Arizona camper battery question

[azguy]

I live in Arizona and it is hot hot hot, I don’t have the luxury of parking my camper inside, but I did buy a cover but haven’t put it on yet. I am worried because It gets like 130 inside the camper and am afraid it will get even hotter with a cover on it. Any other people in AZ have any advice for me?

One more question, I have a really expensive AGM battery that I pulled out of the camper for the summer. The camper seems to have some sort of trickle charger somewhere, but I don’t think there is an on off switch for it, so my question is will I wreck it if yank the battery but plug in the camper or does the camper need something to store excess juice in?

Thanks in advance

[ardvark]

Not a lot of specifics here, but I am guessing when you are leaving it plugged in your power converter is throttling back and passing just a little current to the battery. Mine puts out .5 amps once the batteries are fully charged, but the typical power converters do not care if there is a battery on board. The one question I have is why are you leaving it plugged in. Are you leaving something running? 🙂

Steve

Steve and Andra
2012 F350 6.2 gasser SRW LB
Fab Fours front and rear in case we run into a rhino
2019 Northstar Laredo SC

[azguy]

Thanks for the response Steve,

I don’t keep anything running, but I do go check in on it time to time. I am nervous just letting it sit out there getting beat up by the sun so sometimes at night, I like to open vents and windows to let it air out and cool down. Sometimes when I go in it is 130 degrees inside. I turn on lights. I also like to fire up things like the fridge, and ac just so it doesn’t just sit for months without running. I feel weird about that, I also fire up generators at least once a month or so.

Also for those of you who have to park their campers outside do you cover them in the summer? It gets crazy hot inside, do I have to worry about that. As you can tell I am not an Arizona native.

Cheers,

[ardvark]

azguy wrote:

Thanks for the response Steve,

I don’t keep anything running, but I do go check in on it time to time. I am nervous just letting it sit out there getting beat up by the sun so sometimes at night, I like to open vents and windows to let it air out and cool down. Sometimes when I go in it is 130 degrees inside. I turn on lights. I also like to fire up things like the fridge, and ac just so it doesn’t just sit for months without running. I feel weird about that, I also fire up generators at least once a month or so.

Also for those of you who have to park their campers outside do you cover them in the summer? It gets crazy hot inside, do I have to worry about that. As you can tell I am not an Arizona native.

Cheers,

AZ, I am not exactly sure why you are pulling your battery. I have AGMs also and here is what I do.

First we do have temps over 90 here routinely in summer and it may just touch a 100 rarely. I do keep our camper covered for now, but will be building a garage for it later in the summer. We are taking it out today and are looking for places we can keep distance and still camp which is much harder to do here in the South than out West. 🙂

I do leave my batteries in as I do not see any gain by removing them. I do think you are doing absolutely the right thing by cycling everything periodically. Components are like the human body, they do best when exercised, however, I do not leave our camper shoreline plugged constantly and I do leave the disconnect for the batteries opened so they are not charging constantly. I know a lot of folks leave their batteries online, but they tend not to consider the power converter has a lifespan just like every things else.

So every month or two if it is sitting I plug the shoreline in and charge the batteries, operate the equipment, and air out the camper. In a normal year, it would not be sitting more than two months in a row. Do remember if the fridge has a roof vent to uncover it if you are going for a full cool down, although I do not think that is necessary (all I am trying to do is circulate the anticorrosive). That’s about it and we have had remarkably few problems with our equipment.

As a side, firing the genny is an absolute if it is gasoline, propane less so. 🙂

Ardvark

Steve and Andra
2012 F350 6.2 gasser SRW LB
Fab Fours front and rear in case we run into a rhino
2019 Northstar Laredo SC

[azguy]

Hi Steve,

Thanks again, I pull my battery because inside of the camper in the summer during the day it is about 110 here and drops down to the 70s or 80s at night but pretty soon it is going to be almost 118ish, and will drop down to over 100 at night. Inside my camper can get from 100 to 140 temps. I feel and maybe it is wives tail, but I feel that that will wreak some havoc on my battery. I don’t really have any good ways to keep the inside cool. Also the battery has a compartment, and I believe that it is probably even hotter than the rest of the cabin, but I could open it up while it is sitting there.

I haven’t found the time to get the cover on, but hopefully I will have this weekend off, so I can get the cover on finally, but again wonder if the cover will actually make it even hotter inside.

Thank you for the advice, I really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Mike

[ardvark]

Mike,

By all means do what you are comfortable with. Increased temperatures do decrease charging time and in theory overcharging could be a concern with “dumb” chargers. I was able to find studies noting a decrease in battery life with increased temperatures. Here is the best study I could find on the subject of heat and battery life and it does support your supposition of the negative correlation between heat and battery life.

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_heat_and_harsh_loading_reduces_battery_life

I’m still not willing to take my batteries in and out of our camper. Those darn things are heavy and I am getting old! 🙂 But again, go for it if you feel the need. 🙂

Ardvark

Steve and Andra
2012 F350 6.2 gasser SRW LB
Fab Fours front and rear in case we run into a rhino
2019 Northstar Laredo SC

[azguy]

I know what you mean, mine is 74 lbs. I was curious to what others do, and if I took it out, and plugged in the shore line without one if it would hurt the onboard charger, I am getting to the point where 74lbs is too heavy, but $400 bucks is a factor too. lol

Thanks for the article. It is almost 10 years old, so I could assume that the batteries are even better now. It is probably Ok to leave it in there as long is it doesn’t just sit there plugged in the whole time. Thinking about it more I have a battery cutoff switch and nothing says I can’t just disconnect it. but keep the shore line plugged in, so using the switch wouldn’t be any different than removing the battery but plugging in the shore line.

Maybe I will throw my battery back in. It is nice to have instant lights if I go out there at night.

[ardvark]

I know the article was older, but it was the best one I could find that did not just talk in generalities about the effect of temperature on charging rates.

You will do no harm to the power converter. I operate mine often with no battery in place and on dealer lots we almost never had batteries in place until a unit was sold. The charger does not care if it finds a battery online.

Ardvark

Steve and Andra
2012 F350 6.2 gasser SRW LB
Fab Fours front and rear in case we run into a rhino
2019 Northstar Laredo SC

[Anonymous]

We are south of Tucson, so yeah, it’s hot. We have a standard, dealer-installed battery in our Lance 650, three years old now. We pull the battery disconnect in the camper whenever we park it in storage. (We splurge for covered storage.) We make a point of taking the rig out at least once a month to exercise it and when we do so, we re-connect the battery and let it charge. So far, it works fine.

Bryan

[azguy]

Thanks Bryan, I appreciate that.

[Author]

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