Battery.......Corrosion and Questions

[BandJCarm]

Trailer stays hooked up in driveway to 50 amp shore power RV receptacle.

I just went out to check on the batteries. 4 six volts........double 12v setup. Have several questions, need advice.

1) Battery terminals are starting to show a white powder, corrosion. Batteries are about a year old. Trailer is 8 months old. If nothing else, I plan on cleaning them with a wire brush and spraying some kind of auto battery corrosion spray on them. To do that requires disconnecting them, they are WEDGED in there! I'll do that tomorrow.
Thoughts?

2) There is a tiny bit of water/wetness on the top of a couple of the batteries. The door was ajar (I guess I forgot to close it when unhooking 2 weeks ago when I brought it home from dealer getting new roof and a/c unit. It COULD be rainwater? It could be leakage. I will of course check the water level when I get them unhooked to clean the terminals.

3) Batteries are Provolt brand. Never heard of them. After all the issues I've had with slides, I do NOT want batteries to be a problem. I see a recent thread about a Cardinal 5'er that the OP had similar slide issues to what ours started out as, and found a bad ground cable, and corrosion, and when fixed that fixed his problem. Should I replace? Would you? Or just clean up and refill?

Will review any answers. Heading out for a while in a bit. Whatever I do will be done tomorrow or next week

Thanks.

[5picker]

Batteries that are constantly connected to a converter or battery charger (even a multi-stage) will emit a small amount of off-gassing. This off-gassing (and subsequent condensing of the gas back to a liquid) will cause the wetness you are describing and can cause the corrosion you refer to on the cables.

Anytime you continually charge lead acid batteries you are going to have to do regular acid level checks and maintenance on connections. Make it part of your routine.

[BandJCarm]

Originally Posted by 5picker

Batteries that are constantly connected to a converter or battery charger (even a multi-stage) will emit a small amount of off-gassing. This off-gassing (and subsequent condensing of the gas back to a liquid) will cause the wetness you are describing and can cause the corrosion you refer to on the cables.

Anytime you continually charge lead acid batteries you are going to have to do regular acid level checks and maintenance on connections. Make it part of your routine.

Agreed. And thanks!!

Based on this, would you assume that these are ok batteries and just need cleaned and refilled where necessary?

Or replaced?

[lugoismad]

Use a little dielectric grease on your terminals to help prevent the corrosion. It'll keep the from being exposed to the air.

[5picker]

Just because they off-gas doesn't mean they are bad.
Testing each cell with a hydrometer and/or load testing will give you a better indication of whether the batteries are bad.

[5picker]

Originally Posted by lugoismad

Use a little dielectric grease on your terminals to help prevent the corrosion. It'll keep the from being exposed to the air.

That works well.

I've seen just about every grease/spray known to man on battery terminals over the last 40 years.
Dielectric Grease, Vaseline and Fluid Film have been my go to's for supressing terminal/connection corrosion.