In Episode 96 Eric Stark helps his audience to appreciate that while RVing there will be good days and bad days. Some days will be perfect and some days will be like any other day and some days will seem to last forever because they are so bad. The big picture of making memories and enjoying time spent with family is what is important, those are the moments that last a lifetime and make RVing worth the ups and downs.               Eric also gets into his groove explaining the differences between wiring batteries in series or parallel and why you should know the difference. He also explains using 12-volt batteries and 6-volt batteries and what the big differences are. This coming July is the month to spend time in Montana come by our store in the Bitterroot Valley and meet us. We certainly want to meet our listeners and give away some free stuff for those that are willing to make the trek to Victor, MT to visit us. Montana has a tremendous amount of sites and activities for every RVer. It is truly an RVers paradise. If you are remotely thinking about going solar listen to this episode and see if Eric can motivate you to take the big step to solar. It is an awesome way to enjoy your RV even more

How are your batteries wired and does it even matter? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today in episode number 96, this is Eric Stark with the smart RV or podcast, delivering the smarts you need to enjoy the freedom of the RV lifestyle without the fear of breaking down. A lot of things are happening in the world today, but we're going to focus on the RV that you own and using it.

This isn't a political show. So we're just sticking with what's important right now, using your RV, getting out, relaxing, getting rid of some of that stress. The problems of this world are not going to go away for awhile, but we need to be able to cope with them. And sometimes an RV can be a coping mechanism.

So along those lines, being able to cope, living the RV life, sometimes there's pluses and negatives to live in the RV lifestyle. So to help visualize this think of going on. Commercial cruise ship, you know, you're going to go whatever the brand is, Disney. I don't know. There's so many of them. , but you're getting on a cruise ship and they show the food and how it's made.

And you're just chomping at the bit to just go for the food and they show the pools, not pool pool. I mean, some of these ship cruises, these cruises, you can go shoot skied off the deck. You know, it's awesome. They have shows at night, you know, show people relaxing on the deck, soaking up the sun, you know, there's things for children to do, just everything's thought of.

And you're sitting there looking at it like, man, that would just be awesome. What a trip that will be. And you know, the list just goes on of everything that can, that you can do on these cruise. It's like a dream come true, but you know what? They don't show you is what it takes to get to the airport, to get to the, from the airport, to the port where the ship is, you know, flying, you know, you might be a traveling for two or three days to get there depending on where you live and what ports you're going out of, where you're going.

Like. You know, let's say Oregon or Washington, you're going to go on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. What are you going to be flying to wa or Florida, probably getting a motel for the night. You know, maybe some sleazebag motel that's close to the port. You want to get there first thing in the morning, you know, and then you get on the cruise ship and they give you the wrong cabin or the cabin has problems with it.

So, you know, just getting on the cruise can be a nightmare. You know, traveling sucks, period. You know, when you're flying things like that, I mean, it's just, it's stressful. And this day and age, it seems like there's always problems in the air, but you're looking at the big picture you want to get on that cruise ship.

You know, you want to enjoy that? Well, our vein can be similar to that. I mean, some days are Vien are just going to suck. Other days are going to be great. And some days we'll just be like any other day, you might experience living at home, not in your RV, but at home. No, it's just the way it is. And those days that suck is probably because you're doing RV repairs, maybe the, you know, you have a water leak overnight, and then you wake up in the morning and you got a mess.

You got to clean it up, you got to repair it. You know, maybe you're someplace where this is hard to even get past. But it can be difficult at times, you know, you're gonna have those days. And then there's going to be the days where you're traveling in your RV, whether you're living in a full-time or you're just getting out on your two-week trip, you know, just traveling can bring on some stress, you know, pulling your RV down the road.

If it's a travel trailer, driving that motor home, it can be difficult. So there's things you worry about things that are going to have. But, you know, then that day finally comes, it arrives. It's here is see a utopia. You imagined everything is good. That day will wash away all the bad stuff. And it will usher in new memories that are great.

