Wiring question

[KampCraft79]

I bought a 99 Dutchmen 810 pop-up and it did not have a battery. It did have the hook ups but no kill switch. My question is once I add a battery and kill switch, if I'm going to hook up to a 30amp power supply, do I need to disconnect the batter or turn the battery off from the switch first? Is there any harm if I don't disconnect the battery first? Just curious how this works?

 

[SteveP]

If by kill switch you mean the safety switch to shut off the power to the lights look around and you might find it, possibly on the drivers side of the camper there should be a canvas sleeve where the wires go up to the ceiling, look around the top of that sleeve for the switch.

Don't get your wires crossed when you hook up the battery. The negative wire is usually white. My positive used to be red but is so sun faded it's barely pale pink now. The negative should go directly to a stud or bolt on the trailer frame, the positive should have an inline fuse or circuit breaker near the ring connnector.

There shouldn't be any need to disconnect the battery when you plug into the 30 amp. Your power panel may have a 2 or 3 position switch, 110v, off, 12v, with off being optional, but if it doesn't don't worry about it.

 

[generok]

If you wire the battery in through the appropriate 12V input on the converter, no, you do not need a kill switch or disconnect when you are on Shore Power. Depending on your converter, it either has a diode isolator, or it has a charger. Either way, you won't damage the batter when you plug the PUP in to short power.

The only advantage to a kill switch is turning off any kind of LP or CO detector so it doesn't drain the battery when the PUP is not in use.

 

[Customer]

There is no need to disconnect the battery when connected to Shore Power. Due to the age of your RV it may not have a converter capable of charging the battery but all modern RVs do. Nevertheless, no harm will be done having both connected.