Leisure Batteries

dandywarhol · Post by **dandywarhol** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:37 pm

Also best to charge the leisure battery from a mains charger twice a year to give it a full boost...........or fit an amorphous silicon solar panel to the roof which does a really good job year round.

phedders · Post by **phedders** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 5:44 pm

I have a really nice 12v to 12v charger made by erm... Sterling Power Products. It's a BB121250.

You wire it up like a split charge relay - but this is much better - it monitors the main battery and watches for the alternator to start charging it - waits 5 minutes (ish) then starts to charge the aux battery. So your main battery gets 5 minutes of high rate unhindered,blagged,borrowed,snitched recharging.

Even beter, it boosts the output voltage to exactly 14.8 or 14.4 (switched) whatever the available voltage/current so that your aux battery gets a really good charge. Has monitoring for a proper 4 stage charge.

I managed to fit mine above/left of the second battery tray - above the aircon stuff.

Comes with a couple of battery/alternator thermocouples and can have a remote panel for monitoring/controlling it. This one can charge at upto 50A if the supply can do it.

I have a 15A 13.8v power supply (bench supply) that I plug into home/site mains and onto the main or aux buses. If plugged into the main power bus, it will first charge the main battery until it's voltage matches the 13.8v output and then the sterling kicks in and charges the aux nicely. Fab.

Well chuffed with it.

--
Paul

dandywarhol · Post by **dandywarhol** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:09 pm

Nice piece of kit Paul but at £176....phew.

phedders · Post by **phedders** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:29 pm

Yea not cheap - but I reckon that it's worth it for these reasons:

-main battery gets a decent crank replacement charge before the aux charging sucks all it can

-aux battery gets charged properly so it probably gets much closer to it's rated Ah than with a variable off the alternator charge.

-aux battery gets charged carefully and that means it'll last a lot longer

-aux battery gets charged quicker and that's useful when doing short runs near your camp base / home etc with stuff running off it.

Given the care of the battery it may well make up for the extra cost in time - and it does make a 95Ah battery seem bigger. Well it makes a 95Ah battery more like 95Ah!

It's like saying that a Waeco compressor fridge is loads more expensive than a peltier job. True. But the compressor fridge works...

So I reckon it's a case of "you gets what you paid for". Fully recommend it.[/list]

dandywarhol · Post by **dandywarhol** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 8:48 pm

Fair comments phedders

I get what I paid for with an £11 towsure split charger and a £25 Draper Intelligent mains powered battery charger to fully charge the leisure twice a year.