The memories you want to have stuck in your head. So my point is RVs. Sometimes it's going to be utopia. Sometimes it's not. But don't give up. Don't park the RV. Don't throw away the keys. Don't tell your spouse. I'm done with this man. We're getting rid of this RV. You know what? Look at the bigger picture.

Look at the RV lifestyle for what it is. It's not always perfect. It will never be perfect. Some days in your RV. Are you going to be just like any other day at home? Just it's a day. That's the way it is. And some days are going to be. In those perfect moments are what you're looking for. And they come, you know, they don't come like, you know, once a year when you're out RV and it happens and those moments come and that is what makes it worth doing.

So even though you might have a bad. You're new to intervene or maybe full-time RV, or every time you go on a trip, there's always something that breaks or an issue. You know what, that's just part of the experience. We have a lot of the same things at home, but we look at it differently because we're not traveling.

So don't give up on our vain. It's an awesome lifestyle and definitely worth doing for as long as you possibly can enjoy it. All right. So that's the RV lifestyle and a little tip there. You know, there's stuff all over the internet. That's going to give you the same encouragement. You know, I just want to throw it out there because sometimes customers come into the store and they get a little discouraged about things.

So that's the, hopefully a pick me up for you now, since you're going to stay on you, you keep your RV and you're going to stay on the road and use it. Let's get into our next section, staying on the road. So how are your batteries wired and does it. The short answer is yes, it does matter because if they're wired wrong, there could be serious problems.

Now don't drop what you're doing and run out and check your batteries in a panic. Oh my God. Are they wired wrong? Normally, if they're wired wrong, you would know that instantly the moment they're hooked up something inside of the RV would burn up. Stop working. So, what I'm getting at is, is more of when you're wiring the RVs to make sure you do it right.

Or if you're having someone do it, make sure they do it right. And what can happen is if our we batteries are hooked up wrong, like if you have six volt batteries or two 12 volt batteries and they hook them up wrong, you know, they can create a voltage issue and damage the a 12 volt components in the RV.

Now, usually in a modern RV, the converter takes the. It has a fuse on it and it's called a reverse wire fuse. Um, that's not the official name. I can't think of it right now. Um, but it doesn't matter. It will take the, hit the fuse blows and not a big deal. But if that fuse blows on your converter, that means you hooked up your batteries wrong, reverse polarity fuse.

That's what it's called. So that'll save the day in most cases, but if you have an older RV that won't save the day, the converter will take the hit. But I want to talk about this because batteries come up quite a bit and people come into the store and they're asking me about batteries. Quite often, people calling RV ears and as legitimate, because there was a lot of confusion out there.

You know, a lot of these articles I do or things I talk about, I go online, I look at stuff first to get a feel for what people are saying. And what I find is there's always so much confusion and sometimes. It's not that everybody's wrong or everybody's right. It's just, there's so much of it. It becomes confusing and batteries are definitely one of those areas.

It's an area where it can get confusing and bad things can happen if batteries aren't done. Right. So the first question I'd have is do you have 12 volt or six volt batteries? Quite often, six volt volt batteries were referred to as golf cart batteries because this is. Battery a golf cart would use they're called GC twos or a GC, whatever.

So if the battery isn't marked what voltage it is, you know, there should be a label on it. It should say 12 volt, six volt might have amps, cranking amps, different things on it. That's going to help you identify it. But if there's no label it's missing, the physical size could be an indicator. Now I can look at a battery and tell you if it's a 27 series 24 series or a six volt battery, six volt batteries are taller.

I don't have the dimensions. I will put them on the website, but if you're not sure, here's another way you can tell if the batteries are not maintenance-free, this little trick will help you to tell what voltage your battery is. And maybe you already know this. Like I said, it's, if it's a regular lead acid battery, it has the holes on the top for pouring water in.

You can use this trick. If the battery has three holes in the top for putting water in, that would be a six volt battery. If it has six holes in the top for putting water in, that would be a 12 volt battery multiply the number of holes by two there's your voltage, not too complex, pretty simple, but a lot of people don't know that, but that's how you would tell.

