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Old 08-03-2018, 08:35 PM   #26
blw2
Senior Member
 
Brand: Thor Motor Coach
Model: 2013 31L
State: Florida
Posts: 2,181
THOR #908
yeah
bigger than a person. Big, expensive, and critical.
Ours are cheap little marine hybrid batteries...or a step up if you have true deep cycles
but yeah, a dollar is a dollar so take care of your stuff....I agree.

My read on the whole desulfication and equalize thing...and the advice that driving does it enough vs the navy doing it...
It's probably good practice, and probably does help
but for our purposes the resulting difference or advantages of doing it are probably slight. Maybe slight enough to be considered "negligible".
I recon there are enough other variables also affecting the state of our cheap little marine hybrid batteries that it's all just not worth the trouble...
again, just my read on it...intuition

I've killed and replaced more batteries than I care to admit, on boats and campers.. i'm a slow learner...but I did eventually learn at least enough to make my batteries last...
1) learn about self discharge rates of these lead acid batteries (they loose a little bit of charge over time... even without anything connected)
2) leaving things connected will draw them down faster.... residual loads, small loads such as the clock on the radio....
3) understand that they don't like to be discharged too deeply. general rule of thumb commonly said to be 50%...meaning don't take it down to half charge. Keeping them at 100% charge or nearly so all the time is I suppose best, but the manufacturer specs I've read indicate they can acceptably be drawn down lower than that... with the real deep cycle golf cart type batteries I think down to something like 20% to 30% (I've forgotten the exact number I read in my golf card battery user manual). that said, I suppose 50% is a decent number to keep in mind.
4) any time the battery is brought below that level it is harmed. even just It will never again hold as much charge as it did before. (again the level isn't like a switch or a magic line..it's more like the lower you take it the more harm is done.) Take them to zero once or twice, they may not take a charge at all.

So I think the best things you can do within reason is to keep the batteries charged.... and disconnect them when in storage...and top up the charge every few months if stored a long time...and of course keep the water topped off...
The other stuff, yeah probably some benefit, but is it worth the worry?
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