The Big Lorry to Camper Conversion

If you need other things to be “on all the time”. then a low quiescent current inverter route could be a good option but you would need hefty solar / battery bank to keep up.
See this for detail on how to work that out

 
MANGOFORTH said:
Bump on the fridge ?
Click to expand...
tacr2man said:
Should get it cheaper if damaged ! :)

probably work OK it is expensive compared with 220v on the plus side saves having to run an inverter
Click to expand...
HandyAndy said:
Remove bump, win win.
But to be fair if you go on to inlanders own website and look at the ‘about us’ section it says they deal in seconds and refurbished models or words to that effect, so £650 doesn’t sound so cheap now ?
Click to expand...

I 'suspect' the fridge bump was to bring the posting/query back up so someone else would comment on it, not that it actually HAS a bump! :giggle:
 
Well currently in the arsenal we have....

620w of solar
60a solar charger

With the intention to buy

1kw silent generator
460ah of Agm batterys
The Combi charger inverter from that video which is 2500w/80a

So I'm hoping we should be able to run fairly self sufficiently. Unsure weather to go for petrol genny and convert to LPG or diesel genny and run off a 2 stroke mix of reds and kerosene.....

I don't want to be dependent on a plug in, that's my goal.

Appliance wise

TV and xbox (we use Netflix ect via xbox)
Phone chargers
Fridge freezer
Food mixer
Potential Electric water heater (if I'm making enough juice)
Washing machine?

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You might want to re-think the AGM batteries and go for gel or even Lithium ...

www.motorhomefun.co.uk

100AH Lithium Battery £500

We picked up a new site sponsor/advertiser last week, I received the advert today. Look at that, a 100AH battery for £500 when using promo code MHFUN. (y)
www.motorhomefun.co.uk www.motorhomefun.co.uk
 
Agree with Mel, AGM's are real bad news just not suitable for leisure use.
 
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Lenny HB said:
Agree with Men, AGM' are real bad news just not suitable for leisure use.
Click to expand...
You being sexist, confused or just using predictive text? :D
 
Lenny HB said:
You are slow today already edited. Must be the effect of having a proper Motorhome.:rofl:
Click to expand...
It wasn't edited a few minutes ago so took you a while to do it grandad! :ROFLMAO:

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MANGOFORTH said:
460ah of Agm batterys
Click to expand...

Don't. Simply don't.

Gel, EFB or Lithium all have pluses and minuses but are workable solutions. AGM's are problematic to say the least because they are difficult to fully charge and deteriorate when not fully charged.
 
Last edited:
I had VRLA AGM's for 7 years of fulltiming. Was extremely happy with them.
I personally avoid Gel's because you have to be careful with charge current.

I agree that Lithium are far superior in pretty much all respects.
 
Gromett said:
I had VRLA AGM's for 7 years of fulltiming. Was extremely happy with them.
I personally avoid Gel's because you have to be careful with charge current.

I agree that Lithium are far superior in pretty much all respects.
Click to expand...
Especially price ! :)
 
Ah man, more confusion. I thought Agm were the better ones, excluding lithium which I just can't really afford.... You get 100% discharge rate though? So 460ah agm is really 230....which would cost £1k in lithium ? please argue amongst yourselves for my benifit.

??

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I've got an Odyssey PC2150 up front and a Trojan 31 AGM at the rear acting as the hab battery.
That's £700 quids worth of batteries and 200ah
The Odyssey was to support the winch as that has some criminal amp draw and the hab was for 240v inverter which mainly boiled a kettle but also powered a tv, laptop iPad charger and marquee lights when doing a show.
Both are past their best already after only three ish years.
NEVER AGAIN.
Save up for lithium, trust me it will be worth it.
 
MANGOFORTH said:
Ah man, more confusion. I thought Agm were the better ones, excluding lithium which I just can't really afford.... You get 100% discharge rate though? So 460ah agm is really 230....which would cost £1k in lithium ? please argue amongst yourselves for my benifit.

??
Click to expand...

You seem like the adventurous type :D, build your own lithium battery pack, I built my 240Ah lithium battery pack with a 120A BMS for a little over £500.

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You are going to get pages and pages of people saying AGM are crap now, you know that haha..
While yes they "can be".
If you do have a decent solar setup then they "may" be OK as that seems to be the resounding failure reason (not keeping them topped up because charger and or solar charging was inadequate.
With 620w of Solar you may offer them a better chance of survival than most..
I think you are going to need to analyse what your solar can realistically produce per day and see if the daily draw from the fridge etc is going to keep them full or not..
If that solar setup fails on paper then I would probably stay away from them TBH.
Having said that £200 odd quid vs £1k to get you moving may be easier and take it on the chin if they do fail in two years.
 