And it's important. You should know what batteries you have. So if you're out on the road who I'm going to get into that later, but you should know what batteries you have. So all RVs are pretty much designed for 12 volts. They're not divinely designed for 6, 18 24. Now RVs have 110 volt system in them, but it's separate from the 12 volt system.

So you will probably either when you buy your RV, have a, have one or two 12 volt batteries wired in parallel, and you might have two, six volt batteries wired in series. Most RVs come with 12 volt batteries. Some do come with sixes that you can safely add more batteries by following the wiring style.

That pertains to your battery voltage. So if you have, let's say six volt or golf cart batteries, you wouldn't wire them in parallel. You'd wire them in series because that's how they would be wired. And you'd want to stick to that. You'd want to wire them the same way. It's important that you know that, and I'll get to that in a minute.

When you're out on the road, there are two methods for wiring RV, deep cycle batteries, power parallel, and in series. And I've already alluded to. But they're significantly different. They're not the same. You can't fake it. You need to know the difference. And once you know it, then there you go. The problem can be solved in many different ways.

In times when you're dealing with your RV batteries, if a battery or an RV comes new, it might have one battery in it. Pretty simple. One battery it's to either be a 24 27 series for the most part. And it's going to have a positive case. Going to the RV, feeding the RV, and it's going to have a ground cable that just goes to the frame and grounds the battery.

And he might have some other wires running to it, maybe from the tongue Jack or some other things. But that's the, we're talking about the, you know, feeding the RV at this point. So that's a very simple battery system, a one battery system, and a lot of RVs come with just one battery. And so you might be aware of that.

Maybe that's what you have. Putting into batteries. We'll definitely give you more battery storage, more nights out on the road if you're dry camping. So two batteries is a better option all the time. Now it's when you get into the dual battery systems or set ups that become a little more complicated, you know, there, because it's parallel it's series, you know, you have to know.

So most batter or most RVs come with one or two 12 volt batteries, as I've mentioned, and they are going to be wired in parallel. So if you have two batteries, that's the starting point where they get wired in parallel. And I'm talking about 12 volt batteries here. Now, parallel doesn't change the voltage from 12 to any other voltage.

It remains at 12 volts. So. Three 12 volt batteries for 12 volt batteries, five 12 volt batteries wired in parallel. The voltage will be 12 volts. It's not going to change. It's not going to go to 24 volts, 36, 48 or anything like that. Now it'd be a problem if it did, if you were to wire it wrong and all of a sudden you didn't have 48 volts, that would be an issue.

Because your RV's 12 volts, so that's not acceptable. So parallel at the end of the day, the bad, the voltage should be 12 volts. When you're dealing with 12 volt batteries. Parallel wiring is really common in RVs. It's basically positive to positive, negative to negative. It's pretty straight forward. So if you had two batteries, I'm visualizing this in my head.

I don't have anything in front. So you have your positive cable coming from your RV and it might be black. It might be red. It depends on the RV manufacturer. There'll be black or red in most cases. The, so that's the feed to the RV. So that would go to a positive for posts on one of the batteries. Then you'd also run a wire from that same positive post to the positive post on the other bank.

And you do the same with the negative on the first battery, that's feeding the RV with a 12 volt wire, and I'm going to have a diagram of this on the website too. So you can check that out. So the negative two negative. So the two batteries on the negative posts are connected. Then you connect, uh, the second batteries negative.

You ground that to the frame of the trailer, that's parallel. You have 12 volts it's flowing through the battery, keeps it drain the drum or balanced works great. One to use golf cart batteries, or six volt batteries. You're going to wire them in series because they're six volts. So you need to up the voltage to 12 volts, and you're going to do golf cart batteries in pairs.

You, you know, you 2, 4, 6, 8 type of thing. You're not going to go 3, 5, 6. Excuse me 2, 4, 6, 8, but the key is keeping that voltage at 12 volts. At the end, if you do it wrong, you could have a higher volt. And that's not what you're trying to do. You're trying to keep it at 12 volts and golf cart batteries are, are nice because they have a higher amp rating.

