Thread: battery tender
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Old 06-15-2012, 12:42 PM   #7
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
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Yes, of course you're right -- a float charger isn't very good for charging a discharged battery. It will do it, actually, but can take several days. The trick is to use a float charger to assure that a battery that is idle doesn't ever get discharged. I do keep an excellent three-stage charger, an Onan, for use if I leave headlights on or something; but for maintenance a float charger with superior regulation is arguably better.

Dry-camping in my motor home, which I do often, I sometimes run the house battery low, and a float charger is not the thing then. When I first started full-timing I would run the generator (starting it with the truck battery if the house battery is too dead to start it) to charge the house battery, but it was pretty slow, too -- several hours. Nowadays, I start the diesel instead; it charges both batteries -- there's a big relay that straps them together when the diesel's running -- and at idle the diesel will bring up a rather dead house battery in way less than an hour. Quicker, and much less fuel expense.
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