missing converter

[Paula Bindrich]

After draining my deep cycle battery on Labor Day weekend I discovered a couple things about my rig.

Uhaul didn't wire the car up correctly, like I had asked. It'll cost me more to drive "down the hill" than to get someone up here to fix it.

and my converter in the camper is missing. There's also some cut and swapped wires coming in from the battery side outside. The green and yellow has been cut and spliced so that the green coming in is attached to the yellow going somewhere... I don't know if that helps any.

So, my question is what have people found useful in putting in a new converter or something similar. A friend said that on their boat they have put in a regular battery charger that has a "maintain" function. It's hardwired in so that when they use shorepower it also charges the batteries.

any other/better but also cheap solutions out there?

Paula

[Pete Dumbleton]

I have removed and discarded two of the older heavy converters and use a battery charger to recharge my battery when I have shore power. Much less expensive and it does a better job than the old converters did. I see no need for a converter unless one does a lot of shore power camping and uses a lot of 12VDC power (furnace fan, reefer on 12V, etc.).

[Paula Bindrich]

I've been going through all the options including getting a solar setup. I bought a charger that I could hard wire in like my friends boat but found that this models settings reset each time the power is out, so I couldn't tuck it out of the way because I'd have to reset it to deep cycle, amps, etc. each time it got plugged in again. So it's going back and the hunt is on again.

I'll also have very little shore power time. Only when I'm home.

Going to get the cars wiring set the way I wanted it but going to Denver is about a once every two months thing even though I live about 30 minutes away.

Paula

[Gina D.]

As mentioned many times before...

I had no converter in my 13. I used a schumacher charger set up like your friends and got along just fine.

Charger charges battery, battery runs 12v stuff while being replenished by charger. No muss, no fuss, no bother.

I use solar when off the grid.

My 17 has a converter that also has a distribution panel. The breaker for the converter function has been set to off permanently, and I hard wired in a similar charger. (After disconnecting the charge line from the converter, of course).

I still seem to get along fine.

The converter has "eaten" one of my LED domes and plays havoc with my TV/CD player. I flipped the breaker on in Oregon as I was running all my lights at once during trailer tours. Folks were interested in them. I have no proof, as I didn't investigate to closely, but I have my suspicions about the charger with the converter contributing to a VERY premature death of a brand new battery. I used the converter to charge for a bit before I installed the Schumacher.

As soon as I get motivated to build a new distribution panel, the big heavy thing will get pulled out and I will have more storage where it is.

Note that this works for me as all my stuff is low draw.. LEDs, cold cathodes etc. This may not work for those that like to use thier incandescents or other heavy draw items, such as inverted TVs. The charger wouldn't keep up.

[Pete Dumbleton]

IMHO, the ideal set up is a larger battery charger for quick and complete charging (and desulphation) plus a smaller maintenance charger hard-wired in so it's charging whenever the trailer is connected to shore power (unlike the larger charger, the maintenance float charger doesn't need an operator to start).

A solar panel with a good controller can also be connected to the battery at the same time.

[Paula Bindrich]

Yep, something hardwired in and a future solar setup is where I'm going to go with this. I'm fairly sure the only shore power I'll get is at home. In the meantime it's just me and the dog. Since Phoebe hasn't figured out how to turn on the lights yet I think I'll be fine with just being careful on usage.

Thanks everyone!

Paula