I think this probably covers the AGM issue off nicely!

AGM Batteries for Motorhomes/Caravans - Failures

Audi withdraw AGM from it's vehicles, wet technology EFB is now officially better. AGM Batteries were being heavily promoted for use in Motorhomes and Caravans, yet most of the Chargers in Motorhomes and Caravans are unsuited to AGM Batteries. Failures result
www.aandncaravanservices.co.uk
 
MANGOFORTH said:
Why?
Click to expand...

They don’t seem to have a great reputation.

One measure of the quality of a battery is its weight; the heavier they are the more lead they contain and the more durable they will be.

The pair you are looking at weigh a total of 60 Kgs:

9E82CF6C-6766-437F-96EC-BBFC772CC692.png


A pair of these Gels weigh 80 Kgs and cost, as near as damn it, the same money:
0D873CE8-2CA8-47CF-AF99-42B6EBF42025.png

For the same published Ah rating these Gels will also give you a greater effective capacity since they can be discharged to 80% depth of discharge (a real useable capacity of 176 Ah) compared with 50% DoD for the AGMs (a real useable capacity of 115 Ah).

I‘ve run these and achieved a life of 13 years out of one and the other is still going strong at 10 years old.

Ian
 
£550 quid for the AGM's - Available energy 115ah or 1472 watt hours
£500 for the AN Lithium - Available energy 100ah or 1280 watt hours

£50 less for a loss of 192 watt hours

or to put that into perspective you could power a 500w heater for
500w for 1hr is 500 Wh
500w for 30 mins is 250Wh
500w for 15 mins is 125Wh etc etc
500/192= is 2.55 so 25 mins
You could power a 500w heater for 25 mins longer on the twin AGM's but it'll cost you £50 quid more than the Lithium

Does that help show that the Lithium isn't "that" far out of the ballpark in the big scheme of things

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HandyAndy said:
£550 quid for the AGM's - Available energy 115ah or 1472 watt hours
£500 for the AN Lithium - Available energy 100ah or 1280 watt hours

£50 less for a loss of 192 watt hours

or to put that into perspective you could power a 500w heater for
500w for 1hr is 500 Wh
500w for 30 mins is 250Wh
500w for 15 mins is 125Wh etc etc
500/192= is 2.55 so 25 mins
You could power a 500w heater for 25 mins longer on the twin AGM's but it'll cost you £50 quid more than the Lithium

Does that help show that the Lithium isn't "that" far out of the ballpark in the big scheme of things
Click to expand...
and that is before you consider charge efficiency and lifespan.
 
REWIND REWIND....
IGNORE MY POST ABOVE.

Only just realised that 230ah is PER AGM I fail at reading...

Scrap my calculations (or double the AGM values and redo the figures).. If someone else wants to re write my post correctly and post it below, be my guest I'm not going through it again :D :D
 
Gromett said:

European battery storage manufacturer and distributor | GWL Group

A wholesale distributor of LiFePO4 and LTO battery cells, photovoltaic solutions, and electric car charging systems. Worldwide delivery of Industry grade batteries directly from Czech (EU) warehouse.
www.ev-power.eu www.ev-power.eu

Wissel is the man to speak to (y)
Click to expand...
Been on that website a few times when I was thinking about building my own ( got the original idea from Jehu Garcia :D
Better bang for buck came from making the battery out of second life cylindrical cells.
I spent ages calculating cost vs energy density on those winston cell on GWL power... until I started to realise they were all calculating out the same.. So it's basically pick your battery by dimensions on there, they are all "equal" cost.
 
My last van had AGM's they lasted all of 18 months. I replaced them with Gels.
Current van didn't bother with the standard fit AGM I fitted 3 Gels.
AGM's are basically starter batteries and not suitable for leisure use. The only true leisure battery is a Gel.

The only downsides of Gels is they are not keen on high current discharges but with a decent capacity/bank it won't be a problem. Charging them takes longer as they need an absorption phase of several hours to achieve a full charge.
Gels also have a very long life.

For a plain lead acid a Traction battery would be a good option but they need looking after and need regular topping up. Also most are 6v so you need a series parallel arrangement for your bank.

Cost wise cheapest option would be decent lead acid like the Varta LDF range. They get very good reports but you would need a bigger bank compared to Gels for the same usable power. Cheaper than Gels but won't last as long.

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