Answering Your RV Tech Questions

welcome to another Todds two minute TCH tip Tuesday brought to you by the National RV Training Academy the largest Hands-On RV Training Academy in America hey before we get to the video which I know this is the reason why you're here go ahead and hit the Subscribe button that way you don't miss anything hit the Subscribe button now thank you now back to our Tech tip Tuesday hey on this Tech tip Tuesday I'm going to go ahead and answer some questions here now do want to let you know I did do a video just last week on uh testing the Lumis saap we're still in the middle of the test so hold on right we're going to see how it goes I know some of you are looking to where to get it we'll get to that if it passes through right I will be able to actually get the uh Luma safe if it does its job but until then let me go ahead and answer some of your questions so I got a couple questions here and let's go ahead and get those taken care of here we go all right it says our dematic water heater makes a sporadic uh clicking noise while in electric mode uh when we turn it on we rarely actually use uh the propane to heat our water uh usually just the electric could the propane igniter be getting a signal from the control panel by trying to light the propane uh that isn't available right so your help would be greatly appreciated Todd you're awesome can you please just help out didn't say that but anyway should all right so sporadic clicking noise now could be a couple things right um you did say could it be the igniter click click click click click um which means yeah that would be a an awful an awfully bad short on the circuit board the one way to tell with that is if you hear the clicking and you think it's the igniter go outside right and look at the igniter because of course there's going to be a small gap on that igniter roughly about 316 of an inch and you're going to see a spark right if you're seeing a spark while on electric oh yeah you've got something going on with the c also um because the tank is metal right and as we are heating up that water gets to a certain temperature every once in a while that metal will Flex well certain times there'll be a sporadic click I don't know if you just didn't hear it before but from time to time you'll heal that all right so the thing is is you know if you suspect it's the uh igniter you know on the propane side which shouldn't be igniting while you're in electric mode uh first make sure that you don't have both the um electric switch on and the propane switch on because some older models you can turn on both and whenever it goes into the heating process both come on at the same time okay and if you don't have propane yes it's going to try and ignite it'll do it you know three through three systems and then finally shut down so just make sure you're not sending two signals to the circuit board the way to confirm with that is make sure that it's off on propane uh at whatever selector dial switch you have inside the RV walk outside and then stand there and look at your water heater don't get too close but stand there and see if the igniter is actually going on if that's the case could be a short then again it could be just those two buttons because some older models you can uh use the electric and uh the propane at the same time it just heats the water up faster but in your case if you're not using propane yeah it's just going to go into what we call propane lockout so check that out um another question that we had um this has to do with h battery so uh this comes from uh Scott uh Whit cell here we go I have a 400 watt solar panel and two deep cycle batteries 150 amp hours okay two two deep cyle batteries 150 amp hours I'm assuming they're lad acid jel or AGM because it doesn't say they're drawing between 25 uh 225 and 325 watts and my batteries are discharging to 50% uh in less than 10 minutes everything is less than 6 months old any ideas what could be wrong uh any feedback from you would be most welcome by my math it should run for roughly around 6 hours at 50% input all right here's how he's getting those numbers he's got 150 amp hour battery two of those and because he's calculating at 50% and we'll say that he's got 300 amp hours but he's at 50% he's only going to use 150 amp hours um if we look at it from voltage I mean from wattage 50 * 12 Vols is about 1,00 Watts so what he saying is if my batteries are discharging the way they should right I should have about 1,800 watts of available power in those batteries before my batteries at 50% okay he's consuming between 225 and 325 watts per hour so we take the 325 and divide that into 1,800 and we come up to about 5 and 1/2 hours that's what he should be getting he says they're draining to 50% in 10 minutes so my first question is what's indicating to you that they're 50% you do you have some type of digital display and how does that digital display um communicate with your batteries here's the thing there's there's too many variables here and too many unknowns this is what we would do on a battery old school load test charge your batteries up all the way whatever the voltage is at the terminals with no load check your voltage now apply a load go turn on your fart fans or whatever they may be draw about 500 watts and let's see if the voltage drops okay it's going to drop a little bit because when there's flow you're going to drop a little bit of pressure okay so let's say you've got lead acid gel AGM batteries you drop it to about you know from 12.7 volts down to about 12.5 it's a good battery okay um then I would question how how