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Firstly can I say what a wonderful site this is and how helpful you all are. We are very new caravanners and have gained a lot of guidance and information by readings these board.

Can somebody advise how to 'condition' a battery. We bought a new one yesterday as the one in our 'van did not seem to be holding its charge. As we have now had a mover fitted it was also draining very quickly.

On reading the leaflet that came with the new one it mentioned the bit about conditioning it....how?...

thank you in anticipation...a damsel in distress

Jan

I would understand 'conditioning' to mean a function, (stage), of a smart charger which effectively over chargers the battery in a very controlled manner, the purpose of this is to remove 'Sulfate' which may have built up on the battery plates and allow it to then obtain full charge in the normal way.

How old is your van?

I ask because for 4yrs Swift have been fitting a proper 3 stage battery charger which will 'condition' your battery, leaving you nothing to do but hook the van up and switch the charger on. You will need to check the make of your charger which hopefully will be 'Nord Electronica'

If not, then the likelihood is the van 'charger' is nothing of the sort and in fact a 13.8v 'power source' with a secondary function to about 80% charge your battery. To get round this you can buy a multi-stage 'smart' charger, these come with various stages albeit more than three is possibly unnecessary IMO.

A good cheap option I use myself is a 'Medion' 3.6amp charger from Lidl, £13 when they have them in and on offer, Halford sell more sophisticated choices.

Would you charge a battery from new off the van Gary? I'm about to buy a new 85 amp battery to go in a new van & if you reckon it's best to charge it in the garage I'll do that as soon as I get it home. I too have the charger from Lidls & it's very good.

BB

Thank you so much for the all help and information.

Our van is a Sterling Europa 1997 so it would appear from reading Garys advice that we will need to buy ourselves a charger. We have hooked it up this morning to the charger on board the van so I hope this is OK for the time being?

Jan

Batteries are supplied new 'dry charged' basically this means when the battery is filled with electrolyte ready for sale, this brings it to about 50% of full charge.

So yes it's a very good idea to use a decent smart charger before use in the van.

One point, a 'leisure battery' should be designed to be rugged enough to tolerate full discharging before being fully recharged, a car battery is not designed for this and premature failure of doing this to a car battery would be the result.

Having said that, 'Leisure' is not really a true term, 'deep cycle' being the proper one, it strikes me 'leisure' is a cost compromise somewhere between deep cycle and car type. Depends then how much a compromise yours is? the actual cost of it to you... may not be the best indicator!!

Hi gary

The battery that we have bought is an Elecsol 110..

Elecsol deep cycle leisure batteries are manufactured to provide a certain number of deep discharge cycles. The conventional leisure battery should give a cycling life of between 200 - 300 deep discharges. A Gel battery will give between 400 - 500 cycles and an AGM battery 600 - 800 cycles. The Elecsol batteries will give over 1000 deep discharge cycles
 

Will it be OK to connect up to the van until we get a charger

Thanks....Jan

All those cycle rates depend on the battery being correctly fully re charged, if not then how many you can expect is a complete lottery.

Caravan 'chargers' until recently have been set at 13.8v this is the low voltage setting of a proper charger, it's purpose is to maintain the battery in a high state of charge once it's been fully charged, commonly then it's known as a 'maintenance' charge with the correct term being 'float'.

The advantage of this has been a van charger that requires little knowledge so a caravaner can leave it connected without worry, for many years with modern technology the charger can be made to fully look after the battery in a perfectly safe way so still without any help from you, the difference today is their now cheap as well.

Swift have fairly recently broken the mould by fitting a decent charger, possibly others as well, this should now mean buying a decent expensive battery is worthwhile.

If however you still have the 13.8v charger, you need to use a proper charger on a regular basis while leaving the van charger to 'maintain' as best it can when your using it.

Many thanks Gary for all your guidance. Think this means a little spending spree coming on to buy a suitable charger as I presume Lidl will not be stocking the one you have suggested for a while.

Thanks again for everybodies input

Jan

Have a look on the lidls website Jan, they show the exected items on there & give dates of avaibility.

BB

thanks BB

I presume it is OK to just charge the battery up using the 'van charger at the moment and then to fully charge when we have bought a new charger from Lidl.

Its playtime at the moment in the van, we are trying to see if we can use Gas for the fridge and hot water so that we can use no EHU for rally type gatherings. We have only used EHU for the few times we have been away.

The sun is shining and we are having lots of fun.

Jan

Of course it is, the battery should be fine. We all love playtime in our vans don't we. We sold ours at the end of last season & as we left it a little late to order a new one we're waiting for our new one to come & our playtime is a few weeks away yet.

BB

This might help

http://www.leisurebatteryshop.co.uk/leisurebatteryinformation.php

It will have been charged so if you don't have a charger or can't borrow one I'd just stick it in the 'van and leave on the hook up till it is up to full charge with the trickle.  Some electrical systems will fuse if the battery is very low or completely discharged. (Remember to switch off the "Status" aeriel system if you have one if leaving unattended and unhooked)

Swift have fairly recently broken the mould by fitting a decent charger, possibly others as well, this should now mean buying a decent expensive battery is worthwhile

yes dont i know it just bought one and it so clever it forgotten how to work lol!!!!