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Old 05-08-2012, 11:43 AM   #1
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Charging at home question

So I use my dog bone to plug into the house outlet in the garage, and my intention is to keep my batteries charged and happy till the next trip.

So here's my question:

When I plug in to the shore power described above, the volt meter doesn't budge much upward. But then when I switch my 110 main fuse to "On" the volt meter jumps up to where I would expect it to be, which is around 13+.

Do I keep my fuse switches "On" when I'm at home charging?

Thanks in advance.

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Old 05-08-2012, 12:01 PM   #2
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Re: Charging at home question

Yes. The GFI fuse needs to be on as well. You should also connect to shore power before turning the 110 on & turn 110 off before disconnecting the shore power.
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Old 05-08-2012, 12:02 PM   #3
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Charging at home question

With the breaker panel on your charger is working.


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Old 05-08-2012, 12:12 PM   #4
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Re: Charging at home question

Quote:
Originally Posted by rionapo
Yes. The GFI fuse needs to be on as well. You should also connect to shore power before turning the 110 on & turn 110 off before disconnecting the shore power.
Great. Thanks....

So I rarely use (if ever) the 110 outlets, so I'm assuming that it's ok to leave those fuses "off" when I'm not charging?
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Old 05-08-2012, 01:34 PM   #5
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Re: Charging at home question

yep, you just need the breaker on that feeds the onboard charger. Just be aware if your charger is not a smart charger and puts out more than about 5 amps, it's possible to overcharge your batteries. Also depending how the 12 volt system is configured, the starting batteries may or may not receive a charge. If the system does combine more than one battery, a single faulting battery can fool even a smart charger into overcharging the complete system. Best solution is to frequently monitor the charge when plugged in.
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Old 05-08-2012, 01:40 PM   #6
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Re: Charging at home question

Quote:
Originally Posted by daveb
yep, you just need the breaker on that feeds the onboard charger. Just be aware if your charger is not a smart charger and puts out more than about 5 amps, it's possible to overcharge your batteries. Also depending how the 12 volt system is configured, the starting batteries may or may not receive a charge. If the system does combine more than one battery, a single faulting battery can fool even a smart charger into overcharging the complete system. Best solution is to frequently monitor the charge when plugged in.
Frequently monitor meaning don't leave it plugged in for a week?
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Old 05-08-2012, 03:28 PM   #7
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Re: Charging at home question

Depends on the charger and the system. For instance, I had a starting battery (one of two) fail. My system is set to charge both house and chassis battery systems. Because my charger is a high amp smart charger, normally it supplies a heavy bulk high amp charge and eventunately tappers off to a low amp maintenance mode. But the bad battery made the charger think the batteries were dead so it rampped up to high and continued that way. I was just lucky to walk out in the morning and smelled the battery boiling. It was so hot I could not touch it. I was lucky it didn't blow up and/or cause a fire. I doubt it caused any trouble for my AGM batteries but if they were wet cell types, they would also be subject to over charge. If left that way for a month it might be costly in more ways than one. I lost a set of 105 amp marine batteries in my bass boat using a 10Amp car charger when I didn't monitor the water level and charge. I bought a charger with a timer on it so it would shut down after a set time. For the most part a light amp maintenance charger is a safer method to charge for long periods.
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Old 05-08-2012, 04:01 PM   #8
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Re: Charging at home question

Quote:
Originally Posted by daveb
Depends on the charger and the system. For instance, I had a starting battery (one of two) fail. My system is set to charge both house and chassis battery systems. Because my charger is a high amp smart charger, normally it supplies a heavy bulk high amp charge and eventunately tappers off to a low amp maintenance mode. But the bad battery made the charger think the batteries were dead so it rampped up to high and continued that way. I was just lucky to walk out in the morning and smelled the battery boiling. It was so hot I could not touch it. I was lucky it didn't blow up and/or cause a fire. I doubt it caused any trouble for my AGM batteries but if they were wet cell types, they would also be subject to over charge. If left that way for a month it might be costly in more ways than one. I lost a set of 105 amp marine batteries in my bass boat using a 10Amp car charger when I didn't monitor the water level and charge. I bought a charger with a timer on it so it would shut down after a set time. For the most part a light amp maintenance charger is a safer method to charge for long periods.
Great info. Thanks for your help.
I'll take a closer look at what I have and begin to come up with a safe game plan.

THanks again.
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Old 05-08-2012, 04:37 PM   #9
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Re: Charging at home question

That's why a good charger with an amp display or amp meter is nice to have. As the battery fails you can see the amperage rise to abnormal levels indicating something is wrong. I don't want to scare you off as many members kick on thier charger all the time. I'm just saying bad things can happen if you don't stay on top of your charging sessions over long periods of time. In my case I did see the amp meter jump to unusually high levels and didn't take action...it will never happen again.

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Old 05-08-2012, 08:20 PM   #10
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Re: Charging at home question

If you want to leave your van on shore power unattended, invest in a low cost timer. Set it to come on for an hour twice a week. That will keep up with battery self-discharge and greatly reduce the risk of overcharging.

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