After a short weekend of camping with shore power, with no problems, we came home an plugged into shore power while in the driveway. The batteries began to over charge, we would unplug from shore power and lose our house battery charge overnight. Next day plug into shore power, again batteries would start to cook. After a few days of this process we dicovered the batteries were dead (less then 5.3). We replaced with four new group 24, deep cell Interstate batteries.
My husband cleaned, painted and did some maintence on the battery tray. He marked everything very well and put it all back together carefully. When everything was back together we turned things on and had power, or so we tought. We were in the coach cleaning, etc. and thought we were on shore power. When we tried to start the frige it would only turn on with gas...hum...strange. When we tried to run the sweeper we had no power to the coach outlets...hum...we are on coach batteries and not shore power. Shore power was going into the coach batteries (holding at 13.3) the converter was running, but no shore power in the coach.
With shore power on we would turn off the main switch BUT still have lights. Something is wrong, the connections all look correct, but my guess is if you are plugged into shore power and hit the main coach switch you SHOULD not have lights, but we still did.
This one has us stomped. After 15 hours of cleaning, working and freshing things up we have created a problem. Any guesses? Help!

[This message has been edited by whamer (edited September 20, 2004).]

My lights run off batteries.

...even when the main coach switch is off?

Any guesses as to why we don't have shore power in the coach when we are connected to shore power and the switch is on shore not generator? Inverter, converter or bad connection?

whamer: shore power circuit breakers??

Here is a thought...there is a switch for AC(left) neutral(middle) Converter(right)...with all this being new we may have switched "the switch" to converter and not AC or vise verse. Would this affect the shore power going into the coach? Again this is all SOOOOOOO new that we may have ourselves running in circles. Is there a manual, book or something that clues you as to what switch goes which way when you want this or that?

quote:

Originally posted by whamer:
...even when the main coach switch is off?

Any guesses as to why we don't have shore power in the coach when we are connected to shore power and the switch is on shore not generator? Inverter, converter or bad connection?

Yes, my lights are all 12 volts off the coach batteries, regardless of AC power.

I am not sure what you mean by the "main coach switch".

My 84 Regal has a rotary switch with two positions, Gen and External. My coach does not have an inverter, so I'm not able to help there.

It might be time to start tracing AC power with a light, meter or wiggler. I have a handy little flashlight that detects AC current when it is close to a wire.

Could there have been a miswire on the new batteries? Often, I look at what was worked on last.

We got it! Simple, simple thing! Everthing was done correctly with the new batteries, the mis-que was the switch from AC to CONT...the CONT in not the converter, but actually the inverter (we did not mark, it came that way?). Once we switched back to AC everything in the coach was fine. And I did confirm when the Main switch for the coach is in the off postion we still have shore power doing into the coach lights.

WHEW! Do we have to make every mistake to get the hang of this Barthing thing? One happy newbie :-)

quote:

Originally posted by whamer:
And I did confirm when the Main switch for the coach is in the off postion we still have shore power doing into the coach lights.

So, are your lights AC, then?

It's clear that whamer's climbing the learning curve, as we all must, and from the variety of replies, it's clear that all Barths are not equal in the electrical power systems department. One wonders if this is simply the march of technology, or if they just did things differently each time.

Most converters in fairly recent years had automatic switchovers that prevented power from flowing into the system from both shore power and a genny, an obvious attempt to make the system damn fool proof. It's plain that's not the case on some of the older ones, at least, that still rely on human intelligence to make the switch.

As far as I know, my '90 Regal SE has this type of converter but I have a mysterious box in my battery compartment that resembles the inverter that was part of the Generac genny on my old s.o.b.

The only thing I can see that box does, is light a night light on a tacked-on wall plug that's fed by a drooping piece of zip cord that leads from the mysterious box through a storage compartment, then up the wall. It lights when I'm on A/C, otherwise not.

I haven't tried any A/C appliances without shorepower or the genny, so I don't know if it's ain inverter or not, and I haven't taken time to check it out and/or trace the wiring.
Still got too much other deferred maintenance to complete, and this is low on the priority list.

OK, here's how I understand my coaches electrical system. I can only explain this in simple terms, because, I am simple.

Our coaches have two basic electrical systems. 1. 12 volt (DC) and 2. 120 volt (AC). The 12 volt powers all of the lighting in the coach that have the little bulbs which look like this . As well as any hot points (cigarette lighter sockets) that you have.

Near you generator you have a piece of equipment called a converter



The converter, converts 120 volt (AC) to 12 V (DC) So when your coach is plugged in or the generator is running the converter takes the 120 V from the shore line, coverts it to 12 v and sends it to 1. A fust strip which then goes to all of your 12 v lights and also charges your coach batteries.

Your 120 Volt (AC) Is only in action when the coach is plugged into shore power, or your generator is running. The 120 v system powers all of your residential type receptacles and any 120 v lights. I only have one lamp in the living room. All Barth coaches have a switch somewhere, (mine is under the bed) which must be switched from shore to generator depending on where the power is coming from. Some of the newer coaches like Dale Smiths or Jay Teasleys may be auto switching, but I don't think so. I have a big rotary switch, the new coaches probably have just a button to push.

There has been some discussion about inverters. An inverter will take 12 v current and turn it into 120 v. Obviously, this is a cool way to really run your batteries down fast. I don't think there was any Barth made where you could run, let's say an airconditioner, frig, off of an inverter. We carry a small 800w inverter

$40.00 at Camping World

to power a laptop or charge cellphones etc. Now big honking Prevost buses etc. have huge battery banks, or many boondockers will replace our 2 type 24, 12v batteries with 4 or more 6v golf cart batteries and then they add a big 2000+ watt inverter



which will power a ton of AC powered items like hair dryers, big plasma tv's etc.

Finally if you haven't already, you all need to discover Phred's Poop Sheets http://www.phrannie.org/phredex.html this is some of the best and most understandable info on all rv component I know of.

And, please do not hesitate to correct any of what I have spouted here.



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One of the first experiments Suzy and I did was to fire up the roof air, TV and lights, then switch from shore power to genset, then back. Not so much as a flicker going back and forth, and we didn't touch any switches of any kind. Fact is, I wouldn't know where to find the switch if there was one.

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Dan & Suzy Z
'81 Euro 28

Point one, Dave, that is a great illustration of the difference between 12 and 120-volt lights. I like your converter and inverter illustrations as well.

On my coach things are a little more primitive. To switch from the generator to shore power, the power cord is unplugged from the generator and plugged into the shore power, no switch I can find. There is what I think is a converter/battery charger located under the dinette seat but I have not fired it up yet.

I have found an additional battery wired in parallel with the generator battery, this battery is located in the bustle. The bustle battery appears to be something that was added in a less than elegant way by a previous owner; I found it by following wires that initially made little sense.

All the lights on my 25 foot 1973 are 12 volt. Now there is a pair of what appear to be light switches above a 120 volt outlet next to the entry way, I’ll have to pull covers off and do a little wire tracing to see what’s up with the switches.

Timothy

One thing that I was going to point out is that your converter will only charge your coach batteries and will not charge your engine battery. I had disagreed with Bill H on this one time and had to eat my words when my alternator belt broke and I had to jump my engine battery from my coach batteries. I have a switch to connect my coach batteries to my engine battery but it doesn't work.

I also found that if you run your coach batteries down your convertor will not charge them back up very quickly. In my case it was well over 24 hours.

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well dave liked ur post just found it this is my first coach and ive had trouble understanding the power concept and still am !