We got up around our usual time. The house batteries were fully charged after charging them since we arrived yesterday and plugged into shore power. I went outside around 8:05 and disconnected the house batteries from the RV and then used our jumper cables to power the RV from the chassis battery and solar charger while the house batteries rested with no load or charge for four hours. I downloaded the images I took yesterday and then downselected them. J left for a walk around 10:15 and I did some computer work. J returned around 10:50. I left around 11:15 to go for a walk, and J recorded the house battery voltage while I was gone.

I returned to the RV around 11:45 and had lunch around 11:55. The RV house batteries were done with their four-hour rest at 12:25, and they were showing 12.85 VDC as they are supposed to with a full charge. I called Lifeline Batteries to report our findings and left a message with my contact there. Then I called their main number to see if I could talk with someone else, and he said our batteries appeared to be just fine. He suggested that we just use them and monitor the voltage. Well, the good news is that we won't have to do the high-voltage conditioning/equalizing charge, but I wasn't convinced that everything was A OK with our batteries. I went back outside around 1:10 and reconnected the RV house batteries and then we started to run our 110 VAC items off the batteries through our Xantrex Prosine 1000W inverter without any solar-electric power or shore power through the converter. I processed two images for the blog then worked up a blog entry while keeping tabs on the battery voltage and Ah (amp-hours) used. I started to process recent images through Capture One (C1) to adjust exposure and white balance and to assign final file names. J left around 5:40 to go photograph the American White Pelicans in the lake. After I finished a logical set of images, I moved data around and backed up hard drives. I stopped running our 110 VAC items off of battery power after we used 100 Ah, in theory 25% of our battery capacity. Then I started a pseudo rest of the batteries with just a small load on them.

J returned around 6:40. It had been the most frustrating photographic session ever she said. The lake, a reservoir actually, is extremely low and looks like it has been for several years. So, when J tried walking out to the birds, she had to cross a large patch of old dried out vegetation that turned to dust every time she took a step. Then a bit further out she got stuck in some mud — literally. She walked out of her gum boots a few times when the boots got stuck in the mud! The birds also got spooked by other folks in the area, and J didn't get a single good shot.

We had dinner around 7:00 of grilled brats (me) and franks (J) with chips and salsa. It was quite the healthy and balanced meal — he said sarcastically. We did have meat (brats or franks), starch (chips) and veggies (salsa) — three different food groups. :)

J did the dishes. After 55 minutes of pseudo rest, the house batteries were at 12.15 VDC with a 3A load. According to the Lifeline Battery specs, a battery with no load at 12.2 VDC is considered at 50% capacity — hmmm. I turned on the converter (converts 110 VAC to 12 VDC) to start charging the house batteries from shore power. Our Inteli-Power PD9160A power converter with a Charge Wizard for AGM batteries like ours should put out 14.0 VDC, but we were only getting 12.7 VDC! Plus, the converter was making a lot more noise than usual. I tried unplugging the Charge Wizard and that didn't change much, then I rechecked the wires in the battery compartment, and the batteries were still only at about 13 VDC! I used my multimeter to investigate, and discovered that the Inteli-Power PD9160A power converter was in fact operating at 14.0 VDC, but by the time the juice got to the fuse box, about 5 ft (1.5m) of 4- or 6-gauge wire away, the voltage was down to 13.82 VDC, and by the time the juice traveled another 15 ft (4.5m) or so down more 4- or 6-gauge wire, the voltage was down to 13.1 VDC. The small-gauge wiring was nowhere near sufficient for such a long run, especially when trying to push 35-40A along them. So, we're even more inclined to replace our Xantrex Prosine 1000W inverter and Inteli-Power PD9160A power converter with a Xantrex PROsine 2.0 2000W inverter/charger. The additional output wattage will help us run the microwave and having the charger right there means that it'll be able to charge the battery through the 5-ft (1.5m) or so long 2/0 cables to the batteries.

After getting all of that figured out, I backed up more data and had some brownies with ice cream — food from the chocolate and dairy food groups. :)