Troubleshooting our first use - 239ML SL Series

[lingnj50]

Good morning everyone!

My husband and family took our Passport out on our first family camping trip and had a couple questions:

1) We have a deep cycle battery and are used to a pop-up, so we don't use much of the "bells and whistles." We also had a solar panel hooked up directly to the battery and couldn't get the battery to last over 12 hours?? Is this common? Even switched off the breakers for the water heater, AC, ect. So, CO2 detector and fridge/freezer were the only things using the battery???

2) Scared to empty grey water tank as the valves seem like that are stuck in styrofoam and will pull out completely when we pull on them. Nothing coming out when we pull gently and they seem to twist? (be screwed in) Help!

Thank you for your assistance!
Jen

[chuckster57]

Welcome to the forum

What go size battery did the dealer install? If it’s a gp 24, it’s not going to make it through a night if you run the furnace. How many watts of solar?

Your Roof air is 120VAC only so it has no affect on the battery. Do not twist the handles for the dump valves, they will come apart if you do. You can turn them clockwise to make sure they are still connected, you should get some resistance when tight. They can be stiff to pull out/push in. Just use a little bit of force, if it doesn’t want to play ball then it’s time to call for warranty service.

[Campermike]

We also went from a pup to our camper. It does drain the battery faster as I believe the fridge pulls a fair amount of DC power even when using propane and we have the smaller group 24 battery. That said ours won't die in 12 hours. With solar power recharge we have made it 4 nights. Even with light furnace use one or two nights but that did drain the battery a lot. Without a recharge 2 nights will nearly deplete the battery(brings it below 50%) Either your battery isn't fully charged when you start or it has failed. I will also second that some of the valve are just stiff. Pull a bit harder and it should open.

[TimC]

Do you have led lights? If not, you could drain your battery pretty quickly just by leaving lights on.

Also, just having the fridge on propane still uses a little power. But it’s a constant power and would consume about 30% of my lead acid batteries power per day back when I had lead acids (assuming 80 amp hour battery).

One last thing. What do you mean when you say you had a solar panel hooked directly to the battery? I’m guessing you didn’t mean it this way, but you’re not hooking it to the battery without a charge controller, are you?

[lingnj50]

Thank you for your response.
Our solar panels have two different ways to connect; 1) the adapter directly on the camper and 2) red and black charging cables. We have the charger cables connected all the time, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.