Complete newbie

I have been looking over this forum and I need some help! My small family, my two daughters, wife and I, just purchased our first camper and are having a bit of trouble with some electrical. We purchased a 2020 Elkridge 38rsrt. Our issue is charing the battery, as simple as it seems its giving us some trouble here at home. We have the 50amp coming out of the coach and into a 50amp to 30amp converter then further down to a 30amp to 15amp converter (per the advice of the "mechanic/engineer'). Our inverter is beeping and the battery level has dropped fairly drastically. Any advice and/or guidance on how to troubleshoot this would be greatly appreciated!
 

danemayer

Well-known member
On the panel where you check the holding tank levels, one of the buttons will light up the battery level lights. When on shore power, this should display 4 lights, reflecting the output of the Power Converter and battery, not just the battery.

If you have 4 lights but the batteries are not charging, your Power Converter is working, but the power is not getting all the way to the battery. There is a row of 12V mini-circuit breakers (covered by a red rubber boot) near the battery. One of them has thick wires attached. That breaker will have a teeeeeeeeny tiny reset button. When that breaker trips, the path between Power Converter and battery opens up.

circuit breaker reset.jpg
Another possibility is that your battery cutoff switch is OFF. If you have a residential refrigerator, you probably have 2 cutoff switches. One is dedicated to the refrigerator circuit and the other is for everything else.

If you don't have 4 lights, the Power Converter is not working. First thing to check is to see if all of your 120V AC devices have power. Check outlets in the bedroom, kitchen, and living room. Check the microwave. Check the TV. Check the air conditioner(s). If you find that some have power and some don't, one of the 2 legs of 120V AC power may be missing. When that happens, the Power Converter may not be getting 120V AC power.

If you have some 120V AC devices/outlets not working, first check that the power cord is fully twist-locked into the receptacle in the side of the trailer.

Sometimes when you use a stack of power adapters to go from a 50 amp plug to 15 amp receptacles, you can also have a problem where only 1 leg of the RV 120V AC system is getting power. The problem is typically in the 50-->30 adapter where the 1 hot wire from the 30 amp adapter gets shared with the 2 hot wires in the 50 amp plug. Only thing you can do to fix it is get another adapter. If you have a volt meter, you can check the power on the receptacle side of the adapter.

There's more information, including pictures and drawings, in our owner-written Electrical User Guide.
 

turbohawk

Member
Hello Element and all, I found out the hard way that my water heater breaker in the unit is also wired to the inverter/charger. Being that I had already tested the water heater and at my residence I don't have a 30/50amp setup (yet) I was being AMP conscious when testing the systems, so I was isolating the labeled appliances via the main AC breakers to keep to 15A max. But later that day I noticed the battery level had dropped drastically and while in the midst of a movie with the kids it hit me that perhaps the water heater and inverter are on the same circuit (why would it be wired as such in the first place?).

Heartland is there a logical explanation why a relatively high-load appliance like the water heater is combined with ANYTHING else when there are other circuits that could have been more appropriate for the inverter (like the one labeled "general"?)

What I didn't know at this time was the existence of the little electric toggle switch at the water heater, but I found that, switched the heater off, then turned on the breaker and suddenly battery was charging again. BTW, my USB flash drive manual is lacking a lot of updated info, VERY important things like wiring schematics are not to be found on mine, and a lot of outdated info for things that my unit never had in this century.

I do have a question about the mini-12v inline breaker near the battery, could it possibly be connected to my brake system?

Good luck Element and happy trails!
 
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