In my campervan I have a 110ah Elecsol leisure battery charged from a split relay on the main battery, one of these:

http://www.elecsolbatteries.com/products/Leisure-Batteries/Elecsol-110.html

It powers the stereo, compressor fridge, water pump and LED lights. It was used constantly last year from April to September on our Europe trip, and would typically last two or three days (depending on the ambient temperature) before the fridge cut out (it cuts out at a certain voltage to protect the battery). After that there’d maybe still be a bit of use of the waterpump and lights, but not much, before we moved on and it got a full charge from the drive to the next place.

Since we got back, the van’s been used as my daily vehicle, so there’ll be some draw from the stereo but other than that it’s ‘on-charge’ constantly.

I was camping at the weekend and the fridge lasted less than a day (and let’s face it, the ambient temperatures haven’t exactly been excessive of late). Initially I just thought thought that it had been heavily used over the summer so it had maybe died of premature old age. However, the manufacturers blurb suggests a life of 1000 cycles, which it hasn’t had by a long way.

So, have I fried the battery by using the van daily?

Sounds like you have been deep discharging it a lot. The one you have linked to is just a glorified starter battery so It won’t like that. It’ll also take more than a few hours on the road to charge it up fully. That said it also say it has a 5 year guarantee so send it back 🙂

Yeah, it did get deep-discharged a lot whilst we were away, but always came back to full charge after a five or six hour drive, which was typically what we did between stops. I got the feeling that the capacity had started to drop off a little towards the end of the big trip, but it was difficult to tell as, like I said, the biggest draw was the fridge and the amount of juice that used obviously varied anyway with how hot it was.

However, since we got back it’s hardly been discharged at all, and is constantly on charge, so I’d have expected for it to be fully charged at the weekend.

I’m happy to enquire about a warranty replacement, but if it’s something about the current setup that’s not helping then I don’t want to make the same mistake again.

Sounds like you have been pretty brutal with it if you have been deep discharging then trying to fully charge it in 5-6 hours. You might need some cleverer electrics for that sort of thing. Have you been keeping an eye on the water levels? Fast charging will lead to a bit of water loss, it might just be that.

nickjb is right the battery you’ve linked to is a glorified starter battery, mind you budget wise you probably wouldn’t want a “proper” leisure battery either!

5 year guarantee, see if they’ll stand the exchange?

pepper – what makes that not a proper leisure battery and what’s an example of a proper one?

it did get deep-discharged a lot whilst we were away, but always came back to full charge after a five or six hour drive

yes but that was a surface charge measure and not real

as noted if you expect to get that get the wallet out and get a traction battery as that is what they are meant to do [ deep discharge cycles]

by the time your fridge switches off I assume you are at about 20% charge [ 12.4 is 50% so you have depp cycled the life out of it

test the warranty but I bet they can tell as the plates will be goosed rather than have failed.
IME – having lived off batteries- anything beyond highly expensive traction batteries are rubbish for anything other than occasional use.
If you want a fast charge alternator thingy I have one of these brand new and unused from my boating days.

http://www.sp-shop.co.uk/Sterling-Power-Digital-Advanced-12v-Alternator-Regulator-AR12VD.html

worth it if you want to fast charge

you can e-mail me if you have geeky battery questions

EDIT: stoner – size of the plates in the battery basically

a starter has lots of thin ones as it can dump charge [ cranking amps] to start the car. A “leisure” battery has slightly thicker plates but is really neither a leisure battery or a starter – it is poor at both
A traction [ true leisure battery] has thick plates but cannot do large amp drops – ie cranking amps/starting but is meant to cycle from deep discharge [50% ish] to charged hence the thicker plates. This also helps it cope with faster charging.
the difference will cost circa £200

cheers junky
I have one of those elecsol ones in the campervan and it works well, but I’m concious of not abusing it. for example fridge only on battery occasionally and then only when thee a load of pre chilled mass in there like pints of milk etc

Elcosol batteries are no better than stadard wet acid battery with regard to being subjected to discharge. Waeco fridge cut out is ~10.5volts by which point the battery is almost completley flat (9.5v generally deemed not salvageable).
An alternator will never charge your battery >75% and as you will only ever equalize the total change to the starter battery when driving possibly even less. Charging with a mains charger ~20a output overnight once a month will help condition battery as would avoiding ever getting the battery down to 10.5v. Either get on mains hook up sooner or increase your Ah capacity in the van.
Your battery may be revived if left for a few days constantly charging off the mains..
I similary wrecked a 110ah leisure battery in one season using a waeco fridge over a few weeks camping and it never recovered, i since went with twin cheap ~£80 110ah batteries and regulary charge via mains especially overnight before a trip, i can now run off the grid for ~4 days and the batteries are still >=11volts and seem to be lasting ok.
Compressor fridges are not as good as most make out and a single leisure battery will only just last a w/e if 100% charged (off mains) beforehand. HTH

PS > Elcosol are the battery equiv of £50 HDMI cables and £20/m speaker cables..

