The negative terminal is labeled. Therefore both configurations can be charged by any 12 volt battery charger by simply connecting the chargers red cable clamp to the plus 12 volt terminal lead and the black or ground cable clamp to the negative terminal as shown here.
Connecting Batteries Together For More Battery Storage
How to charge rv batteries in parallel. This connection will help maintain the batteries when the vehicle is running but will not charge them sufficiently from a discharged state. When asked how to charge batteries in parallel people commonly reply connect the positive to positive and negative to negative. Connect the positive side to the red connection first and then attach the negative side of the battery with the black connection or clamp the black connection to a metal piece to ground it. You should be sure your batteries are fully charged before leaving for a trip. Once you have the batteries wired properly in parallel you will need to connect the 12 volt power wire from the trailer 7 way connector to the positive wire on the first battery. Yep electrically speaking that works.
If your battery charger produces a charge rate greater than 12 volts it may damage your batteries. 7 plug in the charger and turn it on. Connect the negative black wire from your battery charger to the negative terminal of one of the 12 volt batteries wired in parallel. Attach the rv battery charger to the battery. Making sure your twelve volt 12v batteries are hooked up in parallel will ensure proper cycling and charging. Do you continue to add to the string in a linear fashion figure 1.
Properly connecting your rv batteries is an important and often overlooked step. But what if you have an rv for example and need to add 3 or 4 or 8 batteries in parallel. Twelve volt batteries wired in parallel must be charged at 12 volts.