[Bill.upnw]

hi guys

i have a split relay and battery connected to my system, its worked fine for past 6 months, i could run my pumps off it without the engine being ran all the way down to 11.5 volts.

now the pumps are hardly working/not working at all when the volts drop to like 12.1/12.2v.   

its not any fuses, ive checked them...just wondering if its the battery that is knackered? someone mentioned about topping the battery up with deionized water...which i havnt done or checked yet but im thinking i should?

can anyone shed any light?

whats confusing me is it worked fine all the way down to 11.5vs before, now my battery fully charged goes to about 12.4v's and as it works its way down to 12.1/12.2v's its slowly but surely comming to a standstill.

[Spruce]

When the pump starts to slow down, start the engine. If the pump revives then you need to look at the battery or connections to the controller. The split charge relay is ok. (Whilst we have never had a 15 amp fuse blow on any of the vans, we did have a board burn on the relay itself for some reason.)

All of the leisure batteries we have had were/are sealed so we were/are unable to top them up with water.

When the first 'generation' of leisure batteries failed we found that they gave all the tell tale signs of being fully charged, ie right voltage after being left to stabilise, etc., but had no capacity. On my previous leisure battery, we could run both pumps for about an hour and then had to start the engine to finish the job.

[Bill.upnw]

so how often do you replace your battery then spruce?
 
another friend i spoke to suggested charging the battery with a battery charger from the mains once a week he said they never reach full charge just from a split relay....hmmmm

[Spruce]

so how often do you replace your battery then spruce?
 
another friend i spoke to suggested charging the battery with a battery charger from the mains once a week he said they never reach full charge just from a split relay....hmmmm

I went to a van mount about 6 1/2 years ago and am on my second leisure battery. The first one was orange and called Orange that I bought from a caravan outlet.
This was the one that I referred to in the previous post.

My current Leisure battery is a Numax and it is getting on to 3 1/2 years old. I don't do enough mileage to keep the battery charged so put in on charge every second or third evening, depending on it's usage that day. I can get a good idea of the battery's condition by seeing what amperage the battery is being charged at by the van's alternator. I have a Numax 10 amp intelligent battery charger that is used in the motorhome market.

My son has a Numax 85 amph and that is 3 years old as is my son in laws Numax 85 amp in his Ford Connect van. SIL does more travelling mileage to work and back (10 miles each way plus working so probably 30 miles per day) and so only needs to fully charge his battery once or twice a month.

I agree with what your mate said with regard to never fully charging a battery via a split charge relay.
My leisure battery was showing a charge of 75% of full charge about 6/7 months ago. I embarked on a journey to London in my Citroen Relay van. It took about 4 hours of driving (around 250 miles) before the leisure battery was fully charged (14.4 volts with a trickle charge of around half an amp. The initial charge rate into the leisure battery on setting off was 4.9 amps at 13.8v.)

See
http://www.cleanitup.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=187748.0

[Spruce]

Did you get your setup done by Grippatank by any chance?

[Bill.upnw]

no, its a brodex system, going to order a trickle charger i think thanks for your help spruce much appreciated

[Bill.upnw]

Hi Spruce just a little update for you mate.

I was working on sunday( ) basically the voltage before i started working was 12.6, but after about an hour and half work it just stopped pretty much so i had to switch the engine on... with the engine on the voltage was at 13.1 but it still wasnt the same, spluttering and going from good pressure to crap to nothing and repeating lol

so anyway I bought a C-tek 8 stage charger

going to put it on to charge overnight tonight.

hopefully that should sort my problem out.

[Don Kee]

Thats not a power problem i wouldnt of thought mate

If you switched the van on and the voltage shot up then your split charger is fine and the connections seem ok...

No power at the pump but getting over 13V suggests to me a pump or controller problem mate...spruce will know more though

[Spruce]

Thats not a power problem i wouldnt of thought mate

If you switched the van on and the voltage shot up then your split charger is fine and the connections seem ok...

No power at the pump but getting over 13V suggests to me a pump or controller problem mate...spruce will know more though

I found a problem with a mates system doing this. It was not only battery charge related but when we recalibrated the controller half of the problem went away.

