Something Is Draining The House Batteries On My RV

by Dan
(Colorado)

When the house battery is fully charged and the fridge is on, after an hour or so the battery drains down 30% shuts the fridge gas off. The battery gauge inside the RV shows the battery at about dead at this time. I don't know if there is a short or what?

ANSWER: Greetings Dan thanks for submitting your question on our Ask An RV Question Page.

I am going to assume that when this problem occurs that your RV is not plugged into shore power and that you are not running your generator.

I will tell you up front that I do not believe that your RV's Refrigerator is causing the drain on your house batteries since you state that the fridge is running on propane. The 12 volt electrical draw of an RV fridge running on propane is normally minimal.

My first suspicion is that there is a problem with your house batteries. You need to make sure that all battery connections are clean and tight and that the batteries have the proper amount of electrolytes.

The first thing you should do is watch the video below by RV Expert Mark Polk from RV Education 101, it gives you the proper steps to maintain your House Batteries.

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If the steps outlined in the video above do not help you resolve the problem with the batteries, then I suggest that you take your RV in and have a Certified RV Technician check out the 12 volt DC system in your RV.

They should load test the batteries to make sure that they can take and hold a charge; they should check the charging system on the RV to make sure that batteries are receiving a proper charge and last and not least they should check for any 12 volt electrical item that might be causing a large load on the batteries.

I hope this helps.

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RVing Al

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