[P @ F]

Back to the old way of things  ,  have been using the van starter battery to power pump and diesel heater for nearly a year now  , but it’s bitten my arse twice in the last month .
Has still been running heater and pump but didn’t want to start the van .
Don’t think the alternator and solar could keep up with demand , was using a Numax XV24MF at 86 amp , just not enough of a power bank , more so now it’s no longer solar season !
Have now got this bad boy to run the heater and pump whilst leaving the XV24MF as the van battery .
I will connect the solar to the new battery but also charge at night , not what I wanted but hey ho !

[P @ F]

Went to fit the battery a while back and then realised that all the wiring was at the front of the van  due to using my starter battery   
Oh well , looks like a complete rewire  tomorrow then !
On the upside my wire runs will be heck of a lot shorter, which will mean less volt and amp drop through the system 

[Spruce]

TBH I'm a bit disappointed that your Numax didn't last longer as a starter and leisure battery combination.

I need to order a new starter battery for my van and was going to go down the route of a dual purpose battery as you did. But now you have found it hasn't lasted as I would have thought it would have,  I'm now having second thoughts.

I'm wondering why.  My old Citroen Relay pushed out 14.6v from the alternator. The maximum charge voltage they recommend for a sealed (maintenance free) leisure battery is 14.2v. Its all about gassing.
My current Peugeot Boxer charges at a maximum of 13.9v. I've just had to have a new alternator fitted and that's also charging at 13.9v.

I've been runing this Boxer since June. I also added a Sterling battery to battery charge to replace the voltage sensing relay I used on the Citroen. Even with low daily mileage the B2B charger has kept the leisure battery fully charged according to my Victron battery monitor.

I have noticed that the battery is now more fully charged with the B2B charger. It often sits over a weekend with a voltage reading of 13 volts where the same battery only charged to 12.8 v occasionally. But even at 12.8 volts the monitor still records the battery at 100% charged, but the B2B charger will still push 6 amps into that full battery.

 

[RPCCS]

Back to the old way of things  ,  have been using the van starter battery to power pump and diesel heater for nearly a year now  , but it’s bitten my arse twice in the last month .
Has still been running heater and pump but didn’t want to start the van .
Don’t think the alternator and solar could keep up with demand , was using a Numax XV24MF at 86 amp , just not enough of a power bank , more so now it’s no longer solar season !
Have now got this bad boy to run the heater and pump whilst leaving the XV24MF as the van battery .
I will connect the solar to the new battery but also charge at night , not what I wanted but hey ho !

instead of charging each night, fit a split charge relay to charge the pump battery while the alternator is running. 4 wires needed, One from ignition live, one from van battery live, one to body earth and one to pump battery. Run an earth from pump battery to body earth, this completes the circuit.
I posted a wiring diagram/ code on another thread in this section.

[P @ F]

I can’t help but think that the battery was tricked into thinking it was full when it wasn’t, with this going on over the almost year I reckon that the memory was damaged .
The alternator was charging at 14.2 all the time , but alongside this I had the MPPT doing it’s bit as well , I wonder if the alternator got tricked into thinking the battery was full and cut back the charge , maybe the solar was doing the same ?
Whenever the engine was running it told me I was in absorb or float , the minute it was switched off it jumped to bulk .
Maybe the way to make the most would have been to flick the solar off whilst the engine was running and to flick it on whilst working , would this have stopped any conflict of the two charging sources ?
On Thursday I got home with float on the VictronConnect app , I let the battery rest and then put the mains charge on it , it didn’t register as charged for over 4 hours !

Question Spuce , what charger would you recommend for my 31MF

I put my halfords advanced jobbie on it when I got it home from the shop with it set on sealed setting and it didn’t register as charged even after 5 hours, I then switched to standard and within 10 minutes it hopped to maintain charge ?