Now I'm going to get into that and then just a minute too. So there's reasons why you'd use six volt batteries or golf cart batteries. But like I said, they have to be wired in series. So you have parallel with 12 volt battery series with six volt batteries in an RV application. Okay. So it's, it's a very simple process to do it.

People sometimes or RV, or sometimes get a little confused with this and maybe it's because they don't, they've never really done it and they've never had to do it. It's just their batteries come they're parallel. And that's what they deal with or they're in series and that's what they're using. But w you know, you should know the difference, and there's a reason why, and I'll get to that in a minute, and I don't have anything backing up at the end of the show here, but, um, so this wiring can be very simple.

And the series application it's a little bit different. You'll have the 12 volt wire going into the first post on the first battery or the first positive post on the first battery. Then the negative post on the first battery, he gets connected to the positive. On the second battery that's right.

Negative to positive. And then the negative post on the second battery goes to ground and that will create 12 volts and it's safe. And if you're going to hook up two or three more batteries, there's a different way of doing that. I'm not going to try to describe it cause it's going to get too confusing because if I don't describe it right, then you can't visualize it.

So like I said, I'll have these drawings on my website as well. The smart RV or dot. It's good that you know how to do these things and understand it. Maybe not a hundred percent, maybe you hook up your batteries and get it going. And a few months later, it's not really stuck in your head. You've got your batteries going.

That's fine. Cause you can look at your batteries again and dial it in. You'll understand what you did. Why does all this matter? Does it even matter how your batteries are wired in a way it doesn't, as long as the RV works, right? When everything's working, who cares as long as it's working. And like I said, if they're wired wrong, it's going to show up instantly.

It's not something that's going to show up later on. If you had the RV at the shop and they put a new batteries, they're going to catch it right then and there, you're not going to have a problem down the road, or at least just shun it. Hopefully the shop would catch something like that. If they wired them wrong.

Putting the wrong terminal on and sparking light crazy. Hopefully that would resonate like, Hey, something's wrong here, but you never know things happen. Here's why it matters your 12 volt batteries. You know, their, their amp hours might be 85, 90, 75, depending on the battery, the brand. So. Where six volt batteries have a much higher amp rating, you know, 225 amps.

You know, it's more than double of what a regular 12 volt battery is going to last a lot longer. You know, that's almost three times the battery two and a half times the battery storage and amps. So it's going to have a higher amp rating and golf cart batteries. They seem to do well longer. There, they last long.

And that's going to depend on your climate, how you maintain them. There are some variables there. So if you're in the desert, you might only get three out, three years out of them, no matter what, the better you maintain them, keep them charged. The longer they're going to last three years might be on the short side, in the desert, but in the desert, it's hot and those things happen.

But anyway, six volt batteries aren't upgrade. It's definitely a better way to go. And I always recommend sticking with good brands. We like AC Delco. We like interstate, you know, they have a national warranty. We have zero problems with them. They're good batteries. And this they're good companies. Now it also depends where you buy your batteries to, you know, discount stores.

You're not going to get the same battery that you're going to get at the store. Like mine is going to be lesser quality battery. And they do that so they can sell them for less money, right. Or they want to keep things in a certain range. They go to interstate, Hey, we want to sell a deep cycle battery for 80 bucks.

What can you do? So interstate goes and they create a battery that can be sold for 80 bucks, but it's not going to be the same quality as a battery that you pay over a hundred bucks for. So we're getting a little off track here, but just keep in mind by good battery. And if you want more storage, better batteries all together, go with the six volt batteries.

Now I've been a little hesitant over the years on the conversion to six volt batteries. And you know, the reason why is I worry about battery replacements having to be done out on the road. You know, sometimes in this happen, it's a tire shop that sell or does automotive repairs or it's an automotive repair shop.

It could be an RV repair center, but they have someone doing it. Maybe the technicians asleep that day, or they just have someone who can do batteries and they're not paying attention. And maybe you have six volt batteries and they pull them out and put it in a couple, two or 12 volt batteries. And they wire them up.

The same as the six volts were possibly creating 24 volt. Hookup the battery cables and bam blows out something or burns up that fuse in your converter. And maybe they don't even catch it. And you do this 12 volts. It stops at the converter and nothing's happening. Nothing's burning up, but you have 12 volts in the system.

