Caring for Leisure Battery

[DavieP1]

Can anyone tell me the best way to look after a leisure battery, i left mine in the van about november all switched off and disconnected and when went back to the van few days ago its completely dead. my van is in a storage yard so its not possible to keep it plugged into mains

regards

davie

 

[Damian]

Davie, the best you can do for a battery when not in use is to take it home, and keep it fully charged.

There has been a lot of talk about where to keep batteries, but the general consensus is to keep it somewhere cool, but frost free, and not stored directly on a concrete floor.

Placing it on some thick cardboard or wooden board seem to be the preferred methods.

It is preferable, but not absolutely essential that you use a multi stage charger which will charge the battery, then go to "maintainenece" mode to keep it fully charged.

Once a battery loses charge, sulphation of the internal plates starts to take place, rendering the battery useless.

Try taking yours home and giving it a full charge and see how it responds, if it will not hold charge, a new battery is going to be needed.

 

[rob_jax]

Hi Davie,

If you use the forum search you'll see loads of threads on caring for your leisure battery, but in essence:

1. Lead acid batteries internally self discharge at a rate of around 0.5 to 1 AH per day - so if you have a 80 AH battery, it could be completely flat in 80 days.

2. Letting a lead acid battery self discharge below 50% causes irreversible sulfation of the cell plates - and is a good way to slowly kill a battery. Discharging the battery under external load and then immediate recharge doesn't cause this problem.

3. Lead acid batteries last longest if kept at 100% charge - either a solar panel (with blocking diode to stop reverse current flow at night) or take the battery out and keep it charged at home.

If you go down the solar panel route, then avoid the cheap models - you need a real panel with at least 10 watt output - and these cost way more than the

 

[STEVE_5041381]

Hi Davie,

If you use the forum search you'll see loads of threads on caring for your leisure battery, but in essence:

1. Lead acid batteries internally self discharge at a rate of around 0.5 to 1 AH per day - so if you have a 80 AH battery, it could be completely flat in 80 days.

2. Letting a lead acid battery self discharge below 50% causes irreversible sulfation of the cell plates - and is a good way to slowly kill a battery. Discharging the battery under external load and then immediate recharge doesn't cause this problem.

3. Lead acid batteries last longest if kept at 100% charge - either a solar panel (with blocking diode to stop reverse current flow at night) or take the battery out and keep it charged at home.

If you go down the solar panel route, then avoid the cheap models - you need a real panel with at least 10 watt output - and these cost way more than the