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Leisure battery
- Thread starter Kenny Q
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jason1965
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Why dont you fit a split relay from you van battery to leisure battery, so as you drive around the van battery charges the leisure battery, i have one fitted and never take my leisure battery out to charge. I think you will find most windies have split relay fitted, To my recollection to have my fitted was £50 including the relay, any good auto electrician can do it, As for the leisure battery, they all have to meet certain eu regs, Best place to get one would be a independent car parts supply shop, that way any probs you can just take it back. You can probably find cheaper ones on ebay, but problem with that is if you get problems its hassle to send back, and all leisure batteries will come with minimum one year guarantee some with 2 or 3, and if you buy from auto car parts shop, they will probably have some business cards off auto electricians. Hope that helps.
Smart Battery Charger / Optimizer For Bike, Car, Van, Fast Trickle Lead Acid AGM | eBay
Got one of these think I paid £23 on eBay, search bay and you will find it cheaper I'm sure, really happy with this charger and can recommend.
Got one of these think I paid £23 on eBay, search bay and you will find it cheaper I'm sure, really happy with this charger and can recommend.
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AGlassAct
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I've always used Halfords batteries, most come with a 2-3 year warranty and are well renown for replacing without quibble. Not the cheapest but if it does go tits up at least you can nip to your local Halfords to get it changed - if I remember right they do two leisure batteries 70Ah £60 and 115Ah £95. I have a 70Ah but wish I had gone for the 115Ah from the off as I now don't have enough juice for all my gadgets.
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Aqua-pure Portadown
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Get a 110 amp leisure battery and fit a split charge relay you will not have to take it out of the van again to charge it ,you can buy relay on net for £15 and fit it yourself ,wire from battery to battery (in line fuse )then leisure battery to system!job done [emoji16][emoji16][emoji16]
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Apparently, the bigger the Ah rating on the battery the better. Has more oomph but will cost you a little bit more than say at 70 Ah. Also, I was going to fit a split charge relay so that it would charge the leisure battery when I was driving around from call to call but then I read that this wouldn't work very well if the trips were lots of short journeys, it needed longer runs. I don't yet know how true this is but something to bare in mind. I currently charge mine overnight (leaving it in the van) on a trickle charge every couple of months. Reverse it up to the garage and connect it up with an extension lead and a circuit breaker. Seems to work quite well.
peter rogers
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The bigger that battery the longer u can run without need for charge
My vas are both wired from leisure battery to van battery on a series link
Most alternators. Are throng enough to charge both
Once van battery charged the eisure on gts charged
Run 6mm cable
jason1965
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I only have a 70 ah Leisure battery on a split relay its been fitted two years and i do a lot of stop starts its never let me down, Bere in mind the pumps thats run from the leisure like shurflo only pull 8 amps per hour, so with a 70 ah battery it would only use 64 amps at full pelt for 8 hours and thats based on the pump running at full 100 psi, i only need my flow controller on 35 so it probably not even using 4 amps per hour and add in driving between jobs, the chances of running the battery down is nigh on impossible, unless its faulty.
VWC
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Pardon a stupid question but is it not possible to charge the leisure battery straight from the 12v cigarette lighter?
Its possible, but I wouldn't.
Cigarette lighter plug adapters aren't designed for the high amperage that a leisure battery low on charge would demand. You have to search for one that's rated at 15 amps. At times after a 'heavy' battery usage day my alternator will push up to 22 amps into my 110 amp leisure battery for a short period of time on start up.
A cigarette lighter electrical circuit was usually protected with a 10 amp fuse so the electric cable supply didn't need to be rated much higher. A cigarette lighter only draws a high current for a short time so if the supply cable got a bit warm it didn't matter. A leisure battery drawing higher amps will blow the fuse. This could tempt to owner to put a bigger fuse in which could cause a fire hazard.
My other concern is that the connection made by the positive pin relies on the friction generated by the negative return springs of the plug on the 'walls' or sides of the socket. In time that connection could be compromised if the plug vibrated out or was accidentally knocked. By nature the plug will what to push itself out as the contact pin is spring loaded to put tension onto the positive contact.
Whilst most cigarette lighter sockets are controlled by the ignition switch some of the auxiliary sockets may not be. If you plug the leisure battery into one of those then you could compromise the charge of your starter battery. As the connection would be permanently linked, the starter motor would also demand a small current from the leisure battery.
Personally, buying the right kit with heavy duty cables is a good investment as you are guaranteed to have a fully working unit at all times. Many suppliers call a split charge relay an isolater. They only 'join' the 2 batteries (starter and leisure) together when the van's engine is running and isolate them at all other times.
We did run a VSR (voltage sensing relay) off the rear accessory cables socket connection on a LWB Ford Transit Connect. (A volt sensing relay is the easiest one to fit as it doesn't need a 3rd trigger wire to the alternator or ignition switch.) That circuit was in the wiring harness but the socket wasn't fitted in that van. (Ford used the same wiring harness in the van as they did in the people carrier which had the socket fitted as standard.) We spliced into the cable and soldered the joins. We used the van that way for 4 years charging an 85 amp leisure battery. That circuit was protected with a 15 amp fuse that Ford specified.
