Battery Upgrade

When we left the story of Camping World Service, the latest fix didn’t work either. More parts are going to need to be ordered. So we decide to tackle our next project while waiting for those parts.

You see, our Winnebago Journey Express came with two wet-cell house batteries and a converter to charge them. This works OK for most people. But, as you all know, we aren’t most people so we wanted something that better suited us.

In the first place our converter was overcharging the batteries which meant Dave was having to add water to each battery’s cells every month. Not a pleasant task.

In the second place, two batteries were not going to provide enough power for the dry camping we plan to do next month without having to run our generator more than we would prefer to do.

Since day one of our ownership of this RV, I’ve been lobbying for AGM batteries and I wanted four of them not two. But the converter that came with our RV would not be good for AGM batteries. So we needed to save up money for the inverter as well as the batteries. We finally got there.

So, once we figured out how close we were to Palmer Energy, we decided to spend our Camping World waiting time going to Florida and doing the battery upgrade which would include installation of a new inverter/charger to replace the old converter. The new inverter would also provide whole house power so we could use all outlets and the microwave when we are not plugged into a campground’s power without having to turn on our generator.

So, John Palmer and Dave spent two days crawling around our RV running wires for the new systems.

And when they were done the two wet-cell batteries were out.

And four new AGM batteries were in the space Winnebago generously supplied for them.

Our AC panel produced a sub-panel in the space Winnebago provided under a cover that was bigger than it would have needed to be for just the original panel.

A new inverter/charger was installed in a basement bay. We had to move our own stuff for that to happen.

And the old inverter control module was removed from the RV’s power center to make room for the new module.

If you look closely at the new module, you’ll see it says our batteries are float charging. That’s the stage the old batteries never got to which caused the water to boil away.

So, Dave’s happy he doesn’t have to fill batteries anymore and I’m happy we should have enough power to run the furnace all night during those cold desert nights next month when we go dry camping with friends.

And we’re broke again.

Now, to start saving up for solar panels.

TTYL,

Linda