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Old 06-01-2016, 09:13 PM   #1
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Battery charging

Hooked up my two 12 volt batteries in parallel over the weekend. Everything looks good. Holding a charge at 12.6 volts. Here is something I don't understand. When the camper is plugged in I read 13.4 volts on the cable coming from the charger. When I plug everything up it only reads the 12.6? Is that right? I understand the charger on the camper is not going to be great is that all the higher it should go? Half of me understands that once the battery is 100% charged it can't go higher but the other half thinks it should read higher when it is charging.

The other question in charging on a separate charger/conditioner. I have two situations. 1) I have a small solar charger that I will use to maintain the battery in storage. 2)I have a conditioner that I want to use a couple of times a year. Can I / Should I hook the positive to positive and the negative to the camper (for ground) or directly to the negative?

Thanks in advance.
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Old 06-01-2016, 09:20 PM   #2
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Hooked up my two 12 volt batteries in parallel over the weekend. Everything looks good. Holding a charge at 12.6 volts. Here is something I don't understand. When the camper is plugged in I read 13.4 volts on the cable coming from the charger. When I plug everything up it only reads the 12.6? Is that right? I understand the charger on the camper is not going to be great is that all the higher it should go? Half of me understands that once the battery is 100% charged it can't go higher but the other half thinks it should read higher when it is charging.

The other question in charging on a separate charger/conditioner. I have two situations. 1) I have a small solar charger that I will use to maintain the battery in storage. 2)I have a conditioner that I want to use a couple of times a year. Can I / Should I hook the positive to positive and the negative to the camper (for ground) or directly to the negative?

Thanks in advance.
I don't understand "Plug everything up". Can you clarify?

I would attach your charger clamps directly to the batteries. Do it before you plug the charger into the AC outlet so there are no sparks.
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Old 06-01-2016, 09:43 PM   #3
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Question

It's always best to connect directly to the posts. Hook the negative up last. A poor connection to ground can cause severe heating at the attachment point. A battery will always read a higher voltage if it is not connected to anything when using a modern digital meter that doesn't put any load on the battery. The only true measurement is when the battery is under some load. That's why when you measure a flashlight battery and get 1.5V it means nothing. The battery may have enough juice for the meter to read but won't light a bulb up.
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Old 06-01-2016, 10:14 PM   #4
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By "plugging everything up" I mean hooking up the wires to the battery and plugging the shore power in.
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Old 06-01-2016, 10:23 PM   #5
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Here is something I don't understand. When the camper is plugged in I read 13.4 volts on the cable coming from the charger. When I plug everything up it only reads the 12.6? Is that right? I understand the charger on the camper is not going to be great is that all the higher it should go? Half of me understands that once the battery is 100% charged it can't go higher but the other half thinks it should read higher when it is charging.
I'm pretty sure that's because your charger is working at max capacity when disconnected as it's not seeing any return from the battery...it thinks it's dead. When connected and seeing a more or less full charge, the charger output is reduced.
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Old 06-01-2016, 10:33 PM   #6
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By "plugging everything up" I mean hooking up the wires to the battery and plugging the shore power in.

If you can tell us the make and model of your converter/charger it would be helpful. If you Google it, you should be able to find the factory manual which explains the normal operation.
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Old 06-02-2016, 05:27 AM   #7
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By "plugging everything up" I mean hooking up the wires to the battery and plugging the shore power in.
OK, let's look at this again. At first most of us interpreted that you measured 13.4 volts on the output of the converter. In order to do this, the converter would have to be running, so that has to mean that shore power is already connected, otherwise, with your narrative it would read 0 volts. So is sounds like your converter is powered and seeing no load, including...no battery. That could be OK.

Now when you hook up the battery and the loads to the coach, the voltage (at the battery or at the converter) drops to 12.6 volts! Now that could mean that your battery is soooo dead that the converter can only manage to supply 12.6 volts and is attempting to charge the battery and cannot summon up enough current to get over 12.6 volts, or it could mean problems in the wiring or the converter itself.

Of course by now either you are still at 12.6 volts, or the voltage has risen if the converter has managed to push some charge into the battery. 12.6 volts is really really low for the output of decent converter (S/B 13.2 or higher) when connected to anything but a totally dead battery but pretty good for a charged battery without a running converter attached.

What is the status now?
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Old 06-02-2016, 10:18 AM   #8
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Smile Battery charging

I don't think you have a problem at all. Everything that you are describing is perfectly normal. Anything producing voltage will have a higher output when there is no load unless it is a very expensive regulator. Once the battery is fully charged the voltage should return to over 13V if the battery is not powering anything.
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Old 06-02-2016, 11:40 AM   #9
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I don't think you have a problem at all. Everything that you are describing is perfectly normal. Anything producing voltage will have a higher output when there is no load unless it is a very expensive regulator. Once the battery is fully charged the voltage should return to over 13V if the battery is not powering anything.
X2...could be, but 12.6 isn't 13 and I don't know of any converter that will drop down that low on its own.
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Old 06-04-2016, 07:41 AM   #10
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Figured it out! The entire problem was the disconnect switch. It turns out it didn't do anything. It was always disconnected even when "turned on". Took it out of the circuit and everything worked as supposed to. The voltage when the batteries were connected read 12.8 to start with and eventually dropped to 12.6ish when fully charged. They started off pretty much charged so this makes total sense.

No I have to figure out how long the batteries can last under "normal" use!
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