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Quote: Originally posted by tango55 on 24/8/2011I was advised not to use a car battery charger to charge a leisure battery as the power input is too great and can buckle the interior lead plates due to the acid getting too hot too quick. My battery charger is a proper designed unit with a 4 stage charge input which has a maximum input of just 1.8 amps which the slow feed rate is ideal for charging a leisure battery. Some people call them a smart charger.

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Use a smart charger!  like the RING RSC16 Smart Battery Charger 

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Then if you can afford it buy a merlin smartgauge, it will tell you the true state of charge of your battery. Used by the MOD too.. The best one money can buy.

Want to know about charging and the true state of your batteries?

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Ref to reply from John:

That's the wrong way around. Leisure batteries have fewer and thicker plates than a starter battery, so can happily take a higher charge rate. We used to charge the leisure batteries on our hire boats at up to 20A with no problems at all. A charge rate of 1.8A would have been useless, as each battery would have taken over 2 days to charge.

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I was advised to trickle charge a leisure battery which is why I do exactly that by charging at 1.8 amps. It is correct what you say though that it can take two days to recharge as I have just returned home after 3 weeks with no electrics but with only a generator recharge and it has actually taken 2 days to recharge the battery fully again to full capacity. The advice I received was from an auto electrical company so I took the advice as somewhat accurate so the information posted on here was from the experts in the trade.