Battery Switch Off: Turned On; No power. Did it Discharge?

[ezra@ezraboo]

First solo trip, right now, today, Saturday, July 23, 2016 in our 1995 Excella at our bare property at Oregon Coast. Switched off battery a few weeks back. DOES THIS DISCHARGE IT? Power doesn't work. Generator for an hour enabled it temporarily. What happened here? Somebody who REALLY knows this stuff please call this newbie in Oregon at 541-520-9821. Thanks!

[Caffeinated]

My experience is that the batteries can run down in a few weeks even with the battery switch set to store. If this happens enough it will kill the batteries prematurely. That is why I have new batteries in a one year old trailer.

Now, if I'm going to store the trailer for more than a few days, I physically disconnect the positive cables from the batteries. If it's going to 3 weeks or longer, I pull the batteries and take them home so I can use a battery tender to keep them charged up.

You should use a digital multimeter to se what voltage is left in your batteries. If they are below 11.58 volts, they could be toast.

Mike

[Morgan guy]

Even if you turn the battery switch to off, there are ghost power drains that are not affected, i.e. monitor systems, radio power in some cases, hard wired smoke or CO2 sensors. Over a period of weeks these can drain the batteries. You might install a small solar panel to give a trickle charges to the batteries. Make sure it has a controller so you don't cook the batteries, though.