General Boards > Technical Support
coach voltage question
Edward Buker:
Joe,
You best bet is to measure the voltage at the battery banks. Your house batteries should be at around 13.8V with the coach plugged in. From reading more info on this post I see that you have a Xantrex Echo Charger. That unit will allow about 5 amps of trickle charge to come from the house batteries to the chassis battery pair. They should keep the chassis batteries at about 13.2V. You can measure and see what voltage is being applied to the starting battery posts. If the voltage is below the expected high 13V range then certainly check the fuses in the Xantrex Echo Charger. If they are good then put a DC amp meter (usually most digital multimeters will have a 10 amp DC measurement capability) in series with the Xantrex positive supply lead going to the chassis battery bank and see if about 5 amps is being supplied. If it is then you are drawing current at the rating or in excess rating of the Echo Charger. That would indicate that something in the coach is on that exceeds a 5 amp draw in total and would slowly discharge the chassis batteries. It could also indicate that one of the chassis batteries is a problem and drawing more current in standby than it should to maintain charge. It would seem that something is not quite right here and needs some diagnostics. If you suspect the batteries there is a way to check those also. Hope this helps.
Later Ed
Gerald Farris:
The green light on the Echo Charger indicates that the fuse from the house batteries to the Echo Charger is good, but the fuse from the Echo Charger to the chassis batteries could still be bad and causing a no charge condition. So like Ed stated, check you voltages to see what is going on.
Gerald
Richard And Babs Ames:
The Echo Charger blinks green when there is a difference in charge between the house and chassis batteries. Steady green means all is well. http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/103/p/docs/pt/5/product.asp is where you can get a PDF manual.
Joey and Jackie Cashen:
Thanks all. At your suggestion I have checked the chassis battery voltage and found that to be 13.18 on both. I would think that it should be higher. Would this indicate faulty trickle charge from echo charger? As stated earlier these batteries are sealed Interstate Workaholic batteries installed 6 months ago.
Thank all of you with your input.
Joe
Edward Buker:
Sleep well Joe, the electrons are where they are supposed to be.......13.18V is just fine. There is circuitry in the Echo Charger that connects the battery banks, house to chassis, and limits the current that can pass to about 5 amps. The circuitry in the Echo Charger is not a perfect "switch" so you will drop about .5V in the transition through the Echo Charger. The fact that you are measuring 13.2V would mean all is well and that the house batteries are being supplied about 13.7V from the main charging/inverter system.
When you look at the guages up front, you are remotely reading what is happening at the other end of the wiring harness from the battery. Even the computer systems in these coaches are sensing voltage levels that are remote from the battery terminals in most cases. When there are questions, in order to be sure, check the health of the charging systems at the battery and you will know for sure the charge levels and the health of the charging systems.
Regards Ed
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