Battery Disconnect

[NJBreeze]

What is this Battery Disconnect actually supposed to disconnect?

I seem to remember my 2012 Silverback disconnecting everything.

ON this unit I can walk inside and all of the lights still work.

Is this switch broken if it can't disconnect everything? Imagine that, another broken component!!

[SeaDog]

The battery disconnect will disconnect the 12V power from the batteries if you are on shore power or generator you will still have lights and 12V via the converter

[Guitar G]

Do you have solar and an inverter? If so, the battery disconnect may not disconnect the inverter, which could be supplying power to your lights.

[NJBreeze]

Originally Posted by SeaDog

The battery disconnect will disconnect the 12V power from the batteries if you are on shore power or generator you will still have lights and 12V via the converter

Never knew that so thanks!!

I have two degrees in Electrical Engineering and can't figure why they wired the converter like that, e.g. in parallel but one behind the disconnect switch so to speak. W/o the benefit of the wiring diagram doesn't this say that when battery disconnect (disconnected) then your not charging when plugged into power??

[5picker]

Originally Posted by NJBreeze

Never knew that so thanks!!

I have two degrees in Electrical Engineering and can't figure why they wired the converter like that, e.g. in parallel but one behind the disconnect switch so to speak. W/o the benefit of the wiring diagram doesn't this say that when battery disconnect (disconnected) then your not charging when plugged into power??

Correct.
No charging of the battery when the disconnect is on and plugged into shore power.

[SeaDog]

You are correct I believe its done that way so that you can remove the batteries and still have 12V power and so that when storing you can keep the batteries from discharging. At my ranch I have the trailer batteries disconnected and on a battery tender while I use the converter plugged into shore power while I'm camping there.

[NJBreeze]

So what about Solar Charging? With battery disconnected is Solar charging?

I'm starting to think these guys failed some classes that I took.

[SeaDog]

usually the solar is wired to the batteries directly trace out the wires and make

[W5CRE]

Originally Posted by Guitar G

Do you have solar and an inverter? If so, the battery disconnect may not disconnect the inverter, which could be supplying power to your lights.

First, there is no inverter in this game.

With the battery disconnected via the disconnect switch it will still charge from solar but will not power lights. It will power only anything that is on the battery side of the switch. The CONVERTER is on the other side, non-battery side, of the switch so if you are on shore power the lights and everything will run. The converter will not charge the battery unless the disconnect switch is turned to connect the battery.

Now, IMHO calling this darn switch a disconnect switch does nothing but confuse everyone. Do you turn the disconnect switch ON to disconnect or connect?

[NJBreeze]

Originally Posted by W5CRE

Now, IMHO calling this darn switch a disconnect switch does nothing but confuse everyone. Do you turn the disconnect switch ON to disconnect or connect?

Yes I hear that!!

One of the tough parts of my former career was putting complicated technical details into simple terms.

[EddieWilson]

Another newbie here. Discussion on disconnect switch helped me somewhat but also left me confused. I am on shore power, I also have solar. Should the disconnect be turned to ON or OFF? I accidentally turned the switch to a “neutral” position, neither ON or OFF, ran down the batteries to a point where the lights, control panel, etc. did not work. Turned switch to ON and everything works, but how do I know the batteries are being charged? Thanks.

[bikendan]

Originally Posted by EddieWilson

Another newbie here. Discussion on disconnect switch helped me somewhat but also left me confused. I am on shore power, I also have solar. Should the disconnect be turned to ON or OFF? I accidentally turned the switch to a “neutral” position, neither ON or OFF, ran down the batteries to a point where the lights, control panel, etc. did not work. Turned switch to ON and everything works, but how do I know the batteries are being charged? Thanks.

Use a multimeter.

Sent from my SM-G781U using Forest River Forums mobile app

[NavyLCDR]

Originally Posted by EddieWilson

but how do I know the batteries are being charged? Thanks.

Measure voltage at the battery terminals. If it is greater than 13 volts, your batteries are being charged.

[JKLines70]