If the battery showed 12.6v after it has stood for 4 hours then the battery wasn't fully charged. 12.7 and above is fully charged and 12.5v is 75% charged. If it showed that voltage shortly after the engine had stopped, then it would have much less charge as the voltage across the terminals would have dropped further.

We experienced a failure where the pump was cycling, but there was very little flow at the brush. I eventually tracked it down to a faulty Hozelock female stop not opening properly. It was about 4 months old and suddenly developed a problem at around dinner (lunch) time. Starting the engine made no difference to the result.

We have also had similar issues with a hose kinking on the hose reel near the inner spindle. Removing the 100m of hose and relayering it solved that problem for a bit. The final solution for that was to replace the hose as it was stretching too much.    

Our last replaced 110 amp battery was replaced as it no longer had the capacity to do a day's work. (From flat it took about a few hours before the charger reported it as fully charged.) When the pumps stopped, starting the engine revived them without any spluttering as there was more amps available from the vans alternator than the 2 pumps required.

At least getting the battery onto a good leisure battery charger is a step forward to identifying the problem.
The is another thread running at the moment where Ian Sheppard has made an excellent point with regard to performance issues we will experience if we let our batteries get too low on charge.

There are some battery manufacturers that quote some very high numbers of discharge and recharge cycles a battery is good for. It gives us the user the impression that this is a quality battery. But the small print shows that these cycles may only be from full to 80% charge and under best performance temperatures. Continually running a battery a 1/2 its full capacity will 'kill' it very quickly.

[SherwoodCleaningSe]

hi guys

i have a split relay and battery connected to my system, its worked fine for past 6 months, i could run my pumps off it without the engine being ran all the way down to 11.5 volts.

now the pumps are hardly working/not working at all when the volts drop to like 12.1/12.2v.   

its not any fuses, ive checked them...just wondering if its the battery that is knackered? someone mentioned about topping the battery up with deionized water...which i havnt done or checked yet but im thinking i should?

can anyone shed any light?

whats confusing me is it worked fine all the way down to 11.5vs before, now my battery fully charged goes to about 12.4v's and as it works its way down to 12.1/12.2v's its slowly but surely comming to a standstill.

As a battery gets older and worn out it will hold less charge and therefor loose it's charge faster.  If after charging and being left to stand it's reading below 12.7-8 it would indicate that your battery is on the way out, the lower the number the closer to the scrap yard. You are not meant to drain a leisure battery below 50% of it's charge and 11.5V would indicate it's almost empty unless it was under load at the time.  You mention that you run pumps, I've found running 2 pumps hammers the battery a lot more than just 1 pump, also some pumps draw a lot more from the battery than others.  The controller set up could also draw more from the battery if it's not calibrated properly.

I switched over to an AGM battery about 4 years ago as these are a lot more resilient to deep cycles and more suited to multiple pumps.

Simon.

[Bill.upnw]

Cheers for the input lads going to recondition the battery tonight and will report back to base thanks for everything lads

[Bill.upnw]

i defo think it must be that I haven't charged it in be 8montha ive been using it so fingers crossed that should sort it

[Bill.upnw]

cheers for the advice guys,

I ended up reconditioning the van battery and the leisure battery with a trickle charge and walaa... everythings back to normal, looks like i just needed to give the batteries a service every once in a while, not done too bad really only having to charge the leisure battery up once in 8 months...

thanks guys thanks spruce!

[Spruce]

cheers for the advice guys,

I ended up reconditioning the van battery and the leisure battery with a trickle charge and walaa... everythings back to normal, looks like i just needed to give the batteries a service every once in a while, not done too bad really only having to charge the leisure battery up once in 8 months...

thanks guys thanks spruce!

I'm glad you got it going. What's bugging me is how you have managed so long with your new van with your SCR yet Jimmi was struggling with his not charging.

[richywilts]

 changed my alternator the other day that seems to be working much better now did also change the leisure battery in the back to but i dont have to run the engine no more

[Bill.upnw]

i only started up 8 month ago spruce so its not an every day graft for me at the moment, just a couple of days a week sometimes more...so thats probably how ive lasted so long m8

ye richy i can imagine changing the alternator will do it all a world of good too...but im a tight basterd and wont fix it until it breaks hahahaha