This indicates to me, your batteries are fine and recovered to almost 80% of their total capacity. As I said earlier, it's virtualy impossible to get a true reading of battery state when there is a load on it. Can you recall how many hours your heater, TV, lights etc., was in use. Also, the shutdown by the Sargent system is there to protect your batteries and now you know this works fine. I attach for your information the Amp usage readings of my key Habitation services. You are well advised to do something similar so you have a better understanding of what is going on in your motorhome.
| Fridge (on gas) | 0.4 | 420 |
| Bedroom LED Lights | 1.3 | 161.5 |
| Bathroom LED Lights | 0.8 | 233.3 |
| Kitchen LED Lights | 0.9 | 210 |
| Habitation LED lights | 1.0 | 190.9 |
| Outside Door Light | 1.1 | 190.9 |
| All LED LIghts | 2.9 | 70 |
| Webasto Hot Water start up | 6.0 - 15.6 | For first 90 seconds |
| Webasto Hot Water running Webasto Heater running | 1.3 8.0 -12.0 | |
| Avtex TV | 3.5 | |
| Bedroom TV | 1.6 | |
| Toothbrush through Inverter | 0.7 | |
| Laptop through Inverter | 2.1 | |
| Phone charger through Inverter | 0.9 | |
| 12 Volt vacuum cleaner through Inverter | 1.1 | |
| 12 Volt phone/tablet | 0.3 | |
| Primus system | 1.5 | |
| 12 Volt Dyson through Inverter | 1.9 |
These are new/ish batteries. Sulphation is unlikely to be an issue.
Usually yes but ageing can be seriously accelerated by over discharge or under charging. Perhaps they sat neglected in a warehouse at 10.5 volts for weeks, that could do it. I guess the only way to be sure would be to fully charge them and apply a known load to them and measure the time taken for the voltage to drop. I would be inclined to separate them first. Not easy when you are on holiday.
The only problem with your premise is the term 'if' a nd ' perhaps'.
It's Amps used, not volt's and is only applicable to my motorhome.
Again I agree with you but the symptoms fit and I would have thought it was something to check out if the problem remains unsolved.
I'm intrigued to know how you will test them ????
For future use I would advise you not to let your batteries fall below 12.06 V which is 50% and Ideally not below 12.42 V. which is 80%. (Recommended practice is to never let a battery fall below 50% of its D.O.D and ideally do not discharge more than 20%). Although you had a reading of 11.9 V. its more than likely you never fell below 12.06 V (as stated before you cant accurately measure battery state with a load on it and when your batteries were allowed to recover they came back to 12. 4 V). I'm wholly satisfied that your batteries are performing correctly and the fact they recovered from 11.9 V. to 12. 4 V. overnight suggests to me they are in good health. I am unable to understand why fully charged batteries would only last for four hours and the only sense I can make of it, is you were drawing a lot more than 7 Amps. (you have 2 x 100 AH batteries and used 28 Amps meaning 172 AH remaining and 50% of this would mean 86 AH left.
That doesn't sound too bad. Certainly good enough that I wouldn't worry now until you get home. I don't know how accurate the Sargent display is - an error of even 0.1V is significant in this context.
Make sure the battery is fully charged, check the voltage. Attach and run something with a known load like a 21watt bulb and check how long it takes to drop to the 50%/12.06v level. 21watts divide by 12v = 1.75A, 50Ah divide by 1.75A = 28 hours. You could use something a bit more power hungry than a 21w bulb to speed up the test, the sums would be similar. Do not do the drop test favoured by some garages, this is for engine start batteries and would damage a proper leisure battery.
If you take them to a garage and they put a meter on them (what kind of a meter ?) IMO it will be a waste of effort and time on your part. Assuming they put a volt meter on them, all this will tell them is the charge state. (You could do this yourself without taking the batteries out. If they do a cold cranking test (CC test) they will be doing a test that is used for starter batteries and not leisure batteries. (A very poor leisure battery will pass a CC test) ( Although there is a national and international standard for a starter battery, there is no such standard for a leisure battery and the battery industry takes full advantage of this by many, resulting in the production of crap batteries and calling them leisure batteries when in fact they are just cheap starter batteries. However, that is a subject for another discussion). (are you getting the impression that the whole subject matter of leisure batteries is becoming a minefield
) ( Welcome to the world of motorhoming).
Yes perfectly possible, voltages alone can be very deceptive.
If you take them to a garage and they put a meter on them (what kind of a meter ?) IMO it will be a waste of effort and time on your part. Assuming they put a volt meter on them, all this will tell them is the charge state. (You could do this yourself without taking the batteries out. If they do a cold cranking test (CC test) they will be doing a test that is used for starter batteries and not leisure batteries. (A very poor leisure battery will pass a CC test) ( Although there is a national and international standard for a starter battery, there is no such standard for a leisure battery and the battery industry takes full advantage of this by many, resulting in the production of crap batteries and calling them leisure batteries when in fact they are just cheap starter batteries. However, that is a subject for another discussion). (are you getting the impression that the whole subject matter of leisure batteries is becoming a minefield
It is ! This extra information about there usage may throw a bit more light on your issue. It would appear they are well used. Out of interest, how much solar power do you have and can you tell me what leisure batteries you have. (Did I read earlier on that you had 2 Banner lead acid batteries ? if so, that will 200 cycles at 50% D.O.D). If you have been doing a shed load of days out and not using Hook Up, the amount of Solar Power (S.P.) you have is going to be important and the amount of good daylight they will be exposed too ? Assuming you have more power coming from your panels than your using during in daylight hours then your leisure batteries will not be loosing any power and more importantly not cycling. At night, they will be using power and therefore cycling. The amount of Cycling will depend on how far they are discharged. (if you discharge by 50% and then fully charge again, this is one cycle. After 200 cycles they die no matter how much charge you put into them after that point). The drop test referred to above by Pausim will help you establish how healthy your Batteries are. Unfortunately, it wont tell you how much life is left in them as you can still fully charge a leisure battery that has very little capacity left.
It also says it is dual purpose, which probably means it does neither job particularly well.
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