You go down the road, you go to your RV park or wherever it is, maybe you get home and nothing works inside and you start looking at the batteries and it doesn't make sense. You take it back. They don't really tell you they did something wrong, but they tell you they fixed it, you know? Or, oh, he just hooked up.

He didn't put on one cable, something like that. Or they put in six volt batteries, again, not paying attention. And this stuff happens, you know, you might think I'm crazy, but it happens. And that's why I'm bringing this up. When people do the conversion or they're out on the road, they should know what they have.

So that way they get the same type of batteries. You know, if you go in with six volts, you want to leave with six volts. If you go at 12 volts, you want to leave with 12 volts, unless you say, Hey, I want an upgrade to the six volts, or I want to ground downgrade to the 12 volts. That would be the difference.

So it's understanding what's there. And like I said, these things happen. These aren't just a few occasional instances, either over the years, it's a regular occurring thing. Or a theme, if you will, regular occurring theme. So you have to pay attention and you know, what you can do to as after your batteries are installed, whether you do it or someone else take a picture of how they're wired that way you have it.

And when you pick up your RV or you put a new batteries, you've got that picture. I mean, pictures are worth it, man. You just take a picture on your phone. Even if you're a hundred percent sure. Just take a picture anyways. I've taken stuff off before, not on batteries. Well, probably on batteries or wiring, like, okay.

I know the black wire goes here, the red wire goes there. Then I get the new part, go to put it in. I'm thinking, Hmm. I start second guessing myself, but if I have it on my camera, no worries. And I take pictures of everything anymore. It just makes life easier. So just having that understanding in general, and I know this is probably pretty basic stuff to say.

But for some, they don't understand that because they haven't had to deal with it. Or maybe they're are just afraid of the series and parallel wiring because it's never been explained and they just think it's some mysterious thing. It's not, it's really simple. In fact, you know, there's diagrams all over the internet, but I'll have some on my website, the smart RV or.com.

Okay. So I hope that helps because the goal here is to keep your RV on the road. Keep them batteries going and keep good batteries in it and keep them charged up. All right. So now we're coming to the next stop. So this is the vacation destinations part of the show. And today I'm going to talk about coming to Montana in July.

Normally I do a little promo on this at the beginning of the show, because we're just starting to promote this. So July of this year, Everybody who listens to the show to come to Montana anytime during the month of July. And why is that? Cause I want you to come by my store in Victor Montana on highway 93.

We're south of Victor. I mean, south of Missoula, the we're in the Bitterroot valley. It's an awesome place to visit. Well, actually, it's an awesome place to live too. Cause I do live here. There's fishing, there's hunting. There's skiing. Hiking ATV and four wheel driving. Overlanding RV, camping, you name it.

The night skies are just absolutely gorgeous, you know, cause we don't have a lot of light pollution here, so you can see the stars. In fact, you know, the Aurora Borealis and you know, a couple of times a year, you can see that from here. So there's tons to do in this, in a good area, but we're not saying just come to the Bitterroot valley, explore Montana.

You know, make it a destination where you can spend a week, two weeks, three weeks, but why you're here. We want you to come by the store. We want to meet you. Not just me, everybody that works here wants to meet the, the, the listeners to the podcast. We want you to come in and see what we have, what we're all about.

And we're going to have some giveaways. Our suppliers are gonna, you know, help us with that. And you know, it doesn't matter what day you come by. The is on this Monday through Friday, we're closed on weekends. And since you're traveling on vacation, that shouldn't be a problem. Why you're here is visit Montana.

And you know, it's not just this area of Montana. All of Montana has something to offer and we're slowly building this stuff up is not on the website yet. We're just so busy with other things. And when I was down for a month that just put a lot of this behind, but we're working on it and we're gradually going to do it.

And there's 56 counties in Montana, and we're actually going to have a map how to see all 56 counties in Montana, if you are really adventurous, but probably not in a lot of what we're looking at here is, you know, if we point out a place to go to, like, let's say glacier national park, and you're looking on the map and you go cam coming up through.

