Life of leisure batteries
Bitter experience is that modern car batteries often work very well right up until they suddenly keel over and die, rather than the previous generation which sort of pined away for a while first. This was a nuisance but at least gave some warning.
Do Leisure batteries do the same? And how long do they tend to last, please?
We had a nice shiny new Leisure Battery, 110 Ah rating, with our 2nd hand caravan two years ago. So far it's always charging up nicely and the little indicator spot is showing green for healthy, so all seems well, but I'm wondering whether at some point it'll copy that car battery habit of sudden death at a vital moment. (Probably when we're miles from anywhere!)
What's your experience?
Thanks.
Comments
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I got 7 good years out of my 110A leisure battery until it wouldn’t charge. I’m not 100% sure but I think something was left switched on in the unattended caravan for a couple of months which completely drained and ruined the battery. I suspect if that hadn’t of happened I’d still be using it now.
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In thirty years of caravaning and motorhoming I've only ever had to buy one battery, and that was to install a second on in one of my motorhomes. All the rest have survived the periods of ownership of each vehicle, the longest being eight years.
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Still using a 110amp Numax, now 11 years old, no problem even using it off grid with a solar panel.
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Should last at least 5 years but from the comments above you can see that many last much longer. The life is affected by the number of cycles (discharge - recharge) so if you are on EHU all the time they will last a very long time. Discharging a battery to minimum voltage will not do it much good and recharging with a very cheap, basic, charger ditto.
All modern motorhomes and many caravans now have so called "smart" charges which are three stage. If you have a very basic caravan charger that only delivers 13.8 volts and you discharge the battery then the life will suffer unless you recharge with a decent charger of the correct type.
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Thanks all, that's very reassuring!
It usually gets used on EHU, and when we're off-grid we have a solar panel to charge it. I suspect the onboard charger is fairly basic, but I have a smarter one for use at home, and the battery gets taken out & gets plumbed into that when we're not using it for long periods.
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The "life" ie longevity of a caravan battery really depends on your take on when it is no longer any good.
The "industry" generally defines this as no longer holding 80% of its new capacity. Sadly test John Wickersham did found some new fell short of their labelled capacity, one only held 30% brand new!
In many of our leisure applications it will not make a blind bit of difference if our battery holds but a fraction of what it is supposed to do, as these users never need to take much capacity. Even a mover is unlikely to drain more than 10%, more typically only 5%, so many users will live in total ignorance that the battery is only a shadow of its original self.
For those who camp off grid it can be a very different picture as some need capacity. However, many who frequently go off grid nowadays have decent rated solar panels and these can comfortably replenish the previous evening drains so again the owner has not a clue their battery is "ageing".
A car starter on a cold morning with a reticent engine and short journey use really can need some capacity, hence the different findings to our use.
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The number of charge/discharge cycles a batter can give varies greatly, somewhere between 70 and 2000 cycles according to the NCC.
They publish details on their site.
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However, I wish I could believe the values the brand owners gave the NCC, I would be very very much more confident if they instigated some independent tests by an accredited and stated testing agency.
Too vivid memories of John Wickersham's work back in 2010 proving some, most, stated capacity values were anything but honest. Not convinced at all things are different in 2018 re cycling numbers, far from it.
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You are doing all the right things.
As others have said, despite the publicity by John Wickersham and others it seems that it is still difficult to guarantee a decent life from a leisure battery. My experience with golf trolley batteries is much the same. Lead acid anywhere between 2 and 5 years and my lithium with a 5 year guarantee (they never fail my pro said) lasted 2years.
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