Battery problems

Mbastian

Where to start...my wife and I have worked for a couple of days to set up a 100 w solar system for our TaG. Yesterday we were charging our deep cycle battery with solar and running the camper lights from the battery. Today we stopped setting up solar because we were told by our teardrop dealer that solar will not charge the battery enough to run the Norcold frig. However, the battery would not charge anything once we removed the solar panel. I bought and installed a new battery and the inline fuse on the positive line looks good and still the battery will not turn on the lights.

We hope to hit the road on Monday morning. What are we doing wrong?

Mike

Sharon_is_SAM

Need more information.

Do you have a battery cut off switch? If so, is it turned on?

Was the new battery charged?

How was the charge controller connected to the battery? Any chance there is a loose connection at the terminal? What size fuse on the battery?

How are you measuring your battery voltage and amperage gain via solar? What is the current battery voltage? What is your battery amp hr rating?

If you plug into shorepower, will your lights and frig work? Have you checked your 12 v fuses in the converter box?

Misterbee

I have been charging the battery on my T@G with a 100 watt solar panel for the last 8 weeks now. It’s enough to keep the battery charged during the day, and we plug in at campgrounds at night. There have been a few days where we did not plug in at night, and the fridge stayed nice and cold.

As far as your current situation, I would test the battery at the terminals with a volt meter first. If it is putting out power, then I would check the battery cutoff switch. Then I would check all of the 12 volt fuses in the power panel. Then I would try plugging something in to one. of the 12 volt accessory ports, to see if you are getting power.

Mbastian

Thanks for the suggestions. We have been charging the new battery with AC power overnight and still no power from the battery. I will double check everything else the morning.

Mike

Ianstag

Sounds like you have not turned on the battery switch inside the tongue box.

DaveB

I'm assuming everything worked fine before you started to install the solar?
This may sound a little too obvious, but sometimes its the obvious we overlook...
The negative (-) side of the battery is still connected to the trailer frame? Because if its not then nothing will work off of the battery.

Mbastian

Ian and Dave, battery switch is on and everything worked fine before trying solar. Battery has water and shows a charge of 4 amps on my trickle charger. Panel fuses and inline fuses are solid. However, Dave, the negative cable is connected to the negative battery pole as it was before I started setting up solar. Is there another connection to the frame? this sounds like it might be the problem.

Mike

Mbastian

well, I grounded the negative pole of the battery to the frame and still no juice.

Ianstag

Have you checked the battery voltage with a multimeter? If you haven't got one, you need one if your doing this sort of stuff.

Sharon_is_SAM

Do your lights and frig work on shore power? I would also change out fuses even if they look good.

DaveB

@Ianstag is correct you will need a multimeter to track down the cause.
Basically you will want to check the voltage starting at the battery posts and work your way down the line until you find the point where voltage is lost. A wiring diagram would be extremely useful, but I don't recall ever seeing one, but I'm sure it exists.

beaky

we have 100 watts of Zamp on our rig, boondock 90% of the time, and have never had a problem running the fridge and the lights

DaveB

Check this out not the diagram I was thinking of but it should help
https://teardrop-trailers.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/399/t-g-wiring