That Ford Transit did a bit more daily mileage traveling to work and for private use than we do, but son in law still had to put a battery charger onto it every 2 or 3 weeks to top the battery up.
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kingsley taylor
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CAMPER VAN VOLTAGE SENSING SPLIT CHARGE RELAY, RING SMARTOM - 12V, 30 AMP | eBay
I installed this 10 months ago ,had no problems yet and are a doddle to fit
I installed this 10 months ago ,had no problems yet and are a doddle to fit
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jason1965
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No mate i will not give enough juice to the leisure battery
VWC
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Thank you very much for your answers. I reckon the best place for a pleb like myself would be to go to a car parts dealer and ask them to fit it for me.
Here's one that is supplied with everything you need including some pretty good fitting instructions.
5mtr Voltage Sensing Split Charge Relay Kit Leisure Battery Charger - Easy Fit | eBay
What you have to do is ensure you know what length of cable you need from your van battery to the leisure battery. Using a piece of string makes the job much easier.
5 meters is the length of the cable from beginning to end. The main run is probably 4 meters as the remaining 1 meter was made up of shorter bits of cable.
This is the one referred to by @kingsley taylor. Both son and son in law have used this one successfully.
CAMPER VAN SELF SWITCHING, VOLTAGE SENSING SPLIT CHARGE RELAY KIT - 12V, 30 AMP | eBay
You don't need to bother with the fridge outlet but the permanently live one is good. On sons van I fitted a charge over switch from that terminal. It mean that he could change where he got his power from to run his pump. He would mainly use his leisure battery but if that went flat during the day he could flick the switch over and use his van battery to finish the job/day.
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Spruce, I have read somewhere that if you are doing a lot of stop start shortish journeys (maybe btwn 5 and 10 miles per day) like a lot of us do, fitting a split charge relay would not generate enough regular power to keep the leisure battery fully topped up. Would you happen to know if there is truth in this claim. i.e is it worth doing ?
kingsley taylor
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I do exactly that mate and have had not one bit of bother with the battery it always has plenty of juice
Our experience is exactly that. We do very little mileage and so I need to regularly charge the leisure battery.
We did about 50 miles yesterday with brief spells of window cleaning. We started off with a fully charged battery and ended up with a virtually fully charged battery at the end of the day. But this is a once a month trip. But that's the only time we can rely on the VSR to fully replenish the charge in the leisure battery.
Is it worth fitting a vsr or split charge relay? IMHO yes. In the past 8 years I've been van mounted wfp we have had a leisure battery call it a day twice whilst out working, the first time was when were were on a big job out of town. We were able to run the van's engine and that was sufficient to run both pumps for another 90 minutes each to finish the job. Had we not had the relay we would have had to return home and drive all the way back once a new battery was purchased and fitted. That relay paid for itself then.
However, if I had one of those new vans with a smart charging system with regenerative charging and needed to fit a special battery to battery charger at £325 + VAT then I wouldn't bother as it would be too costly. I would possibility experiment with a couple of solar panels on the roof for summer time.
My son has never had a battery fail on his van yet, so he has never been forced to run the pump off his van battery. His first wfp battery failed before the day began and we replaced it. The second battery is now 6 years old and still going strong.
( I had a trailer setup to start with and that was a leisure battery nightmare. I had a split charge relay on that as well, but went through about 4 leisure batteries in 2 years.)
Its easy for me to 'bench' charge my leisure battery. I'm spoilt as I park on the drive way. I run an extension out to the van which has a double socket. The charger just plugs into the wfp wiring so I don't have to lift the battery out.
Coming home tonight the alternator was pumping 6 amps into the leisure battery, so it needs topping up. The vans been stood for 2.5 hours and the battery voltage is reading 12.8v. It may drop to 12.7v in another couple of hours. Fully charged it reads 12.9v. I will plug the charger in tomorrow and charge the batteries and backpack at the same time.
The VSR I have in the van is bi-directional. That means that the battery charger will also top up the van battery at the same time as the leisure battery. In winter when we have a cold spell I plug the heater in to keep the van from freezing up, so usually plug in the charger at the same time. The leisure battery gets charged every night in those conditions and approx every second night at other times.
Van alternators aren't good at charging batteries. They are good at topping up the starter battery and will supply all the van's needs with the engine idling. The way a battery (both leisure and starter) accepts a charge isn't helpful either. So as the battery gets to fully charged the absorption rate the battery drops off.
About 3 years ago I had to do a trip to London in my van. My leisure battery was about 75% charged when I set off. It took 5 hours and/or 250 miles before that leisure battery was accepting a minimal charge indicating it was fully charged. I have a Citroen Relay so it doesn't have a small alternator.
Here's another thread posted a couple of months ago
Split charge relay
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- Messages
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Halfords smart charger's have always served me well , I recently bought a Halfords 70ah battery and this past week I worked 5 days without the need to charge when I finished on Friday it was showing 12.3v I don't have a split relay as I use a Pump Box .
Nudel
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Yes it will. As Spruce mentioned above it's not a good idea though.
Another thing is the plug is not rated for the current the socket itself can supply, so after a while you'll melt it. This happened to a friend of mine.
