2009 Entry 17 July 2 Battery problems

[David and Susan Bratt]

On our way back to Amsterdam we stopped for two nights in Ghent, Belgium. The campground is part of a huge sporting complex, with playing fields, a stadium, and parks, and would have been easy to get to if the signs had been less ambiguous. But instead we took a little side trip through the busy city streets. When we arrived, we found that the park was in the middle of a two-day soccer tournament. We were warned it could be noisy well into the night and it was, even through we were in a separate site for motorhomes.

Ghent was a very nice surprise. The bus picked us up right at the campground and we got off on the bridge from which, according to all the guide books, you have the best view of the old city (they were right). The bridge overlooked a busy riverside where a crowd was listening to a string quartet playing from a small boat. Later we joined them and listened to selections played on a grand piano, also on a small boat. Both the summer sales and the beautiful weather had brought out lots of people. There is quite a bit to see in Ghent and we decided to save some of it for another trip, as we can easily pass through this way again.

We wanted to visit Brussels but had read that it is not motorhome friendly--there is no campground nearby with easy access to the city and no dedicated motorhome parking--so we investigated taking a train. They run every half hour and cost only $25 for two day-return tickets. So on Sunday morning we got up early and took the bus to the train station, waited about 10 minutes and took the train to Brussels, about a 30-minute trip. The old part of Brussels is totally charming and just as bustling as so many of the other cities we’ve visited. We ate in the old city square, walked all over and took a bus tour that got us out into the European Union section and away from the city center. We shopped in a few lace and chocolate shops and then hopped on another train and returned to Ghent. The whole thing was much easier than moving Rover; best of all, the soccer players had gone home by then so we had a quiet night.

We hadn’t been happy with our batteries’ behavior, and David had located a battery dealer who sold our brand of sealed gel batteries, so on our way to Amsterdam we took a little detour to the city of Waalwijk in the Netherlands to talk to him. Our batteries have a history: they were brand new in 2007 when we lost our first motorhome in a flood. We salvaged them, and when we purchased the current Rover, we had them tested and recharged. They were still fully charged when we picked up Rover from five months of storage in April, but discovered that although they recharge adequately, they also lose their charge very quickly. As a result, we have been limiting ourselves to places where we could plug in almost every night. Sure enough, the initial tests of the dealer in Waalwijk were not favorable, so we decided to leave the battries with him for more complete attempts at regeneration. If these work, we will pick up the batteries next year; if they need to be replaced, we will purchase new ones from the dealer then.

So we drove off to Amsterdam without batteries, thinking we would be okay there because we could plug in. (The more electrically literate among you will sense where this is going.) But without batteries there is no source of 12-volt power: true, the charger/converter goes 110-to-12, but only to the batteries, not to the 12-volt loads like the water pump, which we hadn’t realized. And even the refrigerator, which uses propane or 110-volt power, needs 12-volt DC for its control panel and propane ignition. We were prepared to do without some things, but we wanted to have refrigeration and needed to have the water pump in order to winterize Rover for storage. Neither would work without the batteries. So we ended up driving out of the campground in Amsterdam to an auto supply store, where we purchased a single 12-volt battery for the three nights we were in Amsterdam.

But once again, it wasn’t that simple. We placed the battery in the tray right at the store and immediately saw that the cable leads would not fit the battery’s larger diameter posts. So we had to buy adaptors to reduce their size. What’s more, when we got back to the campground and tried to hook up the battery, we found we had only two posts (of course) instead of four to accommodate the seven or eight leads dangling like giant strands of spaghetti in our battery compartment. And when David managed to get everything attached, he could not push the tray back in without everything coming undone. So for the last three nights we simply left the battery tray sticking out. Eventually everything worked out, but at no little expense and trouble.

While in Amsterdam, we spent the better part of a morning trying to find a pack-and-ship kind of shop because one of our window shades had come unstrung and Susan had hoped to ship both of them back to the manufacturer for restringing. We were referred to the post office but discovered they will not ship anything over 39” in length. So we gave up on that idea and, even though we were trying to avoid it, will have to restring them ourselves when we return next year. We spent much of the rest of the sunny day taking a canal tour in the city. The next day we cleaned Rover inside and out, packed for storage and packed for home. It was a good thing we accomplished so much because we found out later in the day that the airline had moved our flight time up and we had very little time available to complete our winterizing the next day.

Rover is now in storage awaiting our return next year. It has been an amazing three months and we feel truly blessed to have been able to experience it all safely and in good health. We promise one more blog entry after we have returned home and totaled our mileage and various categories of expenses.

We are delighted that several of our readers have expressed interest in doing what we are doing: we had hoped that this blog would have that effect. We understand the economy is having an effect on the shipping rates. Now may just be the time to go for it. We’d love to see you in a campground next year.