I've just been educated on battery care by an excellent, easy-to-understand instructional (http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volt.htm) referred to on the extensive thread about a dual battery setup. It led me to some additional questions.
We do dispersed camping and usually get about three or four days off the battery before it drops to about 60%. We have a couple of lights, a 12v faucet pump, and we run the heater for 5 minutes in the morning when it's really cold. To get the battery back up to full charge, we stop at shops/gas stations/tourist information centers and ask if we can plug our Schumacher 15A battery charger (microprocessor controlled; multi-stage charging; float mode monitoring; auto voltage detection) in one of their outdoor outlets to top off our battery. Some let us do it for free, some charge a nominal fee. On fast charge, it takes about 30-60 minutes.
Question: Is it really bad for the battery be charged up on fast charge?
While in Yellowstone National Park, a kindly ranger pointed us to an outdoor outlet even though she wasn't supposed to. I first topped off the cells with tap water - which I now know to be a mistake; I should have used distilled water. Then, in order to avoid detection, I put the battery in a cloth grocery bag and the charger in my backpack, plugged in, and proceeded to read a book to pass the time. When my partner got back from the showers, she noticed there was "water" dripping pretty badly from the bag. I had gotten distracted and the battery was boiling over and spilling acid. We doused everything with gallons of water, enough so that even the bag never burned through.
Question: Why did it boil over? The Schumacher is supposed to have auto shutoff; did it fail? After reading the above instructional, could the problem have had something to do with the battery being in the bag even though it wasn't closed up completely? Was it because I used tap water? I filled the cells to the top; did I overfill them? Should they be filled only to the top of the case, not the top of the fill tubes? I need to know how to prevent it in the future.
Question of safety: We currently keep our battery in our camper under the sink. I have a 4" open vent to the outside, but I don't have the battery in it's own box with a vent hose. It seems there's wide disparity of opinion on whether this is safe or not so I don't think I'll get a definitive answer but I'm curious to hear your opinions. Since we pull the battery out during our trips for charging, we can't lock it in front of the wheel wells when we install our camper and we don't want it in the back of the bed where it could be stolen.
I'm researching how to install a dual battery setup to charge the battery when we're driving from place to place. Question: For those of you who have this setup, do you tend to put your second battery in your engine compartment or in your truck bed or camper and what are the pluses and minuses of one over the other? Can I use a lower gauge wire to the rear if the house battery is close to the starter battery in the engine compartment? (The dual battery thread is recommending 4 ga or even 2 ga between the batteries.) We don't need the setup to provide added power or capacity (no winch, no frig). It would strictly be for charging.
Thanks for your advice!
We do dispersed camping and usually get about three or four days off the battery before it drops to about 60%. We have a couple of lights, a 12v faucet pump, and we run the heater for 5 minutes in the morning when it's really cold. To get the battery back up to full charge, we stop at shops/gas stations/tourist information centers and ask if we can plug our Schumacher 15A battery charger (microprocessor controlled; multi-stage charging; float mode monitoring; auto voltage detection) in one of their outdoor outlets to top off our battery. Some let us do it for free, some charge a nominal fee. On fast charge, it takes about 30-60 minutes.
Question: Is it really bad for the battery be charged up on fast charge?
While in Yellowstone National Park, a kindly ranger pointed us to an outdoor outlet even though she wasn't supposed to. I first topped off the cells with tap water - which I now know to be a mistake; I should have used distilled water. Then, in order to avoid detection, I put the battery in a cloth grocery bag and the charger in my backpack, plugged in, and proceeded to read a book to pass the time. When my partner got back from the showers, she noticed there was "water" dripping pretty badly from the bag. I had gotten distracted and the battery was boiling over and spilling acid. We doused everything with gallons of water, enough so that even the bag never burned through.
Question: Why did it boil over? The Schumacher is supposed to have auto shutoff; did it fail? After reading the above instructional, could the problem have had something to do with the battery being in the bag even though it wasn't closed up completely? Was it because I used tap water? I filled the cells to the top; did I overfill them? Should they be filled only to the top of the case, not the top of the fill tubes? I need to know how to prevent it in the future.
Question of safety: We currently keep our battery in our camper under the sink. I have a 4" open vent to the outside, but I don't have the battery in it's own box with a vent hose. It seems there's wide disparity of opinion on whether this is safe or not so I don't think I'll get a definitive answer but I'm curious to hear your opinions. Since we pull the battery out during our trips for charging, we can't lock it in front of the wheel wells when we install our camper and we don't want it in the back of the bed where it could be stolen.
I'm researching how to install a dual battery setup to charge the battery when we're driving from place to place. Question: For those of you who have this setup, do you tend to put your second battery in your engine compartment or in your truck bed or camper and what are the pluses and minuses of one over the other? Can I use a lower gauge wire to the rear if the house battery is close to the starter battery in the engine compartment? (The dual battery thread is recommending 4 ga or even 2 ga between the batteries.) We don't need the setup to provide added power or capacity (no winch, no frig). It would strictly be for charging.
Thanks for your advice!