Flat leisure battery!
I bought a brand new swift challenger(my first ever caravan) last May and put it in storage over winter thinking the solar panel would maintain the battery charge. But when I visited it last week there was no power so the alarm and control panel (or anything else) didn’t work. I’ve checked all the fuses/trips etc and they seem ok. So I checked battery charge and found it’s only 3.8 volts!
the caravan has an alarm and tracker so I’m wondering if they’ve drained the battery.
any advice you can give would be most welcome especially about is the battery now capable of being recharged/if not is it covered by the warranty/can I do anything to prevent this happening every winter?
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Yes, the alarm and tracker will have drained the battery. You don't say how big the solar panel is, but I had to supplement my 100 watt roof panel with an 80 watt one, sided in the front window, to get my battery through winter.
I think that you have a dead battery and that it will need to be replaced. I doubt it the battery is covered by warranty as you, albeit inadvertently, let it go flat.
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I had this problem with the battery losing charge while sat in storage. Got a sparky with a meter to check out the electrics. He tested the fuse box and identified the control panel was drawing power continuously although it was off.
It seems it is not hard wired into the water pump and heating but connected to them by Bluetooth. So 24/7 the control box is sending out messages 'hello I'm here' and consuming power.
Simple solution was to pull out the battery fuse when it went into storage. Problem solved.
Put fuse back in when you want to use the caravan.
Tracker, if fitted, runs off its own hidden battery.
In a gold storage unit with three locks on the van so not fussed if the alarm does not work.
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But your insurance company might think differently 🙁
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The battery may be salvageable; if you've got a smart battery charger it's worth a try otherwise it's lesson learnt I'm afraid.
I find that if our caravan is in storage for longer than about 2 months I need to put the battery on charge. I never bother putting the alarm on anyway but if I did that timeframe would no doubt come down considerably.
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Just read this on another forum.
Hi all
Got my caravan out of storage to prepare for our holiday. The battery was dead showing about 5volts (left a light on), from past experience this meant a trip to the battery shop for a new battery. I tried my charger (Aldi Special) and wouldn't charge. A friend suggested I borrow his Ctek charger. So after reading the instructions I connected it up and after 48hours the charger went through an 8 point charging cycle and now seems to hold its charge of 13.4v
Brilliant.
I thought i would share that with you all.
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Our Swift caravan has a 10W roof mounted solar panel as part of its original construction. It has unfailingly kept the battery topped up while in storage over winter. The motor mover also works after that period, so the battery is nowhere near flat. There are two alarm systems. One being a manufacturers fit tracker which has an internal battery with a five year life expectancy, after which the tracker contract expired. The fob alarm system has an internal control box with an internal battery floated across the van battery.
When our tracker contract expired we fitted a TruTrak alarm. There’s just two wires across the battery feed. It’s far more sophisticated than the original fit tracker, and cheaper and it does clever things like monitoring the battery state. I’m lying in bed so I’ve just checked on the van which is 4 miles away. The battery state is 13.07V. So there is an economic solution available without draining your battery.
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We have a 2018 Swift Challenger with a 100W solar panel as well as alarm and tracker fitted. The leisure battery is now 8 years old and has been kept fully charged by solar energy, both in this caravan and our previous one.
Swifts have an isolation switch on the Sargent Power Supply unit which turns off all 12v supplies except to the alarm, tracker and motor mover, if fitted. If this switch is left in the ON position then there are 12v parasitic loads which could exceed the contribution from the solar charger, especially on short, dull winter days. The full features of the a Swift Command system are not available when the isolation switch is OFF but the alarm and tracker still function and the Locate and Battery State options are still operational.
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I had a tracker and alarm on a caravan but no solar panel and the battery would last 1 to 2 months before needing topping up. The solar panel should be more than capable of keeping the leisure battery charged if the van is not parked in shade. It sounds as though there is a drain on the battery as suggested by others and you need to isolate the system. I believe it’s a Sargent system on the Challenger and, if so, it should have a shutdown button. Alternatively, the leisure battery was faulty.
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