RV Battery Maintenance Tips: Checking Fluid Levels
Dave SolbergDescription
As with all RV components, to ensure you get the most out of your batteries, you must complete routine maintenance. By checking regularly to see that everything is in proper working order, you extend the lifespan of your RV battery and save money in the long run.
One of the most important RV battery maintenance tips involves checking the fluid levels of each of the batteries on your unit. So in this lesson, we teach you the essential maintenance tips you need to inspect a 12-volt lead acid battery for fluid levels and fill it up if any terminals are running low.
Expert RV battery maintenance tips for optimal lifespan
To help you get the most out of your RV batteries, Dave Solberg walks you through a demonstration on checking RV battery fluid levels. He recommends using these RV battery maintenance tips each time you inspect the batteries on your unit, which should be at least once or twice per month. To begin, Dave shows you how to remove the exhaust covers on your batteries for better access to the terminals. He talks about some of the hazards you might encounter, and explains why you might want to wear safety glasses.
With the covers off, Dave teaches you the tips necessary to gauge the level of acid in each battery. You’ll learn how to use a mirror to check how much fluid is in every terminal, as well as the importance of adding only a certain kind of water. Dave introduces a couple different methods you can utilize to add water and demonstrates the process for both. Remember Dave’s simple RV battery maintenance tips when inspecting and maintaining your unit each month, and you should have no trouble checking and refilling the fluids in your RV batteries!
It's important to check the fluid level in your batteries to have proper maintenance and battery capacity. The batteries in this one are lead acid batteries and they're in this compartment right here. And we had these covers and this exhaust system up here. So as it charges and recharges, we're going to get some gassing. So that gas will come up through here. Exhaust through the vents that we saw on the front side of it. So these are a lot harder to check. Anytime your fluid level gets below the plates we're going to start losing capacity of this. So, we want to make sure we maintain that. What I'm going to do is just take these off, pop this off here and I'm going to take this. Just so we have some better access to this. There we go. Put that on the ground and I'll just snake this up here. Now I have better access to this and this is where my batteries are going to be. I guess I'll pull both of them off here. I'm going to check batteries on both sides. As you can see that's one of the challenges of checking the fluids on here. These are very difficult to get at. This one has two screws here so I'm going to take this off. Just have a better access. I could have checked the fluid level of these two batteries just by pulling this off. Not having to take the whole thing off, but I wanted to have better access in here to be able to see what we're doing. So the next thing I'm going to do, we've got two lead acid batteries. These are 12 volt batteries are going to be hooked parallel to each other. These caps in here, we're just going to pry that up a little bit. And since I'm working away, these are fairly clean batteries. I'm not right up in there. I'm not wearing safety glasses on this. You might want to wear safety glasses. If they're really corroded, you gotta be careful about popping these lids off. They may fling acid up in there but we can see we've got those three. Okay, so these lead acid batteries come with an acid when they're new. When we need to add anything to it we want to use distilled water. We don't want any kind of a tap water or well water because it might have minerals in it that will eat away at those plates, do some damage, short them out. So make sure you use distilled water. Now there's a couple of different ways we can see in here fairly well to test these or to check the batteries in them. However, I going to put those down there. If we're in a really tight spot, one of the things that I like to use just a little mirror like this and you can go in and just do a little test from there. I can see the battery acid level. That's good. That's good. Once, okay, good, good and good. If I do need to fill the acid level You can use a Turkey baster like this here. That's very common. Just put it inside distilled water and go in here. Now, one of the things you want to be careful about is that you don't overfill these and start getting some water on the outside or get any corrosion on the inside. If I have any type of sulfation out here or acid buildup, I don't want that getting inside. A really handy way of doing it is this battery fill. It's got a little check valve right here so I can fill this up with distilled water through the top, come in here and just pop it down in and it will shut off when I get to the proper level. So, take some time. You should do this two or three times a month. With the lead acid batteries, especially the the larger six volt batteries are going to take a heavier charge. They're going to gas more. You will have a tendency to lose more of the electrolyte inside of it. So it's very important to check your battery levels to get the optimum use out of your batteries.
Sorry- but you kinda missed it on this. Why would you need to check your batteries 2 or 3 times a month? If you are going through that much water then there is a problem with your charger and it needs to be updated to one of the newer smart chargers. You neglected to talk about the importance of keeping the battery charged (charging it every couple of months) in the winter to keep it from sulfating and loosing capacity. A charged battery will not freeze but a partially discharged battery will and it when it freezes it damages the internal plates causing you to have to replace the batteries that next year. You also forgot to talk about disconnecting the battery from the parasitic draws over the winter like the co and propane detectors or any other electronics that draws a little bit of current and will run your batteries down over a couple of months. Also please take off metal ring and watches when working around batteries.
hello, during the winter months I turn off the disconnect off to the battery on our 5th wheel and hook up a battery tender, is this a god idea or not? I have heard both ways.
Im so confused. I live in travel trailer full time. Plugged into 30amp #ull time. Is my battery suppose to b on or off? Onnthe few occasions i lost power my battery lasted about 10min with minimal lights ect. It was a bran new battery. Last year.