adding a 2nd leshire battery

[teamb]

Hi, Im running a ford flair camper. it came with the nornal battery for running the engine and so on and also has a leshire battery. i want to add a 3rd battery to the system because i use a power hungry laptop and would like to be able to use it more often while out on the road at days at a time. it doesn't take to long to run the leshire batt down with the laptop running. any one here can give some advice on this subject. thanks for replies.

Andy.

 

[n brown]

if you need 2 leisure batts better to buy 2 new ones than add just one, also the bigger the battery capacity the longer it takes to charge.2 x 115ah is usually ok.join them positive-positive neg-neg

 

[teamb]

Ok, thanks for your info about the batts. shouldn't there be some kind of a device that protects the leishire batt from over charging. if there isn't one on my van spose it would be a good idea to buy one and have it fitted along with two knew leishire batts. currently my one single leishire batterey starts on a full charge on the mains at home. but after being on the road for 3-4 days it runs down to point that the inteior strip lights fail to light up. i run a car dvd player thats low wattage for about an hours 2 or 3 times a week and have the inteior lights on for an hour each night. i drive four an hour or two each day so I thought the leshire batt would have been refilled with electric after driving but im begining to think either the leishire bat has seen better days or there not enough charged getting though to it. the main van bat works fine and is always fully charged but me leish batt is letting me down. thinking about going to halfored and seeing what there prices are on a knew leshire batt.

 

[Squibby]

more info

I have been asking the same questions so if you type squibby into the search box it will come up with my thread on leisure batteries and there is more info there from our fellow members.

Hope this helps you.

Squibby.

 

[teamb]

Hi Sqibby, thanks for that. the info given to you by the other member is just what i needed to know. I just bought one 75 amp hour lesh batt from go out doors for £34 pound was £80 and they only have a few left and think i shall buy another one cause as the other member said in his post to you. its best to buy two batt's from the same batch. i no 75 ah isn't much but combined the two should give me plenty of time running a laptop as i often need to do, and as long as i keep an eye on that volt meter by not allowing the batts to run down too empty and by keeping them prity much toped up i reckon they should have a good life span cause recharging a 75ah is't going to strain the altinator as much it would a 120ah.

I went to halfords and found there own brand 75ah lesh batt was 95 quid and there 120ah was 140 quid. i dunno if the go out doors batt have the same quaility but only time will tell. go out doors 120ah is 99 quid. and as i said both batts they had on offer the 120,75ah where pritty much sold out when i went there to buy one.

 

[MOS]

Hi Teamb
putting two 75 ah batteries on will make your laptop run longer but thy will also take longer to charge 75+75= 150 ah ,if you add batteries to the circuit you must add the amp hour's together ,two 75's dont charge as a75 they charge as a 150 ah battery .large battery banks hold more power but take more recharging .depending on how they are charged( ie) if you have a split charge relay the batteries will charge at the rate the alternator puts out .if you have a diode in the charge circuit for the domestic batteries then the domestic batteries will charge at a lesser rate due to the voltage drop through the diode ,this is a small voltage drop but has a big effect on the charge rate ,and the overall eventual charge level especialy on short jurneys (a battery bank will only take about 20% of its capacity as a charge )as a rule of thumb .so firstly i would find out how your domestics are charged and if its on a diode consider a relay instead (it helps ) my roma home has a diode and im'e just about to change it (personal preference )
hope this helps MOS

 

[teamb]

Hi Just want to say thanks so much for all your replys on my subect. have fitted a knew 75ah lesh batt and also fitted a knew relay. leshire bat know charges at 13.98v where as before it was only getting a low charge or nothing. i seem to be able to run my laptop for ages know just off the one battery. great n thanks to you all that you helped me fix it.

 

[Bigpeetee]

If you're using an inverter to power your laptop, that's using more power, look around Ebay for a 12v in laptop charger.

Change your lighting to LED and save a load more power.

It's often better to reduce the power requirements than add another battery, especially as you seem to be topping the batt up by regular journeys.

I found that if you leave the TV on standby, it uses about 6W of power, or about half an Amp, so will drastically reduce the life of your batt. I put a switch in line with the 12v powering the TV & Satellite so that when it's off, there's no power drain.

If there's a fuse to the leisure battery, take it out and get a cheap multimeter, put the red lead into the 10A hole, black stays where it is and set to 10A DC, put the leads where the fuse was, it will now show the current in and out of your leisure batt, if it shows a + current when the engine is stopped, then you have the leads the wrong way round!!

When you start the engine, you can see how many amps you are putting back into the leisure batt. Same on hookup, you can see the batt charging.

As you turn things on, you can see the current being taken from the batt, and see how much power each item is taking