Re: [A/S] Re: Water pump draining battery

Michelle,
Did you hear the pump cycling on/off unexpectedly? Just leaving the pump turned on draws only the power necessary to power the small light bulb (very, very minimal). The real power draw is when the pump actually runs. A two year old battery is a bit young to fail, but has it been allowed to discharge and remain discharge for any period of time. Has it been allowed to endure freezing temps while discharged. Both of these are VERY hard on a lead acid battery and can leave to premature failure. You need to pull the battery and take to where someone that can dynamically load test it. If you can get your hands on a battery hydrometer (Walmart, AutoZone, PepBoys, etc), you can check the PH of each battery cell (pop the cap(s) off the battery) and see if there is one or more cells way off the norm. This would also be a good time to ensure that each cell is showing adequate levels of electrolyte. If you can see the individual plates in any cell, that is a bad sign, but try adding DISTILLED water and charging. If you see a thick sludge floating in any cell, that is a bad sign as well. Hydrometer readings will only tell you the discharge state of each cell, but if most of the cells are reading charged and one or more is not that is a solid indicator of a shorted cell and there is nothing you can do. Having the battery dynamically load tested will also give you a solid up/down indication of the health of the battery, but the battery must be charged before testing.

As an FYI, you should try and NEVER run a lead acid battery to complete discharge. It kills them very quickly. A brand new lead acid battery that is maintained properly, BUT drained to total discharge before recharging has a life of around 350 cycles. That same battery discharge to around 50% before recharging as a life of over 3500 cycles. Unfortunately, without a amphour meter such as a TriMetric installed in your rig, you don't have any way of quantifying the level of discharge. Battery voltage is the worst indicator as a lead acid battery has a fairly stable voltage over most of it discharge range. The battery voltage is also VERY dependent on the recent history (level of charge/discharge immediately prior to reading as well as the internal temperature of the battery). Voltage does tell you when you are almost discharged but that is way below the level of charge that ideally you want to maintain.

David T.
On Apr 22, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Roland Hyatt wrote:

> Michelle:
>
> If it's the water pump, that's not normal operation. Do you still have
> the PAR pump? Sounds like some other drain issue. If you turn off the
> pump does that solve the problem? Do you have normal water pressure?
> i.e. Does the pump cycle off?
>
> Roland Hyatt
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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