solar panel charging van battery

[oldish hippy]

I have a ctek 250 ,From what iread it should top up van battery.It does not and never has .Now the question if I remove the leisure battery connection and put the van battery on that and nothing else it will charge van battery {Not driving a lot at moment got medical problem} could I leave it on all the time and drive with it on the contact ?.

 

[st3v3]

You could run a temporary link between the two batteries, fused at both ends. Just unclip it before starting up. Maybe run it through the steering wheel as a reminder...

I wonder if it might be good to disconnect the engine batt from the ctek though, to stop a loop.

 

[TJBi]

I have a ctek 250 ,From what iread it should top up van battery.It does not and never has .Now the question if I remove the leisure battery connection and put the van battery on that and nothing else it will charge van battery {Not driving a lot at moment got medical problem} could I leave it on all the time and drive with it on the contact ?.

I have a CTEK D250SE. That is designed to top up the starter battery from a solar panel if the D250SE acts as solar charge controller. If you have a separate solar charge controller it is unlikely to do so.
I also have a CTEK SMARTPASS120S. That is designed to top up the starter battery from the habitation battery and I have found that it does so.

 

[merl]

I have a ctek 250 ,From what iread it should top up van battery.It does not and never has .Now the question if I remove the leisure battery connection and put the van battery on that and nothing else it will charge van battery {Not driving a lot at moment got medical problem} could I leave it on all the time and drive with it on the contact ?.

Assuming you have a solar panel connected to the ctek then yes, moving the cab battery onto the hab output of the ctek it will now put power into your cab bat instead providing you have sun of course. This time of year it should keep the cab batt topped up and keep up with any drain from alarm etc.
If you're leaving the van static for a long period you need to consider any quescent loads that will drain the battery NOT connected to the charger, with this in mind I'd make sure the hab battery is fully charged and then disconnect it altogether at its main terminal and swap it back in every few weeks when it's sunny just to keep it fully topped up.
Letting lead acid batteries sit at a discharged level is a killer.

 

[Chrisinchip]

Although a pain in the @rse, it could be important to know why the Ctek 250 isn’t charging the van battery. A couple of areas to check:

a) if the solar panel isn’t connected through the Ctek 250 then it won’t trickle charge the van battery. Swapping its battery connections won’t help either. Instead you’d need to investigate redirecting the solar controller that is actually connected to your solar panel.

b) the Ctek 250 starts trickle charging the van battery when it detects the leisure battery (LB) is fully charged. I don’t know the exact threshold it uses but wonder if this is not being met either because the LB is old, battery type/profile is set incorrectly in the Ctek, or there is a background drain on the LB. It would be good to fix any of these issues.

Some general considerations:

If your van battery and LB are different types then you may need to change the settings in the Ctek if you swap it’s connections.

There have been several evolutions of the Ctek 250 (S to SA to SE). I don’t know if this reverse charging feature was introduced more recently so if yours is an older version it might be worth checking.

Sorry I have only given pointers for further investigation I would do next and no actual solutions. I don’t actually own a Ctek 250SE but nearly did so relying on the theoreticals I picked up at the time.

Good luck!