Search the Community

Hello all. My volt meter is indicating 12.5 Volts on Chassis and 12.25 Volts on House Batteries, which is usually and does currently cause the inverter to shut down. When I plug into Shore Power (50 Amp) or to Generator Power (7.5KW), voltage does not change, which would seem to indicate the charger in the Inverter/Charger (Xantrex 458) is not working. My suspicion is my house batteries are somehow preventing the charger from kicking in. We are full-timers and use our inverter lots. Our house batteries are 4 Interstate 6V Golf Cart Batteries (2) in Series and then parallel to maintain 12 V. They are two years old and were originally warranted for that period. I am not complaining as we have had wonderful use from them. We were still having some problem approximately 6 months after installation of the new house batteries with the inverter not always working well so I had the Fleetwood Factory Service in Decatur check the system and they found the Chassis Batteries were failing. I told them I had recently had new house batteries installed and did not understand why the chassis batteries contributed to the inverter not working. The techie indicated the inverter used the house batteries and also the chassis batteries until the chassis batteries dropped to 12.5 V or lower. After changing out the Chassis Batteries (Trojan maintenance-free), all has been well until recently. I can use the main engine to charge batteries but that is not a good solution so I am looking for advice. I have a very good system to fill the Chassis Batteries all at one time and do so every two weeks and in fact two days ago topped off house batteries. I have checked breakers on Xantrex, and every other place I can think of. Critical factor is the charger part of the Xantrex does not seem to be working. I am thinking of using a automotive-type charger to charge overnight and with the inverter turned off and see if the charge will hold at higher level. If batteries hold a charge for several hours, that would seem to indicate batteries are not the problem(?) Does anyone have a suggestion other than driving down to the Battery Store to have load test. Thanks in advance. Paul

Folks, The new chassis batteries are being drawn down over a period of a couple of days. As most, I have an electrical distribution panel in the front of the coach. There is a continuous duty solenoid that is activated with the ignition on. But there are a lot of things that are on before the solenoid. I am showing a 2.5 amp drain at this point. Does this seem excessive? How long would a 2.5 amp drain take before batteries are discharged? Thanks for the help, Dennis