I'm an old electronics engineer and have owned my 345K for 3 years now. I have been pretty frustrated with how it is wired and I'm looking at doing a total change now. It seems any time I took it in for maintenance, the batteries always came back dead ... didn't seem to matter what position the battery disconnect switch was in so I finally got frustrated enough to come up with my own wiring diagram and it explained everything. The way mine is wired is if you trace shore power to the breaker box, the 11th breaker on mine is labeled Converter/BR Heater. Inside the box there are four wires joined so there is one that goes to the breaker and one goes somewhere else. The output of the Converter connects to the DC side of the panel. There is also another wire that connects to the DC side of the panel that goes to the battery disconnect and from there to the battery. The inverter is wired to circuit breaker (CB) 10 and the only thing off the inverter is the refrigerator.
So already you have a couple problems. I have a nice storage location where I can plug in my RV as long as it is only consuming less than 15 Amps. More and the GFI cuts off the power. So here are the problems:
First if connected to shore power the the battery disconnect is positioned to disconnect the battery, the converter will be providing power to all of your DC devices making you wonder why. But the real kicker is the actual connection to the battery is disconnected so the batteries will not be charged by the converter. In addition, remember the bed room heater is connected to same CB so if you had a couple cool nights while camping and forget to totally turn off the heater, it will kick in on cool nights. In addition to that, if there is any power going to the inverter at all, it will pass it through to the refrigerator. So basically you have a heater, converter, and refrigerator competing for power on that little GFI breaker. Typically I would go out to storage to find the circuit breaker tripped.
So now we have the situation where there is no more shore power, but there are other things directly attached to the battery like the leveling system and inverter. If you accidentally leave the inverter on, your refrigerator will definitely drain the battery. I'm not sure if anything else will draw enough to drain it, but I would imagine the leveling system probably has at least a small draw.
So now I'm looking at trying a couple things. First off, add Inverter off and BR heater off to my storage checklist. The next thing I want to try is plug camper into 120V 15A shore power and turn off all AC breakers except Main and Convert (CB11) and leave battery switch in connected position. If that doesn't seem to work, I'll disconnect camper from shore power totally, put battery disconnect in disconnect position and use a good trickle charger to keep batteries charged as others have suggested.

[CHICKDOE]

Originally Posted by W5CRE

First, there is no inverter in this game.


Now, IMHO calling this darn switch a disconnect switch does nothing but confuse everyone. Do you turn the disconnect switch ON to disconnect or connect?

this terminology is totally baffling to me also. my disconnect switch has an on and an off position. if i think of it as batteries online (the on position) and batteries offline (the off position) i can now understand.

i also don't understand the terminology of battery disconnect when i have found at least 5 devices on our trailer that are wired directly to the batteries. why even have a disconnect switch if it doesn't do the entire function?

[Reverse_snowbird]

JKLines70,

I'm totally confused. Is there a question in your post?

If you truly want to disconnect all power to your rig, just remove the negative cable from the batteries or put disconnect switches directly on the batteries.

As to the dead battery when you take it in to get repairs done, you can't control if they turn the battery on when they're working on it. If this has happened frequently, your batteries might need to be replaced.

As to the storage unit, you can't control what other unit owners are doing and someone might have done something to trigger the GFI. We frequently go out to find the GFI tripped. Ours is in a storage unit with electricity and it's a big metal box that tends to be hit by lightning in storms. It happened once and we lost an EMS, fuses and batteries, but had no major damage to the rig.

[NMWildcat]

Factory battery disconnects rarely (if ever) disconnect everything by design.
The easiest thing to do is add your own 100% battery disconnect at the battery. When storing, fully charge your batteries and disconnect. They will be fine for several months. I have left mine disconnected for up to 3 months. Most of us have found this method works very well, and it is simple.

[JKLines70]

Originally Posted by CHICKDOE

this terminology is totally baffling to me also. my disconnect switch has an on and an off position. if i think of it as batteries online (the on position) and batteries offline (the off position) i can now understand.

i also don't understand the terminology of battery disconnect when i have found at least 5 devices on our trailer that are wired directly to the batteries. why even have a disconnect switch if it doesn't do the entire function?

Totally agree and that was part of my point. I previously had an old 1981 Prevost. The battery disconnect switch was next to the battery and truly totally disconnected it. There were two sets of batteries and the disconnect switch worked the same way for both.

When I traded Prevost for Cedar Creek, I at first assumed it was the same type of deal and I also felt the terminology on the label was confusing. It really should be labeled "Battery Connect". I logic a 1 is on and means true ... so logically labeling it "Battery Disconnect" and then having "On" should mean the battery is disconnected ... but that isn't the case. So I absolutely agree with you.

[JKLines70]

Originally Posted by Reverse_snowbird

JKLines70,

I'm totally confused. Is there a question in your post?

No question. Just had been out to my Cedar Creek winterizing it and also finally spent some time trying to figure out how it was wired. After I did that, it explained why I was having the issues I was having. I was simply sharing some of my discoveries.

Regarding service, someone once made a good point when I was discussing these issues with them. Camping World doesn't care ... they'll be glad to sell you new batteries.

[tomkatb]

On our 2018 Hathaway the disconnect, disconnects everything except the leveling systems and solar.

What I assumed was normal.

Some die hard safey nerds wired rv fire alrms etc. to never be disconnected. These however will do the batteries in, in several weeks.