Lake Havasu City - Battery Woes Continued!

Lake Havasu City, AZ
Jan 26 - Feb 7th, 2017

First of all, I am so happy that I can type again.  My cast hand really hurts - not where it was broken but where it was confined for so long.  Fingers, thumb, wrist are all protesting as I try to move them!  But exercising them is good right?  So here I go...

One of the places we stayed (for free!) near Lake Havasu City

We were in the Lake Havasu area from 1/26 and left on 2/7 and stayed 4 different places (not normally what'd we'd choose!)!!  First we stayed at BLM land south of Lake Havasu city.   Met some vloggers and folks we follow on Instagram which is super cool.  Met the neighbors across the road from us and enjoyed a walk and visit.  But we left there after a couple of nights to stay in town at an RV park while we had our batteries removed and tested.


We have been experiencing low voltage overnight since we started boondocking at Joshua Tree National Park but our Trimetric battery monitor indicated that we have never been close to 50% discharged.  We were told by a battery guy in Quartzsite that it's either a bad battery OR it's just not getting fully charged (even though our trimetric says it is AND we had been plugged in for 3 days prior to QZ).  So to make sure they were fully charged, we stayed at an RV park where we could be plugged in and paid $20 to have each battery charged.  At the end of the day, they told us our batteries were bad.

So we called Newmar who put us in touch with Interstate batteries who told us we should have come to them in the first place - they would have charged and tested them for free.  So before we left the RV park, we pulled the batteries again and had them look at them.  They "tested" the fully charged batteries and told us they are good and they told us the hydrometer only tells you if all the cells are equal (no bad cells) but it won't tell you if they are charged.  The battery guy we met in Quartzsite had convinced us to purchase a hydrometer as the only way to tell if your batteries are fully charged (as well as see if any cell is bad).  Arghhh!

Arrow in the "red" zone.  Red means bad :(

Basically, the hydrometer has never been in the "good" or very good zone even after the full charge (but according to Intersate the battery is good).   At this point since we are at the mercy of Interstate (who has the power to exchange it for a good battery) we decide we will try again and see if the battery holds it voltage now that it's fully charged (again).

So we hooked up the batteries and unfortunately caught the control wires for the Trimetric on the positive cable and burned up the Trimetric (so no monitoring of the batteries!).  Found a source for a new Trimetric who sent it to general delivery (arrived the next day!!).  For the rest of the time at Lake Havasu (after replacing the Trimetric) - we monitored amps and state of charge and volts.  It is definitely better (dropping no further than 12.0 (under load) vs. the 11.7 we had been experiencing.  However, according to the Trimetric we aren't anywhere near the 50% so we are back to where we started - the Trimetric doesn't show us using near 50% (the most we show we'd been down is 70 AH and we should have 168 AH which is 4 batteries at 84 amps each at 50%).  But the volts are low (although it's not an accurate indicator "under load").

So we decided that when we get to Las Vegas, we will fully charge the batteries and do a hydrometer test, then let it rest then do it again.  If  either reading is bad, we will try Interstate battery in Las Vegas.

Testing tilting our solar panels to bring in more power!

BUT back to Lake Havasu!   We stayed north of the city on BLM land until we got an appointment to have the bay door unstuck (first mentioned in our Free Camping  post on 1/14/17).  After getting the door open, we decided to settle south of Lake Havasu again (slightly different spot) so we would be closer to our friends from home who were in Big River.  We got to go to their church with them twice and of course the obligatory meal afterwards!  We would have watched the super bowl with them but it started quite late in the day and it would be a long drive in the dark.  It was a sad game to watch since we were rooting for Atlanta!  Oh, and we also loved joining them for Friday night karaoke!

One of our hikes

We enjoyed walking along the lake (and good eats!) near London Bridge, short hikes, sunrises and sunsets, bike rides etc. while we continued to learn and monitor the solar panels and testing tilting them.   We also got mail from home which should be all the final tax stuff (oh boy!).

Highlights: Visiting with our friends from home!

Lowlights:  Ongoing battery battle (but we don't want to replace these until we figure out what went wrong  and until we know how to manage batteries (and wear these out) so we don't ruin another set!).

Things we learned:  secure wires away from the battery(!), the furnace uses a lot of battery (most boondockers use indoor propane heaters of some kind),

We haven't been able to sample
many micro brews yet - so far a
serious shortage in most of the
areas we've been so far!

Things we're wondering:    How much battery do we really need and why we can't seem to manage batteries successfully?!  Will the sun be able to fully charge whatever batteries we end up with or will we need more solar panels?  Will the NW sun (and trees) even work for us or does it matter if we stay primarily at Thousand Trails with hookups when in the NW?

One of the reasons we love wide open free BLM camping!