Leisure Battery

[Jimbob1]

Hi Everyone,

Our battery on our caravan is about to give up the ghost.

We have a 110amp battery at present,do any of you think that an 85amp battery would be ok with a Truma Motor Mover.

look forward to your advice. Many Thanks.Jimbob

 

[AnnM1]

It all depends on what terrain on which you will be maneouvering your caravan. However, I would stick to the 110 amp battery as already fitted. You never know when you might just have to use the battery on site to run the caravan and a bit of power in reserve is always a good idea.

Ann

 

[cooky1]

I have an 85amp battery and it works my mover with no problems. I always use electric hook up on sites so the battery is always fully charged. Depends on what sort of caravanning you do. I find the smaller battery much easier to handle and it is quite a bit lighter than a 110.

Graeme.

 

[RogerL]

If you always use a hook-up, a car battery will be adequate even for the mover.

 

[stan_374361661]

Never had a problem with an 85 battery and motor mover,but belt and braces! Can I charge a battery in the boot and how?

 

[HenryS]

Hi. I use a 85ah battery and its fine. I read on one of these posts that a 85ah battery will run a mover for about an hour! Its certainly a lot lighter than a 110ah.

Henry

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hi Jimbob,

A caravan mover is likely to demand 40A of current just to get the caravan moving for a fraction of a second, once it is moving the current demand falls rapidly to typically about 15 to 20 A. If you are trying to go up a steep hill the current will stay higher.

Typically most caravanner's will only need to use the mover for a total of about a minuet once on site, but even if it were longer say 5 mins, the amount of power used will only be about 20A for 5/60, of an hour or 1.6Ah. Allowing for multiple start currents when making fine adjustments it is very unlikely to exceed 2Ah in total. This is like running a 12W bulb for two hours.

Even 85Ah leisure batteries should be able to cope with this level of discharge. The question is how much power will all your other appliances use, and ultimately they are likely to use much more than the mover.

If you use caravan sites with electric hook ups, then I think an 85Ah battery will be more than man enough to run you mover. If do not have a site with hook up then you may need a bigger battery especially for longer stays.

 

[RogerL]

Movers don't just require consideration of Amp hours used, they need the high current taken into account, often starting a 80-100 amps and running at 40-50 amps.

Leisure batteries don't handle high instantaneous current very well, unlike car starter batteries.

A 55Ah car battery will cope with a mover's starting and running current better than a 85Ah leisure battery but as it's not suitable of off-EHU use motor manufacturers normally recommend 110Ah leisure type rather than 85Ah.