Wintertime and batteries

teejay

Guest
Wintertime and batteries

Not seen anything on here yet about how people are keeping their various battery setups in good condition for the winter period. i.e. engine battery. habitation battery/s. What do you do to look after yours?
 
Having managed to completely flatten the engine battery and then damage the two ECUs jump starting (yes £2,000+) I have had a thing fitted which ensures that when I charge the leisure battery any surplus goes into the engine battery. Apparently some vans are already equipped with this, but to our cost we found out that our's wasn't. It should also work with the plug in solar panel, though we haven't had sufficient sun to try that one. If it prevents a flat engine battery I will consider it £150 well spent.
 
milton;n12362 said:
Having managed to completely flatten the engine battery and then damage the two ECUs jump starting (yes £2,000+) I have had a thing fitted which ensures that when I charge the leisure battery any surplus goes into the engine battery. Apparently some vans are already equipped with this, but to our cost we found out that our's wasn't. It should also work with the plug in solar panel, though we haven't had sufficient sun to try that one. If it prevents a flat engine battery I will consider it £150 well spent.
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OUCH! very sorry to hear that Milton. Hope everything is alright with you now on that front. What is the thing you say you have had fitted? Some sort of battery maintainer for the engine battery?
 
Having found out the manufacturers do not allow the onboard mains charger to also service the motor battery, I attach an intelligent charger just for the vehicle battery that, when fully charged, reverts to a trickle charge to keep the battery 'happy'. My 120W solar (roof) panel, whilst more than adequate for ALL the batteries up to roughly the end of September, is absolutely useless when the little sun we get from then on barely rises above the rooftops! It should be remembered that, whilst the leisure battery(s) will happily take continual discharge and REcharge cycles, no such luck with the vehicle battery which must be kept no lower than 12v or it's life will be shortened considerably.
 
Take it for a good run once a week.

Good for the engine, tyres as well as batteries.
 
I have my MH on the drive so it's easy to leave it on mains and ensure the Sargent is set on Smart which keeps vehicle and leisure topped up. When I had a caravan that was in storage, I removed the battery and connected it to a CTEK charger over winter which maintained the full charge.
 
I have this setup ,so well covered.
 

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Hi all receive a nice wee email with competition details all you have to do was post, something sadly I don’t do more of a browser lol but happy to try ..Moho been laid up since September like everyone life sometimes gets in the way. Long story short two dead batteries even though we have soler panels something has drained us dry a prize would make this Mrs Claus very happy
merry Christmas everyone and happy travels to one and all ?
 
Nothing clever like the above. I just disconnect the cab battery if Im not using the van for months like at the moment. I do nothing with the leisure battery either. Well I say nothing but last winter I heard the solar alarm for low battery voltage going off and it seemed that the solar controller had somehow flattened the battery. Thats never happened before so this year ive just isolated the leisure battery and disconnected the solar controller. In the past just leaving them isolated never seems to do much harm
 
EJB;n12409 said:
MH on drive with CTEK charger connected...switch on every couple of weeks or so to fully charge the vehicle battery....it takes plus or minus 12 hours. The habitation battery doesn't usually discharge having been static for up to 8 weeks.
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Keep your batts floating and dont turn charger of,its meent to 5 stage exercise and float,but switching of or only putting on every 8 weeks is not helping.
 
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barryd;n12422 said:
Nothing clever like the above. I just disconnect the cab battery if Im not using the van for months like at the moment. I do nothing with the leisure battery either. Well I say nothing but last winter I heard the solar alarm for low battery voltage going off and it seemed that the solar controller had somehow flattened the battery. Thats never happened before so this year ive just isolated the leisure battery and disconnected the solar controller. In the past just leaving them isolated never seems to do much harm
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Plates will slowly sulpher up doing this and shorten there lives,5 stage charger,exercise them poor bu--ers
 
Modgirl;n12417 said:
Hi all receive a nice wee email with competition details all you have to do was post, something sadly I don’t do more of a browser lol but happy to try ..Moho been laid up since September like everyone life sometimes gets in the way. Long story short two dead batteries even though we have soler panels something has drained us dry a prize would make this Mrs Claus very happy
merry Christmas everyone and happy travels to one and all ?
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Panels dont work over winter mths.
 
Thank you all, for your valuable and relevant comments. Please keep them coming and to those who may have questions about various solutions, please ASK. You will get an answer or three which may help you.
 
teejay;n12364 said:
OUCH! very sorry to hear that Milton. Hope everything is alright with you now on that front. What is the thing you say you have had fitted? Some sort of battery maintainer for the engine battery?
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I can't remember what it is called, but when the leisure battery is fully charged a relay system sends any surplus to top up the engine battery. Makes sense really, and not expensive in my opinion, so why the ********* couldn't they make it standard? It is impossible for a 'normal' (ie non-mechanic) person to remove and charge the engine battery according to the manufacturer because it means disconnecting and disrupting everything so this was the only way we can do it.
We suspect there may have been something wrong with the earthing point we used to jump start the vehicle, therefore blowing the electrics, but after much battling with Peugeot who insisted we were 'mistaken' about following the instructions in the handbook we could go no further than they agreed to pay some of the £3000 bill. They also damaged my paintwork, but won't accept that either. Otherwise all appears to be in order (fingers are now being crossed...)
 
scoobydiver;n12582 said:
I've fitted a separate 10w solar panel to keep the engine battery topped up , I've found they still work even if covered with a small amount of snow ,fitted with mppt controller .
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Your not even getting one amp with that,think you should double that as the brain etc will use some and about 1 ah is required to keep floating the battery as they can loose that each day,esp in cooled weather.
 
I have a 30watt solar panel that I sometimes use in summer to top up various batteries, I have tried it on the moho engine battery over a 3 day blue sky summer weekend in July. Panel out in the open, 17degrees from horizontal,l facing due south, kept clean and it only managed 0.2 watt input into a 12 month old 95 amp hour battery which had not been 'used' for several weeks and was holding before charging, 12.68 volts. A 30w panel is not much use in summer for that and useless in winter. I would say in summer, as an absolute minimum, a 100 watt panel is a base.
 
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