Quote: Originally posted by steveiem on 16/6/2011
i was going by my experience ,vans 12v lights bit of water pumping and using a 21" lcd tv/dvd combo , on an invertor with a 110 amp leisure battery , it usually lasts 5 to 6 hrs ,,
That's probably your inverter, although I would hazard a guess you need a new battery. Maybe your charger is at fault? If it is, it may well have damaged the battery, although they can be bought back to life.
Something doesn't sound quite right.
Quote: Originally posted by nutgone on 16/6/2011
To the OP, I don't know much about in-built van chargers, I thought they were just like normal battery chargers???
A home charger will do the job, the one you mention will be ok, but will just take a little longer.
Even better will be charging it up via the car as you're on your way up there, that's if you have the grey socket on the back of your car?
I do have the greay socket yes. I expect to be towing less than 2 hours, so this may not be enough to hit a full charge from its recent standing.
Ok, I'll bring it out and give it a charge using the unit I have in the garage before we go.
We've recently had two 4 day trips without EHU and the battery was only charged during a weekend trip when on EHU. At this time of year you won't need the light on for very long - we only had one spotlight on for a couple of hours during the evening when we were watching our portable DVD player. Our toilet is manual flush but we had 2 showers a day + one child top'n'tailing twice a day. We only put the water heater on for 30 minutes before & during the showers.
Our battery was new when we bought the caravan in April. We are very pleased with how gas & battery lasted, but we do take spares in case we run out of power.
Caravan onboard chargers don't fully charge the battery because they only get to 13.8volts this is to stop gassing , where as a standard battery charger will reach about 14.4 volts while charging , you should make sure your standard charger has settings for sealed/leisure batterys and make sure you know what type of battery you have , read all about it Here .
Quote: Originally posted by wizard9956 on 16/6/2011
Caravan onboard chargers don't fully charge the battery because they only get to 13.8volts this is to stop gassing , where as a standard battery charger will reach about 14.4 volts while charging , you should make sure your standard charger has settings for sealed/leisure batterys and make sure you know what type of battery you have , read all about it Here .
The battery is currently out of the 'van and I'm giving it a charge via my mains charger which is appropriate for the battery.
Water levels inside. I have 6 (IIRC) screw plugs which allow me to top up the water levels accordingly.
There is also a spirit level type gauge that looks about 1cm across. What would that look like if it needed topping up...any idea? Happy to top up if needed with correct type of water.