Caravan battery
 

As per the title I think my 8 year old 110ah battery on my 2018 Swift Conqueror caravan is on the way out.

The van is at home and normally connected to the mains. I thought it would be good idea to switch the mains charger off and use the solar panel.

The solar panel did not charge the battery. Two lengthy calls to Sargent and the technician I spoke to said that I need to remove the control module and disconnect the panel and reconnect it. Did this but found that the panel was not connected. Plugged it back in and the solar panel was giving good output even on a cloudy day.

However the battery will fully charge during the day from the solar panel showing 13.3v on a float charge.

With everything switched off this drops to about 11v overnight. This does not bode well if we ever went off grid for a night with lights tv etc running off the battery.

The only thing that is running is the fridge, on mains hook up, which is used to supplement the house fridge. It should not use the battery but once the battery was down to 10.2v and I opened the fridge and it immediately alarmed and tried to go to gas. I switched the mains charger on and it immediately went back to mains.

Thank you for reading the whole saga but if anyone has any thoughts on what more I can do to test the battery.

Also does anyone have any recommendation for a replacement? And has anyone tried a Lithium ion battery?

Halfords batteries are very good. I bought a 100ah class B battery last year to replace my 10 year old battery.

From experience, if any battery appears to charge to good health quickly then loses resting voltage quickly, the battery is long past its best and needs replacing.

Thanks for the replies I will start the quest for a replacement.

To be fair, at 8 years, it's not done too badly.

I've bought a few batteries in the past 3 months - for other people whose cars had been laid up during lock down and I've consistently found Tayna batteries to be excellent in terms of service and price.

I was using 2 of these for a solar power installation at our small holding and they've worked very well for 3 years :

https://www.tayna.co.uk/leisure-batteries/numax/xv31mf/

Thanks for the reply, the last battery came from Tanya so I will probably go back to them again, certainly to have a look at what they can offer.

It is widely rumoured that Halfords batteries are made by Tanya - partly why i bought one.

I think Tayna are a retailer, not a manufacturer. A lot of their label batteries are made by AtlasBX in Korea under different brand names.

Halfords "Advance" batteries are reputedly made by Yuasa.

I run 2 caravans and 3 batteries.
Both vans are barn stored but unfortunatly no power available. 3 batteries enables me to always keep the batteries in use charged by rotating the spare.

I bought 130Ah leisure batteries on line, the last one on boxing day in their sale, £84 sale price. The same battery had cost me £100 in August.

When I bought a new van I kept the old one for the daughter who lives abroad to use when she and the family are home.

Paul.

Thanks for the latest info guys. Still looking at the batteries available. I was hoping to save some weight on my new battery, current one is 19 kg but looks like any new 110ah one will be heavier unless I Win the lottery and go for a Li-ion one.