[Closed] Van leisure batteries how long should they last?

What size is it.

Do you have a battery monitor on - what voltage are you running it down to between charges .

Deep discharging ....anything below 12v will kill it in short order.

Fridges eat battery big time so your probably using alot more AH than you think.

When was the last time you reconditioned the battery's using a battery reconditioner charger ?

Most split charger systems are terrible at charging batteries. - modern b2b chargers are better though

What kind of fridge? What size of bAttery?

As above. Rule of thumb is only use 50% of Ah. Ideally havesome kind of battery management to shut off or below a set voltage if you are not the type to manually calculate how much you have been drawn since last charge and onitor voltage etc.

I'm in the same boat, well, van.  Any recommendations for a new battery and a way to maintain it properly? Thanks

Bloody hell how many questions!!! 🙂 Battery reconditioning something I need to look into, battery monitor on and has dropped down to a third charge when the lights start flickering when the water pump kicks in. Problem is I do short drives to camp spots so not getting the charge from travelling :-(. I have got a hook up charger that I use when the van is on the drive usually put in on to heat the hot water tank and get the fridge up to temperature but obviously that does not top up the battery!! 🙁
Will check size

worth checking what type your fridge is.... compressor fridges use significantly less amps than absorption fridges.
I've got a battery capacity meter which basically counts the amps in and out of the battery, a bit more accurate than the gauges which work off of voltage solely. Required a bit of electrickery tho.
If your battery is old, it could show fully charged, but will drop rapidly when loaded.

I always found that I had to use a battery charger on the leisure battery to get it charged fully.
Otherwise it didn't last very long. The guy at the battery shop told me that they take a long time to charge, so driving to charge isn't good enough

4 years tends to be the usual-ish life expectancy on the boat if that helps - I've replaced both the domestically and engine battery twice in the last 8 years.

My van I've only had for the one year so can't comment on that.

There's a solar panel on the roof of our motorhome that keeps the leisure and vehicle batteries topped up. For a vehicle that's only seeing intermittent use I'd recommend fitting one - the recent ones are slim and small/unit of charge.

As above if you can fit a solar panel its the best way to go. Ours keeps the van and leisure batteries topped up when not using it and works wonders off grid.

I get approx 4 to 5 years out of mine. As Trailrat has pointed out there's lots of variables. Most leisure batteries come with a guarantee and a specific number of discharge cycles that they'll endure before giving up.

You can knacker a lead acid battery by deeply discharging it, so doing this to the point where your electrics cut out is a bad idea. The 50% discharge rule is a good rule of thumb but may entail buying a bigger battery that you already have depending on how heavy a consumer of power you are. It also sounds like your charging system needs sorting out. Have you considered fitting a solar panel and charge controller? This will help but won't contribute much if anything during the winter. Getting a charger installed so that the battery is charged and maintained on the drive is also a good idea. Any parasitic loads are going to flatten your battery between uses and if there's no means of recharging there's only one outcome.

I've just replaced my leisure battery with one of these

we have 2 x 150 watt solar panels on the roof and an MPPT 10amp controller feeding 2 x 115amp hour batteries from halfords - bought on discount day for about 70 quid each - under the premise that if they died within the guarantee it would be much easier to swap them than the likes of tanyabatteries regardless of how much cheaper they might have been,

Ours is powering the heater fan , the lighting and the pump and 4 USB ports.

the only time we have felt the need to use hook up/genny is when we need 240v.

Inc strathpuffer and various winter camp outs. Solar does seem to play a big part in keeping the batteries conditioned as the controller has a decent charge system where as the built in Battery management system 240v charger is horrific at it.

I've always meant to get a solar system set up, but haven't got around to it. I just have a battery charger set up in the van so that whenever I'm plugged into 240V the charger is running and getting a good/full charge into the leisure battery. Seems to work well.

With a panel and a solar charge controller you can take the whole DC load off the controller so it will cut the supply at a specific voltage (eg 10.5v) and protect your batteries.
It will also give you real time and accumulating figures on load, charge etc.

Problem is I do short drives to camp spots so not getting the charge from travelling

Might be worth looking at getting an AGM battery if you're not already using one. They're more tolerant of deep discharge than flooded (though you still want to avoid it!) and they'll take a lot more charge in a short space of time if your alternator's up to it.

I had the same problem with normal leisure batteries, performance quickly drops off and its all to easy to drop below 12.2v (which is 50%). I got through two pairs of 85ahr batteries on my old camper.

My current van is doing great, I have two 6v 225ahr Trojan T105 batteries. They are proper deep discharge golf cart batteries so can be safely discharged to 80%, which is a voltage of 11.66v. Just bear in mind that you connect 6v batteries in series to make 12v, but the capacity stays the same, so 2x225ahr 6v batteries is still 225ahr even though you have two.

The other improvement is adding 200w of solar, never realised the full potential of this, having a 24/7 trickle/maintenance charge in winter, and a fairly hefty constant charge in the summer really helps keep your batteries in good nick. In summer I can leave my 80l compressor fridge running for weeks and the solar keeps the batteries above 80%.

P.S T105's are quite tall so probably won't fit in a little battery compartment, Trojan do loads of different sizes and also 12v batteries I think, the T105s are just one of the better value/more common sizes.

(My solar panels are lightweight semi-flexible panels, only about 5mm thick! They can be glued to the roof but I have added a few fixings for peace of mind)

Remember with lead acid batteries heat really kills them, anything above 21C really starts eating into their life span so try to keep them as cool as possible in summer.  I've seen on multiple times over £2K's worth of telecoms standby batteries be ruined because some idiot forgot to turn the aircon back on after a leaving site, resulting in the batteries cooking over the summer months.

Rich lives up near the lake district, I don't think they get any sun up there...?

What we need in the UK is a water panel battery charger, or maybe a little wind turbine on top?

rich is no where near as far north as i am and i can assure you the panels work fine up here - even providing useful input in winter - remembering it doesnt need to be sun - just light.

Cheers guys always loved the idea of a bank of solar panels on my pop top any recommendations ?

Good thread timing.

My van leisure battery (self build van) had a melt down last week. A mildly funky smell when I got in (I'd left it hooked up for a couple of months with a heater and a dehumidifier coming on every day for a couple of hours) turned into a super (and I mean super) acrid egg smell of hydrogen sulfide as I was driving along with the battery getting chargered by the a2B charger. In hindsight I should have pulled over and got out as it's flammable and blooming nasty to humans but I finished my short journey home and isolated the battery. Van is now having a long hard think about what its done until I'm free to look at it. Battery is only a couple of years old too - could been a duff charger that's done the damage- hoping not. Whatever it's well and truly borked now.

Just have a look on eBay for solar panels, there's loads. We bought one for our caravan a couple of years ago and it keeps the battery topped up. Think we paid about £130.
All the power we need. Even with my wife's soap habit on tele.😀

We ended up buying from these on recommendation

https://www.photonicuniverse.com/en

Photonic universe worth it for their advice I guess. They do "packages" that work together.

If you work out what you need very easy to get from else where.

I wouldn't/didn't glue panels to my roof as you lose the cooling airflow around the panel which is fairly critical.