Battery Care

[mcwoods2]

How do you take care of your Batteries in the winter months in storage?

[oldmanAZ]

I make sure the battery water is topped off and plug in my trailer to a standard outlet. The WFCO converter/charger has done a good job as a virtual 'trickle charger' for the past couple of years.

[jbrnigan]

Battery Tender

[wiscampsin]

Once we get ours to the indoor storage facility we take our battery out and store in on a board in the basement at home. Charge it up in the spring before we go to bring the camper home.

[JFlightRisk]

X2...We take the battery off the trailer, put it down cellar, and after checking the level in the cells, hook it up to a Battery Tender. every couple of months, I check the cell level again just to be sure they're full.

[RogerR]

We are snowbirds so are gone for 5 to 6 months. I take it inside and connect to a Battery Tender Jr. brand battery tender. It puts a tiny charge on it and tests it. So far never boiled off a drop or had lost the slightest amount of water by spring.

If all the posts that I have read this is the most conservative of life for the battery. It also uses less power than the Wifco on the RV and hopefully increases the lifetime of the Wifco.

[Siamese]

I remove them from the trailer and take them home. Make sure the water's up, and put a full charge on them. I'll give them another charge mid-winter, and then again when we're ready to put them back in the trailer. My preference is to not trickle charge continuously, as it's not really necessary.

I store them on the concrete floor of my garage. The idea that they can't be stored directly on concrete harkens back to when battery cases were made out materials that were more porous, and could lose charge to the concrete. Today's case materials are unaffected.

[Johnny Lightning]

I've said this before and I'll say it again here DO NOT TRICKLE CHARGE YOUR BATTERY ALL WINTER! Why do I say this? Because I ruined a brand new battery with a trickle charger over a winter. A trickle charger is a different animal than a battery tender, although I believe they are many times confused.


A trickle charger is a constant low amperage charge in the neighborhood of 1-2 amps but unregulated. A battery tender is designed to keep a fully charged battery fully charged over an extended period of time. It does this by sensing the State Of Charge (SOC) of the battery and turning off when the battery is fully charged, then turning back on when the battery voltage drops due to internal discharge. Like the other poster said the practice of putting batteries on a piece of wood and not concrete is no longer necessary. The practice goes back to the early part of the 20th century but just won't die.


As to where to store the battery, keep it warm (above freezing) if you can. If not make sure it is on a battery tender (see above). A fully charged battery won't freeze until about -70 deg. F. A fully discharged battery will freeze at something above 0 deg. F. Use your own judgement but in my world battery tenders are cheaper than batteries.

[Sundancer330]

I didn't want to use the converter/charger and put all the extra hours on it over winter, they only last so long. I leave the battery in the box, top off the water and put a tender on it, but I keep the TT indoors at home.