[P @ F]

Back to the old way of things  ,  have been using the van starter battery to power pump and diesel heater for nearly a year now  , but it’s bitten my arse twice in the last month .
Has still been running heater and pump but didn’t want to start the van .
Don’t think the alternator and solar could keep up with demand , was using a Numax XV24MF at 86 amp , just not enough of a power bank , more so now it’s no longer solar season !
Have now got this bad boy to run the heater and pump whilst leaving the XV24MF as the van battery .
I will connect the solar to the new battery but also charge at night , not what I wanted but hey ho !

instead of charging each night, fit a split charge relay to charge the pump battery while the alternator is running. 4 wires needed, One from ignition live, one from van battery live, one to body earth and one to pump battery. Run an earth from pump battery to body earth, this completes the circuit.
I posted a wiring diagram/ code on another thread in this section.

I thought about a Durite SCR to connect my 2 bats but I am of the belief that my 10 mile journey each way to and from my area just isn’t enough to harvest the 30 amps I use each day ?

[P @ F]

Maybe the sterling b2b is for me also then 

[RPCCS]

Back to the old way of things  ,  have been using the van starter battery to power pump and diesel heater for nearly a year now  , but it’s bitten my arse twice in the last month .
Has still been running heater and pump but didn’t want to start the van .
Don’t think the alternator and solar could keep up with demand , was using a Numax XV24MF at 86 amp , just not enough of a power bank , more so now it’s no longer solar season !
Have now got this bad boy to run the heater and pump whilst leaving the XV24MF as the van battery .
I will connect the solar to the new battery but also charge at night , not what I wanted but hey ho !

instead of charging each night, fit a split charge relay to charge the pump battery while the alternator is running. 4 wires needed, One from ignition live, one from van battery live, one to body earth and one to pump battery. Run an earth from pump battery to body earth, this completes the circuit.
I posted a wiring diagram/ code on another thread in this section.

I do 10 miles  to one area, 8 to another and 15 to a third area, so should be ok

I thought about a Durite SCR to connect my 2 bats but I am of the belief that my 10 mile journey each way to and from my area just isn’t enough to harvest the 30 amps I use each day ?

[P @ F]

I see no reply  , only my quote 

[Spruce]

I have used that Numax 10 amp smart charger for motor homes for 12 years now and its done the job. As I've mentioned before, I've fitted 2 replacement cooling fans and a new supply cable.

https://www.tayna.co.uk/battery-chargers/numax/leisure-12v-10a/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkbOVjdOo5QIVj0PTCh3ziwZXEAQYASABEgJBs_D_BwE

The trouble is that your 10 mile commute each way could be a short as 10 minutes each way if you are doing 60mph on the motorway.  If you were travelling at 30mph the alternator will have twice as long to charge it.

Unfortunately alternators aren't good battery chargers. My feeling with my current experience is that if you are going to spend money on a Durite SCR I would rather put it toward a Sterling bb1230.
But you might still need to give it a boost charge ocassionally.
 

[Den68]

Another alternative is the ring b2b and also mppt solar controller seems you have solar panels.

https://www.splitcharge.co.uk/product/rscdc30-ring-battery-to-battery-charger-30-amp-with-mppt-controller/

[P @ F]

I have used that Numax 10 amp smart charger for motor homes for 12 years now and its done the job. As I've mentioned before, I've fitted 2 replacement cooling fans and a new supply cable.

https://www.tayna.co.uk/battery-chargers/numax/leisure-12v-10a/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkbOVjdOo5QIVj0PTCh3ziwZXEAQYASABEgJBs_D_BwE

The trouble is that your 10 mile commute each way could be a short as 10 minutes each way if you are doing 60mph on the motorway.  If you were travelling at 30mph the alternator will have twice as long to charge it.

Unfortunately alternators aren't good battery chargers. My feeling with my current experience is that if you are going to spend money on a Durite SCR I would rather put it toward a Sterling bb1230.
But you might still need to give it a boost charge ocassionally.

That is exactly the charger I was looking at Spruce !
I will see how the present one fares first , it might be alright ?

