Leisure battery charger issues

[oxocube]

Hey everyone. Hope you’re all enjoying the sun!

I had a sterling power battery charger fitted with a leisure battery by a camper conversion company. Issue is I only have a t6 and this thing fan I swear could create electricity. It’s very noisy, too noisy for my little van. I used to have a t4 and my leisure battery had a trickle charger than didn’t make a noise! I don’t know why the company fitted this beast as it’s for a super boat!
Does anyone know how I can quieten it down or would anyone be interested in buying it off me cheaper than from new. And can someone please help me with which one I’m supposed to get. I would have also have liked the battery to go under my drivers seat but the company said they couldn’t do that. I only use my battery for my fridge and charging my phone and rarely stay anywhere longer than a day so don’t need an epic charge on the battery anyway.
Cheers for reading!

Emma

 

[QFour]

We have a Schaudt unit that works really well. It's a fraction of the size. It's all to do with Euro6 engines and Smart Alternators. Looks like the installer had shares in a copper mine.

Schaudt WA 121525 | Caravan Solar Panel Kits & Chargers

www.mysolarshop.co.uk

 

[trevskoda]

Why do you require a charger as there is one under the hood called an alternator, all required is a 200ah relay and a switch so to disconect when not running the engine so you wont drag the starter battery down, if you require a on board mains charger then a £20 10 0r 20 ah unit will do.

 

[Canalsman]

There is an option to set the B2B to half-power mode permanently. This will make it quieter.

The method is described on page 9 of the instructions.

I'd tried that first to see if that's an acceptable option.

 

[QFour]

Why do you require a charger as there is one under the hood called an alternator, all required is a 200ah relay and a switch so to disconect when not running the engine so you wont drag the starter battery down, if you require a on board mains charger then a £20 10 0r 20 ah unit will do.View attachment 110357View attachment 110358View attachment 110359View attachment 110360

Lot of this doesn't work with Euro 6 engines. If it thinks the engine battery is fully charged the alternator stops charging. The Schaudt unit fools the alternator and gets it to keep charging.

 

[Derekoak]

Lot of this doesn't work with Euro 6 engines. If it thinks the engine battery is fully charged the alternator stops charging. The Schaudt unit fools the alternator and gets it to keep charging.

That idea works fine with my euro 6 doblo. Perhaps it is OK because of my lithium. Split charging with lead leisure battery mostly does not get 100% charge as the alternator backs off due to the starter being hotter and closer.

 

[oxocube]

Thanks for all your replies!

 

[Thistle]

The Sterling BB1230 is a superb bit of kit.
The one you have is their least powerful version, absolutely perfect for 1-200Ah battery banks.

The fans (not sure if this model has one or two) should only run if the charger has been working flat out for some time as it is triggered by temperature on the devices internal heatsink. They also will continue to run on for a few minutes once the engines stopped.

This timeout can be changed in the settings menu.
I think three minutes is the default.

Therefore is the fans are coming on it usually means the batteries pretty heavily discharged and is drawing the max current the charger can provide.

If the fans running constantly even when only trickle charging the battery then there could be a fault with the unit.

A known problem with the 60A version (which has two fans) was a trapped black wire from one or both of the fan to the heatsink it’s screwed to. This can cause the fans to run constantly easy to dismantle the unit and check.

The menu options as mentioned previously allows for setting the unit permanently to 50% and they also have a night mode, so I would recommend experimenting first before getting rid of a superb bit of kit.

Lastly I am a bit shocked any cough… ‘professional’ would wire it up with over length coiled cables, it’s bad practice to do so, fortunately there’s probably not enough current flowing to create much of an electromagnet or generate a great deal of heat in the coils but it would have only taken a few minutes to shorten and reterminate the cables properly and it would have looked a lot neater.

 

[trevskoda]

Lot of this doesn't work with Euro 6 engines. If it thinks the engine battery is fully charged the alternator stops charging. The Schaudt unit fools the alternator and gets it to keep charging.

When you connect all the batts together its seen as one big one and the alt does charge them, there is also a kit to get more power from smart alts.

 

[oxocube]

The Sterling BB1230 is a superb bit of kit.
The one you have is their least powerful version, absolutely perfect for 1-200Ah battery banks.

The fans (not sure if this model has one or two) should only run if the charger has been working flat out for some time as it is triggered by temperature on the devices internal heatsink. They also will continue to run on for a few minutes once the engines stopped.

This timeout can be changed in the settings menu.
I think three minutes is the default.

Therefore is the fans are coming on it usually means the batteries pretty heavily discharged and is drawing the max current the charger can provide.

If the fans running constantly even when only trickle charging the battery then there could be a fault with the unit.

A known problem with the 60A version (which has two fans) was a trapped black wire from one or both of the fan to the heatsink it’s screwed to. This can cause the fans to run constantly easy to dismantle the unit and check.

The menu options as mentioned previously allows for setting the unit permanently to 50% and they also have a night mode, so I would recommend experimenting first before getting rid of a superb bit of kit.

Lastly I am a bit shocked any cough… ‘professional’ would wire it up with over length coiled cables, it’s bad practice to do so, fortunately there’s probably not enough current flowing to create much of an electromagnet or generate a great deal of heat in the coils but it would have only taken a few minutes to shorten and reterminate the cables properly and it would have looked a lot neater.

Hi Thistle sorry for the late response, I’ve only just seen your comment! The fan runs even when the main switch to the fridge is off so the leisure battery isn’t being used at all. I did think maybe it was a heat situation but as I haven’t been away yet and therefore not used the fridge, I don’t see why the B2B would be running hot.
The cables are over length due to us not having the kitchen unit built, we can’t make our minds up so they left us some wiggle room if we wanted to move the battery.
But good to know we should shorten if we don’t move it around.

I’m not used to electrical things and I’m always worried about getting a shock. If I look into this charging unit to see if there is any issue with the black wire, is there any chance of a shock?

Cheers
Emma

 

[Thistle]

Are the fans in the b2b running constantly albeit perhaps a bit erratically?
Mine were and hence why I knew something was wrong.
The emphasis is on constantly virtually as soon as the engine was started irrespective of the battery state of charge

Correct behaviour is fans are off until the units electronics begins to get hot.
They are then switched on and off by an internal thermostat.
The heat is directly related to the batteries state of charge I.e. the amount of work the b2b was doing

If yours are behaving correctly then there has to be a reason why the unit is getting hot enough to turn them on. The mostly likely being that the batteries are discharged enough for the b2b to be working flat out long enough to turn them on.

If you are able to verify with certainty the batteries are fully charged and the fans are still running constantly then the unit may be faulty or you have the trapped wire mine had.

It is easy enough to dismantle the unit by removing the back cover and check but best done by someone that understands what they are looking for.

 

[colinm]

I only use my battery for my fridge and charging my phone and rarely stay anywhere longer than a day so don’t need an epic charge on the battery anyway.

I'll leave the issue of fans to those who know unit better, but would note that a 12v fridge takes quite a bit of power.

 

[oxocube]

Update - switching to half power has stopped the loud fan noise, hurrah! I have another query I hope you guys can help with.

I'd like to add some components to the switch box but I'm scared of electric shock. The garage that fitted the leisure battery didn't fit a kill switch to stop all electricity going to the switch box, so in order to add more things ie: LED fairy lights, can I remove some wiring to stop a potential shock or can I just go ahead and plug the spade connector into the back of the switch box? Also looking at the back it doesn't have a terminal strip to add extra negative feeds. Will I need to add one? As currently only one switch is live on the box so they fed that to a single block. Photos attached to help show whats currently going on.