# leisure battery life



## felmaster (Jul 12, 2010)

I am somewhat a novice so please bear with me 

I have bought meos 12 volt telly which previously has only been used on a mains hookup . It is supposed to be a low power consumption tv

I used it this weekend via the leisure battery ( 85 amp less than 9 months old)

On the second evening the sound went off and the dvd would not play
i checked the battery indicator and it was down below 1/2 charge about 1/3

To test the telly I changed to the veh battery (full charge)and it immediatley worked okay.

I reckon the telly had been on around 4/5 hours in total ( world Cup! )before the battery drained but except for the water pump there was no other electrics utilised -no lights and appliances on gas.

Is it normal for  a 12v/240v telly to act up if the battery still has some charge ? - 
also with having no lights on I would have thought the battery would have gone onlonger

by the time I had got home the leisure battery was back to full charge

thanks


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## vwalan (Jul 12, 2010)

sounds about right. you need a good bank of solar panels or you will have to put up with a genny and possibly no friends. one battery is useless if watching colour tv. .even the low power ones take alot. it was better when you could use a 5inch black n white ,lasted for ever. 
even with a bank of say 3 x80wt panels you still need 600amp of batteries and lots of sunshione .dont park under trees or in the shade. i always use truck batteries found liesure and gel are a waste of money. they maybe better but the cost still makes them expensive. cheers alan.


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## Tony Lee (Jul 12, 2010)

You need to have a look at the specifications for the TV to see what the power rating of the TV plus DVD is and add the lights as well. That will give you a figure in watts. Divide the Watts by 12 to give Amps and multiply that by the total number of hours you were watching.

An 85Ah battery starting off fully charged should only be discharged to no less than say 30% (and that is really far to low to do all the time) so you have about 55Ah available. If that figure is less than your calculated usage then you need bigger batteries or less TV watching.

Another factor is if your leisure battery is only charged up from the engine then it is unlikely to be fully charged in the first place. 85% maximum perhaps so that halves the amount of power you can draw before it is essentially flat.

BTW any traffic-light or straight voltmeter charge indicator does not give you an accurate indication of how much charge is in the battery. Doesn't even give you a wildly-inaccurate indication, especially while current is being drawn from the battery or when it is charging.


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## Kontiki (Jul 12, 2010)

I have a Kenmark TV form Comet, I only have an 85 amp Exide Gel battery & can easily watch 4 to 5 hours of TV in an evening (difficulty is finding 4 or 5 hours of decent TV to watch ) Sometimes have the Maplins satellite on other times have the Sagem freeview box on as it has a hard disk & watch films from that. Lowest I've ever seem my battery is 12.3 volts usually it's around 12.5 when we go to bed. Solar panel can get the battery over 13 volts by lunchtime on a reasonable day & if it's sunny it gets up to 14.2 volts (max for a gel battery)

I always used to think it was crap about batteries & would usually get a cheap generic brand but this Exide came with the van & it has far exceeded what I would expect. I find this time of year the daylight is more than ample to charge my battery for my usage. I did fit LED bulbs to all the lights I could & I charge my laptop & other equipment during the day.


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## Firefox (Jul 12, 2010)

It sounds as though it flattened your battery a bit quick but it depends on your telly.

Check the rating on your Telly. I have a 10 inch TFT from maplins.  It's a Nikkai, only 18 watts so as W = VxA, amps is about 1.5 at 12V. The output on the 240v adapter says 2000 mA so that would be about 2A.

If you have say 50 Ah practically available, a Telly like mine you should be able to watch for 25 hours or all day before the battery gets low. But if your telly was 100 watts, ie 5 x the power of mine then that's only 5 hours before the battery feels it ie 5 times less time than 25 hours.

Also I would check the battery with a proper voltmeter and dont rely on any built in indicator.


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## Nosha (Jul 13, 2010)

I have basically the same set up, and whilst I've not watched TV for 4hrs in one hit; I have watched it for 4hrs or more over 3 or 4 nights with no problem. I think 'Tony Lee' gave the best answer i.e. It doesn't sound like the battery was fully charges to start with. Unless you drove for quite a few hours to your destination then the engine battery would have taken most of the charge and the leisure would have only had a trickle.

