2016 Seneca house batteries issue

[Joe1mc]

I have been dry camping for the last several days in Key West. The first night I shut off the generator at 900 pm, left the master power switch on with all appliances, tv, etc attached to a power supply. I go up at 2 am to notice the refrigerator giving me a low battery signal. Needless to say I didn't have enough juice to start the generator, I had to start the crack motor to get juice to the generator. Last night I unplugged all appliances and had nothing pluggged in and ran generator until 10 pm. Still had a low battery indication this morning when I got up. There are 4 house batteries I can't believe that they run down/drain that quickly. Has anyone else experienced any issues with dry camping and batteries running empty?

[oldmanAZ]

It appears that you may have a low battery issue and your batteries are not being charged sufficiently when your run it. How many hours do you run your generator each day? What appliances etc. do you use when the generator is not running? Do you know what your battery voltage is when they are being charged and their voltage after charging?

[Joe1mc]

My inverter tells me 14.9 volts but 00 under the amps, when I push the batteries indicator same panel as the tank indicators it says full. I checked the date on the batteries and it said 4/15. There was one that was warmer than all the others. Should I get a cell check device, might be a bad cell bringing down all the other batteries. Are these batteries covered under the 2yr warranty?

[Robbbyr]

Originally Posted by oldmanAZ

It appears that you may have a low battery issue and your batteries are not being charged sufficiently when your run it. How many hours do you run your generator each day? What appliances etc. do you use when the generator is not running? Do you know what your battery voltage is when they are being charged and their voltage after charging?

X2. Your batteries and charging system need to be evaluated, you certainly should be able to more than a few hours without it being basically "dead". As I am sure you realize excessive discharging of your batteries is damaging, an evaluation of them is in order to determine if they are worth keeping or if they need replacement.

As previously mentioned an accurate voltage check of your system will give you a lot of information, you may even need to isolate each battery and test them individually. I had 2 bad stock batteries in my Seneca, they would quickly discharge the other two just sitting there! Now I have 4 Trojan 6-volt "true" deep cycle batteries and I can go for days in the conditions you describe before they are discharged.

[Joe1mc]

Thanks, looks like I will have to test each one. I'm so used to camping with full hook ups I neglected to test batteries. I'll have to do some brand research when I get home.

[Robbbyr]

Originally Posted by Joe1mc

There was one that was warmer than all the others. Should I get a cell check device, might be a bad cell bringing down all the other batteries. Are these batteries covered under the 2yr warranty?

We must have been typing at same time before, I didn't see your second post.

A hot battery was one of my symptoms too, it would be warmer than the others even when not on the shoreline charging. And it would get even hotter and visibly off-gas on the charger, even though the converter's charging voltage was right where it was supposed to be.

As far as the warranty issue, mine was (and still is) in warranty, but I elected to forgo arguing with them and went right to the Trojan set up. I figured at best they would just replace the two batteries I was certain were bad. But I knew I wanted better so I took the plunge then. Very happy I did. Minor reconfiguration of the battery connection wiring was needed since I had to connect a pair of batteries in series (to get 12-volts), then connect the two pair together in parallel. And the Trojan T-105's are slightly taller, but I had plenty of overhead clearance. Each battery is heavier than the Harris "Marine/Deep-Cycle" batteries they replaced, indicative of the heavier plates a real deep-cycle battery is built with.

Good luck, let us hear back how things go.