Luxury Coach Lifestyles - View Single Post - AGM vs Wet Cell Batteies
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Old 11-23-2012, 09:07 PM   #2
fulltiming
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Texas
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What are your expectations from your batteries? With my 2 8-D house batteries, my coach will drop to 11.7 volts overnight WITHOUT the stand alone ice maker running. With it running, I will drop to 11.7 volts in 4-5 hours. More batteries are installed on the all-electric coaches (4-6). To get more charge, several issues are in play. 1) Any battery you use for the house batteries should be a deep cycle battery rather than a starting battery. A starting battery will kick out a large current for a short period of time while a deep cycle battery is designed for providing a lower current flow for an extended period of time. Golf cart and deep cycle batteries are a requirement for house batteries as a starting battery will not recover from being pulled down to a low state of charge very often. I do use AGM batteries on my house batteries and they have served me well for almost 7 years. 2) I keep my batteries on a charger most of the time but have pulled them down significantly when using the inverter for extended periods with the stand alone ice maker running. If your coach is not plugged in, make sure you always turn off the main coach battery shut off to keep from bringing the batteries down to such a low state of charge that they are damaged. If it is plugged in, make sure your battery charger is working properly. 3) Make sure that the charger is set for the proper type of battery as different types of batteries (wet cell, agm, gel) require different charge rates. The old battery boilers that were installed many years ago are hard on batteries. Most modern inverter/chargers or new stand alone chargers are multi-stage while will extend the life of the batteries. I disconnected the old battery boiler (stand alone battery charger) in my coach and installed a pure sine wave inverter/multi stage charger unit.
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Michael and Georgia Day
1992 Newell 43.5' #281
8V92 DDEC-2, HT740
PT Cruiser GT with Remco Transmission Pump
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