Batteries are a pain in the rear! Not only are they too heavy and awkward, they require special attention and monitoring in order to keep them in good shape. Since batteries also cost a lot per battery it is in your best interest to keep your batteries in good condition.
When it comes time to winterize your rig, if you must leave your rig outside it is best to remove your batteries and place them inside for storage. On my old rig I on occasion would leave the batteries in the rig for the winter, and plug the charger in once a month to keep them charged. This strategy did work as long as the temperature did not get too cold. One winter the Temps went down into the -30's c and my batteries froze, causing me to have to buy 3 new batteries in the spring.
With our new rig, I have decided to pull the batteries from the rig, and place the batteries inside for winter storage. These next few pages will chronicle the procedure.
The first step to pulling the batteries is to turn off all power to the coach. This means unplugging the coach from shore power, if it is plugged in, and turning off the power cut off switch for the coach. My Power cut off switch is a small switch in my control panel as seen here.
With the power off now it is time to look at the batteries. My batteries are in two compartments. The outside compartment will be the easiest to deal with first.
Upon opening the compartment you can see my battery boxes
Removing the box covers shows the batteries and their cabling. Now before i remove the cables from the batteries I will use a dymo label machine to create labels to identify where each cable goes and to what terminal it attaches too. I will also label each battery.
Here you can see the white labels on the cables and on the battery. Now with everything labeled it is time to pull the batteries out of the boxes.
Here you can see the batteries are removed from the battery boxes and also the compartment.
Next it is time to remove the batteries inside the coach. These batteries are located under the top stair inside the coach. There are two screws holding the compartment door in place.
Removing the compartment door reveals the inside of the battery compartment.
Once we have identified all of the cable connections, it is time to label them all.
Now that all of the cables are labeled, it is time to remove all of the cables, and remove the batteries.
To remove the batteries I use a webbing strap threaded through the strap lugs on each battery. Pull.. and Lift the battery out of the compartment.
With the batteries out of the compartments, we can close up the compartments and take the batteries indoors where we will hook them up to a trickle charger for the winter.
Here the batteries are on my work bench in my garage. They are all hooked up to a Norco Genius four cell trickle charger. I only just got this charger, but it should keep a charge on all four of my RV batteries throughout the winter. This way in spring, they will be fully charged and ready to be installed in the coach once again.
While the batteries are hooked up to the charger I will have to monitor the chargers display panel for proper charge and output. also, I will have to monitor the batteries water levels in each cell. Trickle charging will boil off the water in each of the battery cells so you must check these cells and add water at minimum once per month. Only use deionized water to top off you battery cells.
Happy Trails
The Glampurs