leisure battery charging confusion

[dunnah01]

Had a bit of a mare with our pair of 105Ah lead acid leisure batteries at the start of our recent 3 week break in France.

First up the CBE PC320-RA control panel got condensation onto the ribbon cable connections to the LCD display and shorted it out so although everything works we have no display of voltage or water levels etc. No problem, except the leisure batteries seemed to have taken a nose dive and only lasted a night or so with telly on. Not normally a problem when touring and having 360W solar to recharge things in summer months, but after a couple of days of poor weather but with a few hours of driving the batteries really weren't fully charged so had to go easy on the telly viewing. Ended up on 6A hook up after a couple more days but after a night of telly and the rest just charging the batteries they were still a bit meh.
Got a bit anxious about the state of the batteries and ended up as a semi temporary measure replacing the two 4 year old lead acids with a new 110Ah AGM lead acid battery from a French battery shop which seemed to do the trick although still not totally convinced.

So the questions after all that ramble are:

a) does anybody know what the trickle charge current from a CBE DS450-RA controller is during driving?
b) does anybody know of anywhere that can repair the CBE PC320-RA panels?
c) does a 6A power supply put 50-60Ah into a battery bank in 10 hrs if not much else is being used?
d) is there a simple test to see if my old lead acids are defunct? They are both still showing around 13v after having being sat in the moho garage disconnected for a couple of weeks.

 

[Tombola]

If your leads are showing 13v after a few days they arent knackered, 12.8v + is full so are in good nick. You can add a small load to take a little out if needs be and check again.
if your charger is outputting 6 amps then yes, but you'd need to see what that puts out less any usage at the time

YOu can use a load test or even a hydrometer , but Id keep my eye on them and take volt meter readings (if your meter is OK) if any doubt try a friends or another

 

[autorouter]

does a 6A power supply put 50-60Ah into a battery bank in 10 hrs if not much else is being used?

Yes, the 6A supply is more than capable of doing that. The 6A supply is at 230V, which is 6 x 230 = 1380 watts. In 10 hours it can supply 1380 x 10 = 13800 watt-hours, equivalent to 13800 / 12 = 1150Ah at 12V. The limitation will be the battery charger, which will be a 12V charger, pushing out at least 10A, probably 20A. So it should take between 3 and 6 hours to push out 60Ah. The charger will only be using about 1A of the 6A mains supply, so enough left for the fridge and TV at least.

So you shouldn't have had any problems on the 6A hookup. Maybe the charger is playing up.

 

[GeoffnDee]

If you need it when you return You could try www.apuljackelectronics.co.uk for the repair of your faulty control panel .

 

[GeoffnDee]

Have you checked the fuse for the control panel that is on the DS450 PSU (fuse No 1 , 3amp )

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[dunnah01]

Have you checked the fuse for the control panel that is on the DS450 PSU (fuse No 1 , 3amp )

The panel occasionally worked for a few minutes if I tried to clean up the ribbon cable socket on the PCB so there is a supply there but I think the socket is too damaged and needs to be replaced. All the panel functions work except the display but I'll check the fuse just in case

 

[dunnah01]

If your leads are showing 13v after a few days they arent knackered, 12.8v + is full so are in good nick. You can add a small load to take a little out if needs be and check again.
if your charger is outputting 6 amps then yes, but you'd need to see what that puts out less any usage at the time

YOu can use a load test or even a hydrometer , but Id keep my eye on them and take volt meter readings (if your meter is OK) if any doubt try a friends or another

We're back home from our tour now and nearly unpacked so I can dig out a couple of old meters to check the one I've been using

 

[dunnah01]

We're back home from our tour now and nearly unpacked so I can dig out a couple of old meters to check the one I've been using

Tried 3 meters and all give 12.9v within 0.05v of each other so batteries look to be OK. Luckily I have a 24v cherry picker that's screaming out for a new pair of 12v batteries so I'll have to think about whether to refit them to the moho or fit them in the cherry picker

Just leaves the damaged control panel to sort out. Problem now is that we full time so can't just send the panel off for repair. Most CBE DS450 distribution boxes seem to have either an SOS fuse or switch but ours doesn't. A solution might be to hot wire the 6 wire cable from the distribution box to the control panel but I can't find any wiring diagram for CBE unit. Hey Ho - looks like it's out with the voltmeter and a game of chase the wires

 

[Guigsy]

If batteries are tired, particularly if they've been deeply discharged too often, you may find that they hold a good voltage. But they'll have lost a lot of capacity and will sag pretty hard if put under load.