Cheers all, useful stuff

Sounds like I may have given the battery a bit of a hard time (I’m not that surprised to be honest, it did get some hammer last summer). I was just surprised that it was working fine(ish) right until the end of the trip, and then this weekend it failed so quickly.

There is no electric hookup on the van, hence the battering of the, er, battery. I’m thinking about putting one in though, and I’ll definately investigate getting a mains charger and speak to Elecsol about the warranty.

Same question though – the van is at present my daily vehicle, with a couple of hours driving a day. The leisure battery is therefore on charge a lot, but very little is being drawn (only the stereo, and then only when I’m driving and the engine is running). Will this be doing the battery no good?

wont really matter tbh but what you have to realise is an alternator responds to load and that is what changes it amps output
This means when you drive if you switch somethingon , steroe, lights , fridge the alternator responds to this and increases it’s output… small possibility of “cooking” the leisure but not that high

When using the laternator to charge a battery which is flat the alternator will give out lots of amps[ near max for about 5-10 mins] however after about 20 mins the surface charge [ and temp rises and other stuff] will leave the alternator thinking it is fully charged [ and the amps drops to about 4-6 amps – this is irrespective of the size of the alternator or battery bank – split this between two batteries and take some of for losses and you can see you are bascially putting nothing into to the leisure battery even on long drives.

Stoner I did excel spreadsheets on this from “real world” experiments when living of 12 volt.

You may be as well just buyong acheap battery and just replacing when fubbared but leaving a fridge on till cut off will test batteries – even traction ones…iirc there is an after market cut off that cuts off at higher voltages

Three soulutions
1. Solar battery charger assuming you are aborad giving circa 5 ampn [ 60 watts]
2. One of those charger things i linked to
3. 240 battery charger from mains

Everything is a compromis ebut as SToner notes the trick is not to let the battery get very flat

I also “condition” charge mine before long trips with a proper trickle charger (£50 @ halfords). Also i have zif (sp? zip?) hookup charger which will also charge properly. Think that has helped keep an eye on it. Ive also fitted a stupidsimple 3colour led across the terminals which goes orange at about 12.4v I think, and red at <12v. If it goes orange, the fridge goes off, if it goes red, I turn off the distrib panel to prevent further draining until it can get a top up.

Cheers again chaps.

Junkyard – the charger thing you linked to, is this instead of the split charge relay I have?

Stoner – where did you get the LED wotsit from?

I think the long term solution is to get a hookup sorted, with that charging the battery via a proper charger. I thought about solar, but it seems to be either a case of fitting it to the roof (but we like to have the van camped up in the shade, especially in places that are really sunny), or have it standalone and then you need to secure it somehow to stop it getting swiped.

eBay about 5 years ago.

will do a search…

herewego
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=12v+charge+led&_sacat=0

search for 12v charge indicator led etc

What everyone else said. Split charge relay is not a proper charger, it’s a top-up at best. Either fit a hook-up and build a charger in or charge the battery at home before leaving for the weekend.

the charger thing you linked to, is this instead of the split charge relay I have

[quote]

Details on the website of what it does but it basically bypasses the alternator sensor to charge the battery “intelligently ” – ie the alternator kicks out near full power – yo do need to access the alternator [ remove it] to do this though as you need to attach a wire to the alternator sensor

http://www.sterling-power.com/products-altreg.htm

http://www.sterling-power.com/images/downloads/advancedcharging.pdf

http://www.sterling-power.com/images/downloads/alt%20regulators/AR12V.pdf

Split charge relay is not a proper charger

Nowt wrong with them if you have enough amps ut they are wastefull [ inefficient]. There is no simple solution for a car tbh – though a battery switch works a treat on a boat.

Elecsol batteries are known to fail early, I’ve had a couple go. The warranty was dealt with fine as long as you had receipt and took it to place of purchase. The battery went back to be checked and was then replaced after it had been inspected by Elecsol.

Nowt wrong with them if you have enough amps ut they are wastefull [ inefficient]

That’s kind of what I meant 🙂 They’re usually woefully underspecced (I know mine is, but it works well enough that rebuilding it to deliver more current is some way down the jobs list). I don’t ask much of my leisure battery, though — the water pump’s the only big drain and that’s only on for a few seconds at a time. Gas fridge FTW 🙂

Just read the installation instructions for the Junkyard-charger-thing, not sure I fancy taking my alternator off/apart…

Looks like hook-up and charger is the way to go.