Save Your RV's Batteries CHEAP & EASY!!

Hey everybody, Josh the RV nerd here at Haylett RV of Coldwater, Michigan, and whether you're a first-time RV owner or a 10-time RV owner, chances are you've probably had the experience where the battery on your trailer just doesn't really seem to last that long. Like, you know, you might have to change a battery in your car every now and then, but not like every two or three years or sometimes after one winter like it seems you sometimes do with an RV. So what I want to do in this video is explain why that's happening and what you can do to avoid it so that you can get a better return on investment on your batteries. And this is the kind of detail we're willing to go for you here at Haylett RV, helping you even understand how to make your batteries last longer and cost you less. So if you appreciate these tips and tricks, hit the like button on the video, subscribe to our channel here, and tune on in all the time because we've always got good news coming for you. And so you understand why this is happening, there are more computerized gadgets and circuit panels and fancy pants thingamajiggers in RVs now than ever before. Those are technical terms, by the way. And all of this technology brings a lot of really cool conveniences like Bluetooth and this and that, but it comes with a downside. It requires power. And sometimes the power sources aren't always managed intelligently. For instance, like right now, this RV is just totally dead, but this stereo system right here, it doesn't turn off. It goes into standby. Even when this refrigerator is turned off, there's still a circuit panel in passive mode waiting for a user input. Water heaters, all sorts of appliances, like the circuit panels for air conditioners that talk to the thermostats. There are a ton of things in this RV now that are constantly trickle drawing power, even when the RV is not being used. And that's what's causing this problem because all that fancy stuff, it's very cool, but it's constantly trickle drawing off your battery. It's called parasitic load. And on a common like AGM lead acid battery, that battery is not really supposed to get below 50% charge. Every time it goes below 50%, or if you just leave it constantly plugged in and cooking and overcharging, you are lowering the lifespan of that battery. So in theory, that normal, boring, common AGM cheap battery should be able to last eight to 10 years, depending on how well you take care of it and how hard you use it and stress it. Maybe a little less for really, really heavy duty users. But most of us are getting maybe a third of that at best. It's because we're constantly stressing the battery and lowering its overall lifespan. Sort of like what I do to my wife, constantly stressing her out and probably lowering her overall lifespan. Yeah. So you might think, Hey, no sweat. I got the magic ticket. Either I have added or will add, or the camper already has a battery disconnect switch. So I can unplug that thing. I can turn it off and I can stop the power from, you know, cheesing off the battery. Right? Well, not usually, not usually exactly like you're thinking right there in theory, that should definitely work, but more often than not, there's still something wired into that RV that is still able to get to the battery. There's still something drawing off that battery. So what should you do? One of the first simplest and $0 things that you can do that will significantly help here is whenever you're not going to use the RV for an extended period, physically disconnect the battery terminals from the wires of the RV. That will absolutely hard cut off and prevent any and all unintended parasitic load from trickle drawing off of that battery. Now, what do I mean by extended period? Frankly, for me, I think anything two weeks or more really qualifies, but the fact is the sooner you disconnect it, the quicker you're saving your battery. So I don't care if it's just a week or a couple of days, it helps. You just don't usually need to do it if it's less than two weeks, because in that shorter period, maybe some phantom load has trickle drawn off the battery, but just towing it to your destination, the power coming through the seven-way plug of your vehicle, assuming you have it wired properly, should replenish anything that's kind of phased out in the meantime. And here's one of a couple of little Haylett RV pro tips you're going to pick up along the way in this video. Before you go disconnecting stuff, especially if you're not really familiar with wiring and things, there's nothing to really be afraid of here. Grab that phone out of your pocket, snap a little photo of what that battery setup looks like before you dislodge the wires. And then you have a visual reference point you can go back to when it's time to put everything back together. Easy. What do you do when the RV's in storage after you've winterized it for the season, or if you're just not going to get back to it for six months? The best piece of advice I can give you is get the battery off of there, store it in like a cool, dry place, not in the living area of your house, and put a simple, inexpensive, laughably inexpensive, trickle kind of battery charging battery maintainer on it, and you will be annoyed at yourself with how much money you will save by spending a very small amount on a battery maintainer and following this advice. So you want to get that battery off the camper and you want to bring it into a cool, dry place. I think a garage or something like that is one of the best options because it's not freezing like it is outside, but it's also not in the house because most batteries have a level of off-gassing. That's why they're not mounted inside the camper. They're mounted outside somewhere where they can ventilate. Now obviously there are now things like lithium-ion batteries that a lot of this video doesn't directly apply to say like lithium-ion, lithium-phosphate, Battleborns, Dragonflies, things like that, but most of us still have a common AGM lead-acid battery. That's who this video is really for, but frankly this advisory is still good for anybody regardless of the type of battery that you have. Bring it inside some kind of place that is cool and dry. I like to always set it on a couple boards to give it a little buffer from direct like cold concrete contact. You hook up your terminals positive to positive, negative to negative. You plug in the trickle charger and that is it. You just go back about living your life while you let that thing do its job for the next two, three, nine months, however long it's going to be. Now here's one of those real handy pro tips for you from your old Uncle Josh the RV nerd. Get a couple colors of tape like green, yellow, something. It doesn't matter and before you disconnect everything, remember that picture that we took so that you can see how everything wires up? Before you disconnect it, take a little square of that tape, put it next to the positive terminal on the battery. Let's say that's the green tape. Then take a little strip of that green tape and wrap it around the positive charge line coming off the camper. Now repeat the same thing with the yellow tape on the negative terminal or whatever colors you have. Blue, purple, it doesn't matter. I don't care. That way when you go to put this stuff all back together, you have a very easy to follow visual color code that frankly a child in elementary who knows their eight primary colors could handle and avoid potentially backwards wiring your RV which if you're lucky, it only pops a polarity fuse. If you're not lucky, you just caused yourself a couple hundred, maybe close to a thousand dollars worth of electrical damage that really could have been avoided. It is not hard to do it properly, but it only takes a moment lapse of judgment to do it wrong. Again, that's why we're here. Give you an ounce of prevention to prevent a pound of cure. That's the kind of really simple stuff you can do to save yourself hundreds of dollars over your camping lifetime. It's funny how sometimes it's just the littlest things that make the biggest difference and it's shocking to me how this information is just not more commonplace and that's who we want to be for you ladies and gentlemen. We are family-owned, family-operated. We're always here to help you find your second RV the first time and we want you to keep it in your driveway. We don't want it to have to come back for service. We want you to just be able to do nothing but build positive memories and sometimes little things like this can make all the difference. So if you appreciate the information in this video, please hit that like button, subscribe to our videos here at Haylet RV, and we've always got tons of information coming out for you. And as always, whether you need hitching pieces, parts, trades, finance, a truck and a trailer, package, dealer, RV delivered, or anything in between, the only thing we don't do is hidden dealer fees, but we sure provide you a lot of information. So take care, stay safe, have fun, and happy Haylet camping everyone.