AGM battery

[freeflow]

Hi

We got an Adria coral 680sl 2006 motor home with a Schaudt EBL 226 which has two charge settings, lead-acid and lead gel, can somebody please tell me if I can fit an AGM battery and charge it with my EBL 226?

 

Thanks

[spirou]

You can, but if battery health and longevity are important to you in any way, you're better off finding a solution with appropriate AGM charging profiles or simply fit wet-acid or gel batteries.

[StuartO]

Batteries are cheaper to change that charging systems and matching leisure batteries to the existing charging profile of your MH's system is better than trying to do it the other way around.

 

There is a mountain of previous discussion on this subject if you want to dig into it, the bottom line of which is that with new lead acid technology such as Bosch/Varta Powerframe construction, it makes sense to avoid expensive gel batteries and mis-matched AGM and choose batteries such as the Varta LFD series, which will work well with the existing lead acid charging profile of your MH's EBL. The Varta LFD90 is often the size you need. LFDs are guaranteed for five years and cost only about £75; Exide G80s are still available but cost over £160 each and don't last twice as long.

 

My MH came with Exide G80 gels and the EBL was set to "gel" and that was OK but I changed to a single LFD90 when the Exides were getting old - because I have solar panels, so one battery is plenty when it gets topped up every day by those.

 

Ideally your charging system would apply a terminal float voltage of only 13.2 volts to optimise battery service life in storage and your EBL will probably apply 13.7 or 13.8 volts, as mine does. But this is unlikely to have much adverse effect so the LFD90 is still a good match.