Would suggest you put the van on hook-up for at least 24hrs to give both batteries a full charge then try again.


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## kimbowbill (Jul 13, 2010)

felmaster said:


> I am somewhat a novice so please bear with me
> 
> I have bought meos 12 volt telly which previously has only been used on a mains hookup . It is supposed to be a low power consumption tv
> 
> ...



we had same problem, no picture on TV, i'm not that techincal but you need to run engine for while to getfull charge, best get on hook up or use genny

thanks

J


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## The Grand Wanderer (Jul 13, 2010)

I too have a Meos telly/DVD excellent peice of kit. I use mine with a 12v sat decoder and have watched telly for many hours each night.
I presume that you are not using an inverter but connecting the telly directly to the 12v side of your system.
It is vital that the wire that carries the power to your telly is of sufficient size to carry the load with out any voltage drop, (needs to be at least 2.5mm squared) and only the telly on the circuit.
Next a fully charged and new 100 amp leisure battery will only have an 80% charge thus the useable amount of power will be 80 amps plus it is unwise to discharge a battery to less than half so now, doing the sums it would appear that only 40 amps are availableto use. So if your telly consumes 2 amps per hour you should get at least 20 hours of viewing before loseing your picture. Tellies are very sensitive to voltage and will not work if the voltage drops below 12v.
Solar panels are expensive but great in providing top up power.
I have two leisure batteries both of 100 amp with two solar panels giving a maximum output of 195 watts. I have not used an EHU for over two years and have never even got close to running down my batteries even in winter.
Regards,
Wanderer


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## felmaster (Jul 13, 2010)

The Grand Wanderer said:


> I too have a Meos telly/DVD excellent peice of kit. I use mine with a 12v sat decoder and have watched telly for many hours each night.
> I presume that you are not using an inverter but connecting the telly directly to the 12v side of your system.
> It is vital that the wire that carries the power to your telly is of sufficient size to carry the load with out any voltage drop, (needs to be at least 2.5mm squared) and only the telly on the circuit.
> Next a fully charged and new 100 amp leisure battery will only have an 80% charge thus the useable amount of power will be 80 amps plus it is unwise to discharge a battery to less than half so now, doing the sums it would appear that only 40 amps are availableto use. So if your telly consumes 2 amps per hour you should get at least 20 hours of viewing before loseing your picture. Tellies are very sensitive to voltage and will not work if the voltage drops below 12v.
> ...



I wonder if its the lead to the telly . Its a home made job as the only 12 volt supply is a clipsal two plug connected to a normal cigarette style connecter via small black anbd red leads . the 12 volt telly cig lead then plugs in to that


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## vera (Jul 14, 2010)

*Meos Tv*

WE also have the Meos 12inch Tv, ours has its own built in Battery.
Just a thought ,if our tv battery is flat when we plug  it into 12v then it will charge from the Leisure battery,
Could you of had double the drain pulling from your battery?


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## felmaster (Jul 14, 2010)

vera said:


> WE also have the Meos 12inch Tv, ours has its own built in Battery.
> Just a thought ,if our tv battery is flat when we plug  it into 12v then it will charge from the Leisure battery,
> Could you of had double the drain pulling from your battery?



mine is 15.4  no built in battery and according to the reviews purpose built for 12 v and great on consumption . It did oKay for about 6 hours over two days. I did not  use anything else over the period except for the water pump. thinking about it that could have contributed to the drain -on and off quite a bit wshing etc


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## Firefox (Jul 14, 2010)

felmaster said:


> mine is 15.4  no built in battery and according to the reviews purpose built for 12 v and great on consumption . It did oKay for about 6 hours over two days. I did not  use anything else over the period except for the water pump. thinking about it that could have contributed to the drain -on and off quite a bit wshing etc



What is the _actual_ wattage though? It should be printed on a sticker on the back of the Telly or the box or in the manual. It is probably about 20W or 2A draw, but worth checking.


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## maingate (Jul 14, 2010)

We have just had a very severe winter and if you did not keep yout batteries charged up during the cold spell, they could have been affected.

Pop in to a battery dealer (National Tyres, Kwikfit etc.) and they can test them for you.


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