Question about batteries/electrical system

[kevinmcc08]

Hi all,

We've had our 3950BR for about a year now.

Last summer, everything seemed great. Then by early fall, we started having problems with the monty being dead after brief periods in storage (say a week), despite the battery disconnect being turned "on" when the RV was in storage.

The situation became untenable and so we added a single 170 watt solar panel and replaced the stock 12 volt batteries with two Interstate 6 Volt batteries (GC2-ECL-UTL).

One other thing I've noticed is that when towing, it doesn't seem to charge the batteries. I've been told that after an hour drive time, I should have added substantially to the systems charge level, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Mainly I want to see, what are you expectations of the electrical system as described. I went to the RV last night, and it said the charge level was 80%. I opened it up, turned on the lights and the furnace for maybe 10 minutes. The charge level dropped to 50%. After no activity it bounced back up to maybe 60%. So would it take 20% of the total power to open the slides and heat the coach one time with the furnace?

Is this consistent with what others are experiencing? The dealer can find nothing wrong, but this just seems like terrible performance to me?

Sorry if a lot of this is random information, but I'm just trying to diagnose the situation. Thanks for any thoughts.
-Kevin