Harvey the RV is back in the shop!

Hi, Steve here. Thank you for joining me today on the Panoramic Travels YouTube channel.

What dumb thing did I do and should have known better? Well, we live in the suburbs with a home owners association that only allows an RV to be parked in the driveway for a maximum of 48 hours a month. So, Harvey the RV is usually parked at an outdoor storage lot three miles from our house.

I left Harvey without running or driving it for two-and-a-half months, yes, for ten weeks. It was kind of “out of sight, out of mind”.

So, what happens to the car battery and the house batteries when the vehicle isn’t run for ten weeks?

Let’s start with the car battery …

As I think I’ve mentioned before, if you don’t start a Ram ProMaster for a few weeks the battery will discharge to the point that you’ll have to jump the vehicle. Ram service personnel have confirmed this. Apparently, it’s true for a lot of makes and models of cars. Personally, I think this is a design flaw, but it is what it is.

Typically, we’ll drive to the outdoor storage lot every few weeks and take it for a drive. But, since we left it for two-and-a-half months, the vehicle battery had discharged to the point that, once we jumped it, I could only drive about half-a-mile before everything powered down and I had to coast onto a side street - without power steering or power brakes!

So, I called Chrysler Roadside Assistance and we had it towed to our favorite Ram service station Szott M59 Service Center. They replaced the battery free-of-charge since it was still under warranty.

OK, now let’s talk about the house batteries …

Our 2022 US Chassis Panoramic RV has four 110 Amp-hour lithium batteries. They were discharged because I failed to flip the Battery Disconnect Switch to the OFF position. That is 100% on me. I won’t make that mistake again!

I drove the RV from the service station to my house and plugged it in to the 110 Volt house outlet to charge the Panoramic lithium batteries. I had to keep it plugged in for three days. I’m sure it would have gone a lot faster if I could have plugged into a 220 Volt 30 Amp circuit.

So, what have I learned from this experience? Be more vigilant about running the vehicle every few weeks - not only for the sake of the vehicle battery but also for the house batteries.

I’m looking into installing a vehicle battery disconnect switch, which might mean that I won’t have to jump the ProMaster in the future.

And, finally, I’ll put the Panoramic house Battery Disconnect Switch in the OFF position if I’m going to leave the vehicle for an extended amount of time.

Panoramic tech support tells me that if the house battery disconnect switch is left in the ON position the batteries will discharge in about a month. If you put the battery disconnect switch in the OFF position then the batteries should be OK for four, five or up to six months.

So, please learn from my mistake, thanks for watching and I’ll have more videos up soon!