equalizer your house batteries

[terryweber]

how offen should do this. i have a 2006 prevost country coach note i have a g m batteries. life line. thanks 5194654101 terry

[truk4u]

Terry,

I've done the equalization of AGM's and didn't really gain much. Your nearing the magic 5+ year mark on your batteries and you should make sure they're fully charged, then unhook the cables and load test them to make sure they are still good. It's pretty easy on a CC because they put them in an easily accessible location and being 12v, they're in parallel. You may find one or more are already bad.

If you need batteries, I would appreciate a call.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Ditto what Tom said. I replace mine regardless of condition every five years and in between I never make use of autostart on the generator. The life of the batteries is reduced when they are deeply discharged and the number of cycles of charging changes significantly depending on whether they are recharged at a 50% level or allowed to approach a 80 or 90% discharge.

As they age there is a significant degradation in the amount of time from fully charged to a specific discharge when dry camping. I just run my generator a lot which is good for the generator and the batteries.

[jack14r]

Terry,I don't know what voltage Country Coach auto starts the generator but if it is like some of the other converters it is way too low,Lifeline does not want the battery discharged below 50%,when I replaced my gels with Lifeline AGM batteries I had a discussion with Lifeline and they suggested 23.6 volts as the auto start voltage,so I changed mine to that.You can usually change the auto start voltage in the inverter menu.If Country Coach was like the other converters they were at 22 volts or less.

[truk4u]

So Jack, they had you drop to 11.8 instead of 12.2 (23.6 or 24.4). That sure throws out our theory of not going below 50%, but will result in less cycles.:p I've had the same conversation with them and it seems like it all comes down to cycles.

[jack14r]

Tom,If the circuit is loaded then the voltage will be less,if you take the load off and measure the voltage after 2-4 hours you will find that the voltage is right at24.2-24.4.If I were to start at 24.2 it would really be at a much higher percentage than 50%.I am always inverting with at least 1 cruiseair running,if not I can adjust the voltage and it is unlikely that I will discharge them before I start the generator anyway.Try loading a set of batteries and then when they reach 23.6 volts let them rest and then measure the voltage every 15 minutes for several hours,I did and the Lifeline person that suggested 23.6 was right on target at 50% discharge.

[Prevost.Rick]

the batts are not at that voltage they are usually under load if you took all the load off you would see a much higher voltage,the trace 4000 was programmed mc2.2 by the orignal owner of lifeline when i was at marathon in 1995,it also has 4 different periameters and temp compenstion,the heart of course did not,and a after market auto gens looks at one voltage.that is why when putting in life lines you must put in warm wet setting not to over charge batt,s,and of coarse always look at the alt setting if to high for the old batt,s it could damage the batt,s in a matter of ten hours of constant driving.the equilizing done with bad batt,s well you can touch for temp,or smell,it was,nt used after 98

[terryweber]

thanks to all of you

[jack14r]

Tom,what dies lifeline say?

[Jon Wehrenberg]

"Conditioning/Equalizing Charge: 15.5 volts for 8 hours
Conditioning/equalizing should only be done when the battery is showing symptoms of capacity loss. If conditioning/equalizing is necessary, first go through the normal charge cycle. Once the battery is as fully charged as possible, start the conditioning/equalizing charge. "

From the Lifeline web site.

[truk4u]

Jack,

I discussed equalizing with Lifeline and their take was to go ahead and give it a try, you might gain a little more service time, but usually you will be buying new batteries. I equalized the Deka's in my Liberty, they were only 3 years old. I had a little better performance for a very short period of time, about 3 weeks while we were using the bus. Bit the bullet and put in new Lifelines and life was good.

PS - Don't use one of these on AGM's, they don't work, lead acid wet only!

7811

[Jon Wehrenberg]

What is "one of these"? Do you mean a carbon pile tester or all testers?

[truk4u]

Beats the hell out me, it's a Actron Battery Load Tester sold at NAPA. I thought piles were a personal problem with you.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Obviously you need to go back to herding sheep.

If you are going to post stuff at least know what you are doing. Let me rephrase the question so maybe even you will understand it.

You show a battery tester, but are you suggesting no battery tester of any technology will work on an AGM or just the type shown. In other words, did your information source point specifically at the type shown, or was the statement intended to cover all AGM batteries regardless of tester used?

Somebody has to keep an eye on your posts to check for completeness and accuracy. I'll volunteer to be your nag.

[truk4u]

Go back out and work on your brake chambers... The one posted does not work on Lifeline AGM's or any other AGM according to the manufacturer who I talked to because my new Load Tester wouldn't do squat!

Even you should be able to understand THAT!

[jack14r]

Truk,My question was about what minimum voltage in your opinion should the gen auto start if there is a good load on the batteries?

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Jack, In the Lifeline literature they don't specify if the voltage is loaded or unloaded. According to the table they consider 12.2 (24.4) as 50% but the table does not stipulate with or without so if I were to guess that would be an unloaded voltage. So to answer your question I guess you could allow the batteries to reach that level unloaded, and then subject them to what you interpret as a "good" load and see what voltage that is, and then use that as a potential recharge point.

The problem with that however is if you are relying on autostart, it doesn't know if that is an unloaded or loaded voltage so it almost forces you to treat that as the set point for autostart regardless of load.

I hope I am not revealing any confidential information, but Rick Thompson (Thompson Coach) shared with me the parameters he programmed into his coaches for the autostart and he made it a point to not use a specific voltage, but a variety of factors including voltage, load on the batteries, rate of discharge, etc. to initiate the autostart. To turn off the generator his parameters took into consideration even more parameters. As you are aware I am not an advocate of autostart and prefer to manually initiate the generator start rather than deeply discharge the batteries. But I can say if I had the set up Thompson has in his software I would definitely let the autostart function as intended.

I think the issue of when to start the generator when using autostart is a complex one and as your question suggests there are a lot of factors that need to be a part of the parameters used to engage autostart.

[truk4u]

Jack,

I don't have much to add to Jon's comments and sounds like your discussion with Lifeline using 11.8 is more in line with what some of the converters use for their autostart voltage. I tried my best to stay with 12.2, but many times it would be at 12.0 in the morning and I sure couldn't tell you whether that would effect the life of the batteries or not.

I suppose you could look at two different ways.. If you don't deep discharge them beyond say 11.8, over the life of the batteries you get a certain number of cycles. If you keep them above 12.2, you use more cycles over the life of the batteries. So, would the fewer cycles at 11.8vs greater cycles at 12.2 result in longer house battery life, who knows! I'm sure someone will jump in here with mathematical formulas using the battery charts to solve this dilemma.

Bottom line, both will probably work just fine...