You know, Colorado and I'm going to be coming through around Wyoming. Maybe I'll go through Wyoming and see something there. Maybe we'll go to Yellowstone. I'm going to head up to glacier. And along the way to glacier, I might swing over here, stop over there. That looks really cool. In fact, you know what, why I'm in glacier after we leave glacier, we might just run over to Idaho for a few days.

the month of July in the year: 2022

All right. So now that's our next stop. And we're going to be talking about Montana in July. Until July. Okay. So you're going to hear this episode, every episode from here on. And not to mention, uh, we're coming up on a hundredth episode. I think the first week in may, that'll be coming out and that's going to be a live streamed, one talking about possibly doing it on YouTube, but we will have a link on our website.

And if you're on our email list, you'll get an email with the link as well. So now RV envy, solar panels are what gonna make are what's going to make your neighbor envious. And if you've got solar panels, whether it's portable or some planet on the. Solar panels are awesome. They are a great upgrade to enhance your RV.

Not only the RV itself adds value to it. It makes it more efficient because you have that 12 volt sustainability now, and possibly 110 volts if you slap an inverter in there, but it makes camping better when you're not worried about batteries going. Because you have solar on the roof or you have some portable system on the ground.

So check out solar systems. You know, if you're pondering, that is very well worth the investment, we prefer go power. That's been our go-to brand. And there's some other brands that we do like Sam, Lex, that's one, zap is another, but go power. Just, they seem to have the systems that work for us where we're at and.

Should work anywhere really, but we like go power. They've got a, a great warranty, great products. Now I'm not pushing the go power on you. Solar's awesome. And check it out. The only reason why I bring up go power is to try to stay away from the ultra cheap solar systems. You know, the panels degrade over time.

In fact, I've seen some where they actually have warranted. At three year, five year, seven year, 10 year. And each of those intervals, the warranty changes because they know the panel's going to degrade and they get down to like 60%, some of them like seven years or eight years. So that's a lot of degradation over a short amount of time.

You want a, panel's going to stay. For 20 years, you don't want to have to worry about it putting out less and less. That's not why you bought it. You want a panel? We'll put out the same now, maybe at 20 years it fails and that's okay. But for it to have a start failing or prematurely really is what it is because it's not a quality panel.

So look for those things, check out the warranty, see what warranty truly consistent. You know that it's not a false warranty, but a real warranty. And if you're not familiar with installing them, talk to your local solar expert. I mean, we do a lot of solar here in our shop and we know quite a bit about it.

Solar is definitely the way to go in an RV. Definitely. And some of you might be familiar with solar because maybe you have it on your home. Maybe you're thinking about doing it on your RV is definitely worth the money unless you're at an RV park all the time. If you're always hooked up to 110. And solar is probably not for you, unless you just want a panel on the roof to keep your batteries charged when it's in storage, things like that.

And that's worth it too, because when those batteries are getting charged all the time, there's a charge controller on the bigger panels. Smaller ones don't need one, but it keeps activity going in that battery and keeps those, those bad boys alive. They don't die and that's important. It saves you a lot of money and headache as well.

It keeps those batteries fresh, pretty close to the end of their life, which is. You can go to our website. We're going to have some more information on solar there under the RV envy section. And it will be go power. Got to tell you up front, it's going to be go power information, but it doesn't matter. You can take that information and apply it to any brand you want to.

But as I said, I'd try to stick to the good stuff. So go to the website, check out the smart RV or.com. In fact, look at everything on the website. We have a contact us page there, if you want to contact us and also share this episode with family and friends, anybody who will listen, we want to get the show out there to more people, you know, just being honest with you.

We want as many listeners as possible. So definitely share the show. All right. So after you check out the website, you can contact us if you need to via email, telephone tag. Hack on the website. You can even do a video. If you want to a video message. And let us know what you think about where you're going, what you want to do.

And hopefully we can include that in one of our future shows. So this is Eric Stark with the smart RV or podcast. It has been awesome. Hanging out with you guys today. And if I don't see on the road, that's connected to smart RV or.com. .