*Remote Battery Watering System*
As I have posted, my wife + I purchased a motor-home earlier this year. We spend a lot of weekends camping, either to take the boat or ATV on outings. The MH allows us to leave everything we need for a weekend packed and ready to go, so that we can head out to go camping at almost a moment’s notice. My goal is to have a 30 day ticket preloaded in the MH allowing this to also be our bug anywhere vehicle.
To that end, and because many places we camp do not have “hook-ups” I want eh MH to be as self-contained as possible. We needed electric to power the many things that make life fun, radios, tvs, laptops, lights, etc. The MH did not come with a generator, though it did have a factory space for one. I had two Siemens 75 watt solar panels from a long ago group buy. Which way to go?? Generator of solar?? We finally decided that the solar was more neighbor friendly in almost all camping environments, so I mounted the panels on the MH, and set about figuring out where to put the battery bank.
I decided to build a frame of square steel tubing that would allow me to place the four DC-27 batteries in the same spot that the manufacturer had meant for the generator to be housed. This was fine except for one thing…how was I ever going to check battery water levels and fill them without first removing all of the from the MH???
The solution I have come up with is two sets of “Qwik-Fill™ Dual 12-Volt Battery Watering Systems”. Each set is designed to allow easy remote filling of 2 batteries. I found our kit on sale at CampingWorld.com.
The kit for the dual battery system includes:
For our battery bank of 4 DC-27 batteries, we needed 2 kits.
The kits seem to be made of high quality materials and both kits were complete in their packages. The instructions were clear and easy to follow, allowing the total install time to be about 10-15 minutes per kit.
One of my initial questions when I first saw these kits, was how it didn’t over-fill the cells. As the ad claims, “Provides electrolyte level accuracy to 1/8", HOW?? Well, as seen it the picture below, there is a float valve built into the fill tube for each cell. As the fluid level rises to the right level, the float rises and then closes off the opening. Pretty cool!
Included in the kits are more hoses than you will probably need, remember the kits are also sold to boaters wanting to be able to fill their batteries from a remote location. One of the nice features of the kits are that they have removable pump systems. The hose from the battery terminates in a one-way flow valve with a nice dust cover. To fill the fluid, you simply take your pump assembly, plug the valve together, place the other end into you water jug and pump the bulb until it becomes hard. At this point the cells should be full to the proper level, and you can disconnect the pump and replace the dust cover.
Once the cells are full, the water that remains in the pump assembly, can be pumped back into you water bottle because the design prevents the water in the pump assembly from becoming contaminated by battery acid.
Now for the bonus... since both kits came with a pump assembly, and I can use one for filling both systems, I can use the other as an emergency fuel transfer pump. I added the extra hose to both ends of the spare pump assembly and will store with the emergency kit on our ATV.
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