I am going to ask some newbie questions. We are the very recent owners of our first RV - a Pace Arrow 36U and I have not been able to get through many of the manuals yet..

We were away for a month (not in the RV) and on returning I find that both the house and chassis batteries are completely dead.  I thought I had turned everything off - but I guess there is something doing some vampire draining.  What really surprised me was the chassis battery.  I assumed it would be good for several months without charging.

So I have three sets of questions:

1. Is there something I should be looking at to explain the rapid drain of all batteries, especially the chassis battery.
   
2. What do I need to do to prep the house batteries for winter?  We are in northern Illinois and it could get very cold soon. I have access to power and so could plug the RV in to shore power - should I? Do I need to remove them and bring them to my basement?  Is there some disconnect switch I am supposed to use?
3. What do I need to do with the chassis battery?

Jim,

Thank you for your response.  That is exactly the information I needed.  Your response led me to the right place in the manual which also pointed out switching off the house power if storing for 48 hours or more.  According to the manual the house disconnect also disconnects the inverter.

I had already read about running the generator with load and so plan to do this monthly for 30 minutes or so.

Thanks again for the quick and helpful response.

Colin

Hello Colin,

We live in Ontario and deal with cold weather Winter preparation and storage.

A couple of additional things we do is:

1) Add fuel stabilizer to the fuel tank and run the motor and generator for about 10 minutes. This prevents the gas from gumming up the fuel injectors.

2) As previously suggested, start the generator monthly and run it under load for about 15 minutes.

3) Fully charge your batteries, disconnect them (as previously advised) and leave them in the coach. The cold temperatures will only slow down the chemical reactions in the battery and prolong it's life. By doing this in the past with my boat (3 deep cycle batteries) I was getting 7 years out of them before replacing.

All the best.

More good tips - thanks.

Regarding the fuel stabilizer, what I have read is that stabilizers are just for gas engines.  Our Pace Arrow is diesel.  If I understand correctly, the issues are different.  The primary tendency with diesel is that algae can grow and a product like Pri-Ocide from Pri-Products deals with that.  As we are in a cold (northern Illinois) climate, this is less of an issue, but I still plan to add Pri-Ocide quite soon.  If anyone has experience with Pri-Ocide or any altrnatives that they would recommend, please let me know.

Colin

Even with the battery disconnect switch on, there are still parasitic drags, such as propane monitors, Carbon Monoxide monitors, etc. If you can plug into power you likely have a floating charging system that will trickle charge when necessary and should not overcharge the batteries, but keep an eye on the water levels.

The same is true of the Chassis battey.

If you want, you can also put a disconnect on the batteries and hook up a battery tender.

Also, running the generator like disussed by others is recommended by the manufacturer