Low batteries

[cwhite]

I have a newbie question; I have a 3721 it has the On Command center in it. When I arrived home today I was going to turn on the kitchen lights so I could see what I was cooking and the screen says I have too low battery. I am hooked up to sure power. My question is this should I have disconnected the batteries or is there something else I should have done.

[boat391]

When hooked to shore power you should be on your converter. I don't understand the low battery code. If you are unhooked and it says this it would make scence to me. I have converted to 6 volt batteries and have not had any problems with low power. When I had 2-12 volt batteries they always drained down fast when dry camping. I think I would be looking for a loose wire or bad ground most likely at the battery and see if this fixes the problem.

[DQDick]

I would check for loose wires, bad ground or low water in the battery and yes, test the battery. Usually the dealer puts a cheap battery in the rig before they sell it and it may have issues charging.

[mhs4771]

How about possible Battery Cut-Off Switch in the wrong position. Those things are labeled funny and confusing.

[DarMar]

X2 Battery cut-off switch in wrong position.

[Art-n-Marge]

Measure your battery voltage and what does it read? When was the last time your rig was being charged. I use to keep my rig in storage and then only drove a short distance and tried to use it only to find the voltage was low on the batteries according to my voltage meter. I would have to keep my TV hooked up to operate the landing gear or slides. If I drove longer trips the battery did better since it as under tow for longer and therefore being charged for a longer time period. Maybe you are not having a problem but with new information being available it will take some getting used to.

You don't say if your lights went on anyway implying the converter was working and the battery IS low but being charged. Then it is just a status message.

On edit, forgot to mention you probably turned on a 12 volt light in the kitchen which is what caused the message. Hopefully the light still turned on. I, for one have no 110 v lights in the kitchen and even when my batteries are low the light still turns on, just not very bright.

[cwhite]

Art , I bought it new about 3 weeks ago. All of the other lights , furnace and everything works normal I will check the voltage and connections

[pkbridges77]

Check the plug in at the back of your OnCommand pad. If it's like ours, the pad is removable but only has a short wire so it may have come unplugged, thereby draining the internal battery of the OnCommand and not having any source to recharge.

[Art-n-Marge]

cwhite... FYI - the battery voltage on an RV or auto battery should be around 12.75 volts, not 12 volts as most terminology implies. You might want to check what constitutes a "low voltage" status on the panel. I have read that 12 volts is considered a dead battery and is when recharging should occur to save your battery from permanent damage and that if the battery ever gets below 10 volts it could be considered dead or ready to die even if one recharged it. I am not sure how low a voltage could get for a trailer sitting for 3 weeks, especially since there are devices in your rig that drain your battery even when it sits. Then you hitch up and drive some distance and this might charge enough to recover your battery so it can report "low Voltage".

Now that you have a new toy (the On Command center) there may be a tendency to panic with the new information available to you. Similar to what happened to many of us when we started using a TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System) and didn't realize the interior tire pressure or temps could get higher than what we would consider safe, but is still considered normal. Give yourself a chance to correlate the information with what is actually measured. You have an opportunity to teach us what's really going on.

There's so much to know about RVing, what's normal, expected or problematic.

[cwhite]

Good News,
With all of the help here and a little mechanical knowledge it was a loose fuse on the converter, who would have thought. Thanks for all of the help and input

[HOOK]

battery cut off switch , I agree.

[paulinbaja]

Double check and be sure you are getting shore power. Is the shore power breaker tripped, is the main breaker in your unit tripped, are fuzzes to the converter blown, are the 12 volt breakers to the converter tripped, is the power cord properly plugged in at both ends? When properly plugged in to shore power the batteries have little to do with low voltage unless you have tremendous loads on the 12 volt system.