Leisure battery

[Davy G]

One thing to note is that leisure batteries are designed to be used until flat and recharged, running leisure batteries off a split charge constantly isn't what the acid plates were designed to take. 

  If people are running a split charge system I would recommend a decent van battery as the plates are thinner and are designed to be constantly trickle charged. Had my battery 5odd years now on a durite smart split charger and never had a issue

I'd be wary of deliberately running any wet- cell battery until flat, leisure or starter. I can't imagine it being good for them. I think my twin leisure batteries are around 70% charged on average. Charging is all done through a Durite SCR. Up to now no problems. You are right about having a good van battery. It allows the spare charge to be diverted to the leisure battery or batteries as the alternator is not fighting to keep a poor van battery charged.

 

[Lparker9983]

Yes sorry Steve I should explain, by discharged I mean so the pump slows which probably equates to 12.3 ish v.

All lead acid batteries won't hold the same charge if they are left in a discharged state for a long period of time I might add.

 Leisure batteries are designed to be used for low amperage loads for extended periods of time and with that also charged back up slowly rather than rapidly. In contrast vehicle batteries were designed for big dumps of power all at once and were designed to be charged from a vehicles alternator at speed.

Leisure batteries on things like caravans and motorhomes, there main function is to power things, the power supplies on caravans aren't designed to keep the battery at full charge, that's why folk tend to remove and charge like we used to do before folk started fitting split chargers, but the best bet is a vehicle battery that's made to have big amps replacing the lost voltage quickly. 

Cheers. Lee

 

[Pjj]

One thing to note is that leisure batteries are designed to be used until flat and recharged, running leisure batteries off a split charge constantly isn't what the acid plates were designed to take. 

  If people are running a split charge system I would recommend a decent van battery as the plates are thinner and are designed to be constantly trickle charged. Had my battery 5odd years now on a durite smart split charger and never had a issue

leisure batteries should not be run flat you will damage it the same as any other battery , trickle charging them is fine , a normal starter battery isn’t the best choose fir out job running pumps etc although it will do the job .  

 

[spruce]

Yes sorry Steve I should explain, by discharged I mean so the pump slows which probably equates to 12.3 ish v.

All lead acid batteries won't hold the same charge if they are left in a discharged state for a long period of time I might add.

 Leisure batteries are designed to be used for low amperage loads for extended periods of time and with that also charged back up slowly rather than rapidly. In contrast vehicle batteries were designed for big dumps of power all at once and were designed to be charged from a vehicles alternator at speed.

Leisure batteries on things like caravans and motorhomes, there main function is to power things, the power supplies on caravans aren't designed to keep the battery at full charge, that's why folk tend to remove and charge like we used to do before folk started fitting split chargers, but the best bet is a vehicle battery that's made to have big amps replacing the lost voltage quickly. 

Cheers. Lee

This article from Practical Caravan disagrees with a lot of what you have stated in your 2 posts. In fact some of the content in you first post is different to the second post.

https://www.practicalcaravan.com/advice/how-to-take-care-of-leisure-batteries

One of the points it makes is that a lead acid leisure battery shouldn't be used to below 50% charged and should be recharged as soon as possible.

A couple of additional things. A battery is totally flat when it registers 12.0v after it has rested for around 4 hours. A battery with a starting voltage of 12.0 will drop to single figure voltages immediately its put under load. This is why Webasto diesel heaters and Spring controllers for example are set to switch off at 10.3v.

A built in battery charger in a caravan has to cover all battery charging requirements. They are also very basic units with old technology. (I am just repeating what the caravan industry reports about this.) If you have a non maintenance leisure battery you should only charge that at 14.2v tops. If you have a flooded leisure battery you can charge that at 14.6v.

My smart leisure battery charger will only charge my leisure battery at 13.9v. My Peugeot Boxer vans alternator only charges at a maximum voltage of 13.9v. When my leisure battery is fully charged by my smart charger it goes into float or maintenance mode. But when my engine starts my Sterling Battery to Battery charger can boost the capacity of that leisure battery with even more charge.

When my old Citroen Relay van charged the same leisure battery with a 140amp Durite equivalent voltage sensing relay with 70amp cables it charged the leisure battery at 14.6 volts. After resting for over 4 hours I only saw a fully charged voltage of 12.9v on a couple of occasions. It was mainly at 12.8v. The same leisure battery now often shows a resting voltage of 13.1v having had an extra boost from the Sterling unit.

Numax said that its best to charge a leisure battery at a maximum of 10% of its capacity. So my 110 amp leisure battery is ok at a charging rate of 11 amps. Having a higher initial boost charge gives the battery a wake up call. 

Very really does my leisure battery drop below 75% charged. After a heavy day I might see a charge going into the leisure battery of 36amp for a few moments. It steady drops to around 10amps within a minute or so. After a heavy day it gets the charger onto it that night. My leisure battery was 7 years old this past January.

The battery requirements of window cleaners are different to those of caravan applications. They have a lot to learn from our industry.

Numax and a few others do a leisure battery with a CCA value. So its a combo starter and leisure battery. I expect because it can also be used to start an engine it could well accept a higher charging rate. I don't know the answer to that as I've not been able to any info on this topic on the web.

Further info

https://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/helpandadvice/technicalhelp/datasheets/guide-leisure-batteries/

https://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/helpandadvice/technicalhelp/datasheets/charging-leisure-battery/

Some window cleaners use starter batteries and report they 'work well.' A fellow windie once purchased 2 x 85amp batteries of the same make, one leisure and one starter. He swaps them over every day as he doesn't have a SCR in his van. The starter battery lasted 2 years and the leisure battery lasted 2.5 years. This is the only comparison that means anything to me as he was very closely comparing the performance of one battery type against another. He did state that as the leisure battery was more expensive than the starter battery their cost verses longevity just about evened out.

Both his current batteries are leisure batteries.