are you getting 50% is it an indicator on on the wall if it's an indicator on the wall is it synchronized right do we they sometimes get out of synchronization we got to figure that out I don't know how you're verifying the 50% so I'm going through all the different uh imaginations for it all right now if you're at 12.7 or whatever there it is and you're instantly dropping down to say 123 or 122 on a say a small load like 500 watts uh actually it's a pretty decent load on a lead acid battery 500 watts U if you're dropping down more than say 3% then yeah your batter's kind of toast we say it's not holding the charge and if you're run it through in 10 minutes question is how old how old is your batteries what's the condition of the terminals are they clean are they tight are your connections tight okay energy can't be created or destroyed it's not going anywhere but I want to find out where the voltage drop is and if it's just in the battery then well maybe time to change your batteries but also again it could be whatever you're using on the wall I know if you're not Scott lot of information there you got to go back and Rewind it right because I'm going through all the different possibilities but um if you can respond tell me how you're getting the 50% if it's a wall indicator then the question is is how do we resynchronize it right again check the voltage at the batteries fully charged what's the voltage put a load on it keep the keep your uh volt uh voltmeter there and let's see what the drop is okay if it doesn't drop that much maybe the indic on the wall is no longer synchronized but if it drops quite a bit maybe it's time to get some big beard batteries not have to worry about all that see that plug there it's pretty good all right one more question uh for this Tech tip Tuesday uh great video Todd uh I'm also doing the correspondence course um I'm currently researching the 12volt fridge or residential fridge uh for a motor home as you mentioned uh people are having issues um with the burned out 12vt compressors are we still having those issues well in most cases no okay anytime something new comes out right there's some unintended consequences and we were burning up the motors and a lot of it has to do with low voltage going to a 12vt compressor right we're already starting off at a low voltage 12 volts and if I send low voltage say 11 volts well the amperage increases so there's a lot of burnouts because um um well one if you're using a lead acid gel or AGM battery a single one you can drain that very fast okay and as you drain a lead acid gel or AGM battery the voltage will drop okay and you get to 50% you're right at 12 volts you drain that more than 50% now you're below the voltage right ampage starts Rising burns up the motors so that's one thing the second thing is is you know there was sales taking place and uh they're saying yes you can go all weekend long well here's the thing 100 amp hour battery has 1200 watts in it at 12 volts 1200 watts if the 12vt refrigerator is drawing uh about 400 watts per hour well then you can kind of figure out you're only going to get about four hours out of that battery right and if it's a lead acid jelly AGM about two and a half maybe three hours so yeah we're we're draining them way too fast as a knowledge uh uh for you uh the RV owner comes up and says hey look I'm I need to maintain my batteries maybe get a big beard battery well then I can if I keep it maintained then I protect that 12vt compressor right so do your homework right and if you do go with a 12vt compressor make sure you have a good battery or at least maintain the proper voltage make sure that you understand you only got so many hours in between charges you have solar panels that'll definitely help out plugged in the seven pin connector while you're traveling down the road it's going to help out a little bit as well it's the overnight stuff where you're not plugged in if you only have one battery H you're not going to get that far two batteries a little bit better you know so um if you have a larger battery you know 300 amp hours and lithium yeah you can go all weekend there's your TCH tip all right before you get to the bloopers which is why you're here in the first place the RV industry needs thousands of RV technicians and inspectors and now is the perfect time to do that if you want to make more money or have more control over your time go ahead and click the link below or if you just want to learn how to fix your own RV got something for you there head over to rvtech course.com and get started today now for the reason that you're at the end of the video roll the bloopers hey on this Tic Tap too all right and whe regardless if we're two two minutes or maybe this is a second Tech tip right for a separate show no not not a separate show another tech tip hm I got so choked up because I was so happy make sure you got a good battery make sure you have you shouldn't got oh man now we're going to have grammar so right now you may be watching a brand new episode of tech tip Tuesday and go Todd why you mid sence talking about something that you talked about last week well that's because I did two Tech tips in one show there we go all right

Channel: National RV Training Academy

Views: 19,067

Keywords: Answering Your RV Tech Questions, rv maintenance, rv living, rv 101, rv electrical, rv tips and tricks, rv battery, lithium battery, WaterHeater, 12VoltRefrigerator, big beard batteries, tech tip tuesday, national rv training academy, NRVTA, NRVIA, RVtechquestions

Id: E8woFdAJgYA

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024