New Toy

The house batteries on the motor home were the same ones that came with it when we bought it in 2006 and I knew they were ready to be replaced.  One of the problems with the house batteries was putting water in them.  In fact, the last time I  added water was last year while we were here in Texas.  The problem was the batteries were not on a slide out tray so you had to either take them out or try to get into the battery compartment and add the water in place.  In order to do that you had to loosen or remove some of the battery cables in order to get the caps off the battery cells.  The coach batteries are four 6 volt golf cart type batteries that are hooked up to produce 12 volts to the coach.  I had been researching how to make the maintenance or watering of the batteries easier so I would actually do it as needed and I wanted to do this before I bought new batteries.  The answer turned out to be made by Pro Fill.  Camping World has the system but it is $65 for two batteries.  I found the same system for four batteries for $95.  You still have to purchase a hand pump which is just a rubber bulb that sucks the distilled water out of the jug and pushes it through rubber tubing to the battery cells.  I paid $23 for the pump so the system cost me $118 plus shipping.  This picture is of the actual battery compartment.  The yellow stuff is to clean the corrosion off the cable connections.

    This is Gary putting the valves into the new batteries.

This is the new batteries installed into the battery compartment.

  This final picture is of the completed installation with all the batteries connected to a single hose that attaches to the pump.

The hose has a cover over it when not in use.  The pump end snaps on the the fitting that hangs down from the side of the batteries.  Really a simple system.  All you do is put the end of the pump into the water, prime the tubing, hook up the pump to the batteries and squeeze the rubber bulb which puts the water into the battery cells.  When the water reaches the correct level in each cell, the valve closes, the bulb gets hard to squeeze and you’re finished.  I think it will pay for its self in longer battery life.  The batteries are Trojan T-105.  The four batteries cost me $398.  The company I bought the watering system from is PowRparts.com