[P @ F]

Another alternative is the ring b2b and also mppt solar controller seems you have solar panels.

https://www.splitcharge.co.uk/product/rscdc30-ring-battery-to-battery-charger-30-amp-with-mppt-controller/

I already have a good quality Victron MPPT unit with dongle and app

[P @ F]

OK , van fully rewired today , about 6 metres of wiring has been done away with .
The starter battery is back to a stand alone item , the heater and pump are now  separately fused but linked together through a power analyser.
Previously the pump fed from the load output on the MPPT and the heater fed direct from the van starter battery .
Now I will see what goes into the new 105 Amp Numax in total  via solar setup and what goes out in total  via power analyser , it should be very straightforward to assess what is missing Amp wise from the battery .
For once today I have seen how effective the MPPT is without the load being used , this before did confuse things a bit !
At on point today 0.5 Amp was coming off the panels but 1.5 Amp was going into the battery due to the converted over voltage , maybe I should have setup like this originally 12 months ago !

[dazmond]

I have used that Numax 10 amp smart charger for motor homes for 12 years now and its done the job. As I've mentioned before, I've fitted 2 replacement cooling fans and a new supply cable.

https://www.tayna.co.uk/battery-chargers/numax/leisure-12v-10a/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkbOVjdOo5QIVj0PTCh3ziwZXEAQYASABEgJBs_D_BwE

The trouble is that your 10 mile commute each way could be a short as 10 minutes each way if you are doing 60mph on the motorway.  If you were travelling at 30mph the alternator will have twice as long to charge it.

Unfortunately alternators aren't good battery chargers. My feeling with my current experience is that if you are going to spend money on a Durite SCR I would rather put it toward a Sterling bb1230.
But you might still need to give it a boost charge ocassionally.

That is exactly the charger I was looking at Spruce !
I will see how the present one fares first , it might be alright ?

I've got the same one.....but mines the 20amp version....great battery chargers...

[P @ F]

Daz did Grippa supply the charger ?
You have a 210 Amp power bank and I recall that a charge rate of 10% is ideally what’s needed ?
So I should only need the 10 Amp model I assume ?

[dazmond]

Daz did Grippa supply the charger ?
You have a 210 Amp power bank and I recall that a charge rate of 10% is ideally what’s needed ?
So I should only need the 10 Amp model I assume ?

Yep a 10 amp should be fine.......I was recommended to buy the 20 amp due to 2 batteries richy...

[Spruce]

The only way to test a leisure battery's state of charge is with a volt meter across the terminals after the battery has remained dormant for around 4 hours. This is enough time to let the voltage stabilize.

A fully charged leisure battery will be from 12.7v or above.

As I've mentioned earlier, this raises an interesting question? How full is fully charged? I read many years ago in my naivety of battery charging that a leisure battery needs a special intelligent battery charger  over a standard starter battery charger as its capable putting more charge into the leisure battery.

My experience using this Numax has been positive when compared to the 3 years prior to that charging my battery with a standard charger. My current battery is nearly 5 years old. So despite the fact that my Sterling B2B charger can push a further 0.3 volts of charge into it, I haven't had an issue previously at all.  Each battery I've had in the van since purchasing this Numax charger has lasted 3 years and over.

As you rightly say, Numax said in a text to me many years ago that ideally a leisure battery should only be recharged at 10% of its capacity.
This Sterling unit destroys this advice as I've seen it pumping in 38 amps for a short period after a hard day's use.
 

[P @ F]

So if this 10% advice has been taken out of the equation then it shouldn’t make any difference what setting I use on my charger should it ?
Sealed states secondary as 3.7 Amps
Standard secondary as 5.0 Amps

[Spruce]

So if this 10% advice has been taken out of the equation then it shouldn’t make any difference what setting I use on my charger should it ?
Sealed states secondary as 3.7 Amps
Standard secondary as 5.0 Amps

No. Its the charging voltage that matters. Sealed (maintenance free) = 14.2v
Open = 14.6 v