What leisure battery charger do you guys recommend to charge caravan battery? Have a AA one but according to instructions it will take 100 hours to charge 100AH battery, dont fancy waiting that long.
Leisure battery charger
- Thread starter borderbilly
- Start date
Well your battery should have some charge in it so the time could be reduced. I use a CTEK smart charger and family swear by Noco, but Ring do a cheaper one and.at times Aldi have well thought of smart chargers in shops or online.
Mine is 4 amps max as I’m never looking to rapidly charge a battery.
Mine is 4 amps max as I’m never looking to rapidly charge a battery.
Is there any reason you need to charge it quickly?
I use an optimate which theoretically would take 166 hours to charge my battery (600mA charge rate). It never does because my leisure battery is never completely flat. I've had my battery in the garage over winter, I leave it charging for a couple of weeks then rest it for a couple of weeks while I top up an old car battery I have in there.
I use an optimate which theoretically would take 166 hours to charge my battery (600mA charge rate). It never does because my leisure battery is never completely flat. I've had my battery in the garage over winter, I leave it charging for a couple of weeks then rest it for a couple of weeks while I top up an old car battery I have in there.
Slightly "tongue in cheek", if it's so flat that a 1 A charger is going to take 100 hours to recharge a 100AH battery, that is absolutely dead flat, then is it of any value to recharge that battery?
As others have said, you ought to be very unlikely to need to charge such a grossly flat battery.
I would if I owned it simply plug in that AA charger and give it time to do its thing.
If as it claims it is a "maintainer," then its not going to overcharge the battery if left connected a good bit longer, till you can get back to it, unless that is say over a week or its manual advises otherwise.
IMO a "nice" rating for a smart charger for most domestic car owners and us caravanners is 3.5 to 5 Amp.
Investing in any reasonable quality charger of higher rating than this I don't think is being cost effective, buying smaller I see as more use for maintaining batteries than charging them, but they still can, given time.
I have a couple of CTEKs, 3.6 & 5 Amps, and also a couple of the good value Aldi offerings, the latter I only use to charge with
The former I trust to both charge and maintain batteries, being left on continuous connection when needed. Here their ability to "weather" a power cut and reset being critical with our overhead mains supply.
As others have said, you ought to be very unlikely to need to charge such a grossly flat battery.
I would if I owned it simply plug in that AA charger and give it time to do its thing.
If as it claims it is a "maintainer," then its not going to overcharge the battery if left connected a good bit longer, till you can get back to it, unless that is say over a week or its manual advises otherwise.
IMO a "nice" rating for a smart charger for most domestic car owners and us caravanners is 3.5 to 5 Amp.
Investing in any reasonable quality charger of higher rating than this I don't think is being cost effective, buying smaller I see as more use for maintaining batteries than charging them, but they still can, given time.
I have a couple of CTEKs, 3.6 & 5 Amps, and also a couple of the good value Aldi offerings, the latter I only use to charge with
The former I trust to both charge and maintain batteries, being left on continuous connection when needed. Here their ability to "weather" a power cut and reset being critical with our overhead mains supply.
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many thanks for all replies, no hurry to charge it, yes there is still some charge in battery, just wanted to top it up in readiness for 1st trip. As you can see i am not clued up on electrics and its all double dutch to me. Will switch on charger again tomorrow as its in shed and i dont like to leave it on all night.
It should be fine as long as you have reasonable ventilation, most sheds are quite draughty. You have a charger / maintainer which is designed to fully charge the battery then switch to 'float' mode and keep it fully charged. I've had a quick look at the instructions for your charger. It says that normal charging mode is limited to 10 days, float mode is unlimited. It's far better for the battery to keep it fully charged than let it drop low and then recharge it.
Many people don't understand that if you want to charge a LA battery such that it fully charges and holds it you have to charge it at constant current and not constant voltage (a.k.a. float charging) as most units do.
I was fortunate that I had a 33V 10A power supply which had a current limit control. An AA man gave me one of their old 55Ah jump starting batteries that was well down (I'm talking 1980's here.) I put the power supply on, turned the current down, turned the voltage up to 18V and then turned the current up to 250mA and left it for about a fortnight. As it happened my wife's Fiat Tipo battery was dying so I put the recharged battery on the car - and not only did it spin faster on starting, but it was still doing it when we sold the car three years later!
I was fortunate that I had a 33V 10A power supply which had a current limit control. An AA man gave me one of their old 55Ah jump starting batteries that was well down (I'm talking 1980's here.) I put the power supply on, turned the current down, turned the voltage up to 18V and then turned the current up to 250mA and left it for about a fortnight. As it happened my wife's Fiat Tipo battery was dying so I put the recharged battery on the car - and not only did it spin faster on starting, but it was still doing it when we sold the car three years later!
Hooray! Went into shed today and charger was reading Battery Fully Charged. That was about 4 days on charger.
So close to 100 hours as predicted. Hopefully it will just have been very low when you started. It would be an idea to take it off charge and check the voltage for a few days if you have a meter to confirm that it's holding charge reasonably well. It should measure around 12.7v after standing for an hour after being taken off charge and shouldn't really drop from that in a week.
Just at the back of your mind remember it is only saying "Fully charged", that is it has as much energy in it as the charger can put in, and get it to that associated figure giving 12.7 to 12.9 volts [depending on chemistry and charger setup].
The point to note, that is not the same as saying it has its original 100Ah of energy, or possibly anything like it, just it is as full of energy as it has now the capacity to hold. Declining capacity is the norm outcome for battery aging and abuse, though the battery can still be charged up to "fully charged", just not with an amount of energy that it once was.
In use, this could quickly become apparent, but lets hope you have been specially lucky and it still can hold what you have it for.
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The number of days is irrelevant. Purpose is to make sure the battery is holding the charge.
Having taken a battery off charge, disconnect the wires and leave it to stand for 30 mins minimum for the chestry to amd temperature to settle, then take the voltage reading
You should have your multi meter set to 20 v DC. That setting is for reading AAA, AA and PP3 batteries.
Border Billy, I think you also have the electical probes in the incorrect sockets for checking your battery.
If you are checking small battery's such as AA, AAA etc then your probes are in the correct connections.
But when checking a battery voltage as you are doing just now. Then the setting should be at the 20 volts as indicated by JTQ. But the positive lead should be in the right hand connector marked by V in the red box.
Have a good read up on the instructions, easy mistake to make for a new meter.
If you are checking small battery's such as AA, AAA etc then your probes are in the correct connections.
But when checking a battery voltage as you are doing just now. Then the setting should be at the 20 volts as indicated by JTQ. But the positive lead should be in the right hand connector marked by V in the red box.
Have a good read up on the instructions, easy mistake to make for a new meter.
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That is still high for a battery not on charge, provided it has stood for several hours to dissipate what is known as a "surface charge".
LINK
It has no appreciable "energy" involved in it and does not represent the true off load battery voltage.
As it is hanging up at that, I would lean towards thinking it is indicating the battery is holding the maximum amount of energy it is now capable of holding.
Try measuring again in a couple of days.
Putting it on a modest load before measuring again off load will help knock that surface charge off, and if a modest load for a short period, will not drain it any appreciable amount off being 100% full.
LINK
It has no appreciable "energy" involved in it and does not represent the true off load battery voltage.
As it is hanging up at that, I would lean towards thinking it is indicating the battery is holding the maximum amount of energy it is now capable of holding.
Try measuring again in a couple of days.
Putting it on a modest load before measuring again off load will help knock that surface charge off, and if a modest load for a short period, will not drain it any appreciable amount off being 100% full.
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