RV Maintenence: RV House Batteries (We Dropped the Ball)

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Do you maintain your RV house batteries? We realized recently how important it is to take good care of them.

Since we hit the road last year we’ve found ourselves hooked up to AC power most of the time, leading me to almost completely forget about our RV house batteries. Which doesn’t seem like a bad thing, until you realize your RV has no power from the batteries.

That’s exactly what happened to us. (I should mention Katie was constantly asking me if the batteries were ok, should’ve probably listened…oops!)

The Importance of Maintaining RV House Batteries

You can watch the video on our RV house batteries and how we filled them with water below:

So, we were not exactly sure if filling our batteries up with water would actually help them hold a charge but figured we’d give it a try before we went out and purchased new ones.

Side Note: We realized we had battery problems due to the RV steps getting stuck in or out. We came to find out (from stagghorn22 on YouTube) that the stairs are generally tied to the engine battery, not the house batteries.

Regardless our house batteries were basically out of water.

Funnel (many people suggested using a battery filler)
Rubber Gloves
Protective Eyewear
Distilled Water
If you find yourself in a rush most of these items can be picked up at your local store.

Steps for Filling RV House Batteries with Water

It’s important to note that I’m not a battery expert…obviously. We’re doing this for the first time and are using processes we’ve researched. Every RV is different so make sure to look into different options for your specific situation.

Step 1:

First you’ll want to pick up Distilled water. It’s important to use distilled water due to all the minerals being removed. If you use tap water or other water the minerals in it could react negatively with the chemicals within the battery.

Step 2:

Second you’ll want to shut off all power coming and going from the batteries. For us this included disconnecting from AC power as well as shutting off our 12V switch within the RV.

Step 3:

Third you’ll want to grab some gloves (rubber is best), goggles, a funnel (we didn’t have a clean one so we used a rolled up paper plate), and a rag.

Step 4:

Use the rag to clean off the top of your batteries before opening the water ports. This will help insure you do not accidentally drop any debris inside the cells.

Step 5:

Open your battery ports and add water until the plates inside are submerged.

You’re done adding water to your batteries.

I’ve heard many different ranges for how often you should check your batteries. Considering I let the maintenance on our batteries go too far this time I’m going to take the more aggressive approach and check our RV house battery water levels every 30 days.

After we filled our batteries with water we noticed they’ve held a charge for longer time periods and haven’t had any concerns since.

I hope this was helpful, and I hope you avoid waiting way too long to check your batteries like we did.

Do you have knowledge on batteries for your RV, or have any suggestions for maintaining RV house batteries? If so we’d love to hear about it below in the comments.