Topic: 2020 Unity LTV TB - House Batteries  (Read 2421 times) previous topic - next topic

Good afternoon,
We are the new owners of a 2020 Unity LTV TB. We have had some issues with the power since we picked up the van in Oregon and drove it back to our home in VT. Long story short, the inverter needed replacement before we left the RV dealership, good that we had planned our first night there.
As we drove across the country, we spent several nights boon docking (not consecutive). We found that we were losing power during the night and hadn't used any significant power during that time. We would wake up and the batteries were dead, which are the original to the Van. We were driving about 350 miles per day.
When we got home to VT, we brought our Van to an RV 'Guru' who identified that our Solar Panels were bad, and needed  to be replaced. He replaced the entire solar panel system and controller and troubleshooted the entire electrical system. Our house batteries were fine and were able to take a charge.
We  just took the van to a campsite with NO power this week. House batteries were reading 13.8 Amps on arrival to the site. We had power on for the Dometic refrigerator and had it on auto, which was being run through our propane. We were outside the entire time, didn't use any power in the van except for brushing our teeth with the bathroom light. Again, we woke up to having dead house batteries.
Urgh .... we are getting very frustrated with this and are at our wit's end! Does anybody have any idea of why this is happening? Our RV guru did thorough tests on the batteries and said that they are fine. What could possibly be draining our batteries at night? Inverter is OFF.
I can't believe we own this expensive rig and can't seem to get it to work correctly! YES, we are newbies, any advise other than taking it back to the 'Guru'? The rig was working fine when he had it on site. He did not have the refrigerator going, but we have been running that off of the propane when we have no shore power.
Help!
Thanks,
VT new LTV owners

I have a 2018 TB.  When I bought it, the dealer had replaced the house batteries with brand new "flood" batteries, I checked.  They are fine as long as you do not use too much power, but I have become and AGM guy.  I don't trust myself to check the water in the flood batteries.  I replaced the new flood batteries with AGMs.  I will probably switch to Lithium in a couple of years. 

There is some "parasitic" drain on the batteries if everything seems to be turned off: the meter itself above the door, the built in smoke alarm, the inverter even if you are not using it, the clock on the stereo, and a couple of other small things.  I installed an ammeter and found out that the parasitic drain is only about 1/3 amp as long as I remembered to turn off the inverter.  Lights are all LED and use very little power, not worth worrying about if you turn them off when not using them.  So, the parasitic drain is not really an issue.

My refrigerator, when set to automatic, would not always switch from 12V DC to propane when I stopped.  The refrigerator uses about 12 amps, because it is an absorption refrigerator.  A compressor refrigerator, like we all have at home, but small enough for an RV uses about 4 amps.  So, my refrigerator killed my batteries because we stopped at about 3 PM and it ran all night on DC.  On DC power, the refrigerator is the biggest consumer of power.  Works great on propane if I remember to check and make sure that is what it is doing!

The other thing I did not anticipate is the power draw of the fans.  I left one on all night so it would be a little cooler while dry camping.  They draw 3-4 amps.  Great fans though.  I love the way they close themselves if it starts raining.

Just because your batteries take a charge does not mean that they are holding the same charge as when they were new.  Voltage is not the only indicator of how much energy you have stored.  Your batteries are nearing middle age, so start thinking about replacements.

All RVs have some kind of problem, but I have fewer than my friends that do not have an LTV.  An hour after you stop, the batteries should read about 12.5 volts.  If the voltage has dropped a good bit in a few hours after you stopped, the fridge is definitely running on propane, inverter off, and so on, you probably need new batteries.  They just should not just die like that.

First and foremost, welcome to the world of 'pre-owned' LTV vans, my 2016 IB was purchased last year and indeed the maintenance and dealer inspection were seriously wanting (the van however has been wonderful in putting up with me).  The battery issue is the biggest frustration for me as well, replacing both house batteries within a couple months of purchase.  One of those was just changed again this month (at least under Interstate warranty).

Having the inverter on at night is a necessary for us with some medical equipment that requires the inverter, so not an option to boondock overnight without it.  So far one resolution has been to add an automatic generator starter (AGS) which I was able to do without too much frustration.  The AGS will auto start the generator at a given voltage (I was initially aiming at 12 volts, now 12.2 volt threshold, or ~60% charge) and run for whatever period of time you set.  We were able to not go dead with 2-3 start ups lasting 30 minutes through the night (which is complicated when staying at sites with quiet hours and no hook ups).  The AGS also starts up at a set temp to turn on the AC so you don't cook your pets (haven't played with that as much yet).

I also have found that the charging between the chassis and house batteries appeared nonexistent which led to the post "BIM or other battery isolation in Unity" post down the page a few items.  I have installed the recommended automatic charge relay (ACR) and so far there seems to be some cross charging going on, but of course the recent dying battery through a wrench into interpreting success.  The excellent point about the fridge going to propane when not plugged in, otherwise the draw on the DC is significant.  Something to consider on the water heater as well.

Luckily following my purchase my return trip from Philadelphia to New Hampshire was a straight drive (despite ending up on the pot holed George Washington Bridge in a larger than familiar van through a drenching thunder storm).  As I understand it your year model will allow options for lithium conversion without all the steps I would need, but you can consider the two options I mentioned for much less money.  I did put the AGS and ACR in myself with only a standard level of confusion and frustration, so drive on over to NH and we can compare notes--but don't despair just yet, its definitely a learning curve.

I don’t use the auto setting on the refer because I just don’t trust it,  It is not that difficult to change those setting manually.
The biggest battery draw is the refer on 12 volts, that would be my suspect, the phantoms are small draw.  But if the flooded batteries have been allowed to go below 50% state of charge or to 0, several times, they may be damaged beyond repair.

Electrical issues can be a real nuisance. Many times they're hard to diagnose and just drive you crazy trying to figure them out. Our 2022 Unity RL was delivered to us with two defective AGM batteries. It was missed on the pre-check and we left the dealer not knowing that they were bad. With full hookups we didn't know that there was a problem, but come to find out they would take a charge but not hold it. For the next month it was nothing but a headache.

I use a CPAP machine that should've worked just fine but by 3 or 4 in the morning batteries were so dead not even the generator would start. Once I determined that the problem was with the batteries not being able to hold a charge, I just bit the bullet and bought two Battleborn Lithium batteries--$1,700. However, I can now dry camp for 3-4 days without having to recharge. But since we have 400 watts of solar on the roof both batteries are fully recharged  by 3-4 pm in the winter and 12pm in the summer--as long as the sun is shinning. In my opinion these were dollars well spent. We have a Dometic automatic refrigerator that switches between battery (while you are driving), gas (when shore power is not available) and shore power. So far we have never had a problem with it.

Hi,
We have a 2023 LTV and the Lithium batteries. We sere camping last month in Glacier off grid and after a few nights we kept waking up with our batteries dead. We also had been running with almost nothing on. In our case the drain turned out to be that the Lithium batteries were getting too cold and losing their charge. Once we flipped on the battery heaters, the batteries started holding charge. I know you did not say you had Lithium but thought I'd mention it in case you actually do.
Deb

We are in the process or purchasing what will be a 'new to us' 2019 LTV. We're very sensitive to power capacity issues (as we do a lot of boondocking when we travel). We've decided to immediate replace the FLA batteries with a Lithionics lithium battery system and 3k inverter. If you're in a position to do so, I would recommend contacting Brandon Hensley in Dallas, TX at Pagosa Supply Co. He is an LTV owner himself and the 'guru' we're going to for our lithium upgrade/conversion. Your 2020 is an easy swap out of components to upgrade to lithium compared to 2019 and older models like ours.