Vennwood Posted May 31, 2007 Share Posted May 31, 2007 I have this delemah of having too little space and not enough battery power. I need a battery that is high in amp hrs but small in size - i.e. less than 470mm long - I'm ok with widths up to 300mm and ok with height to 330mm. I'm hoping to get 3 or 4 batteries to give me in excess of 500ah in total so idealy 200ah + batteries would be fine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Kirby Posted May 31, 2007 Share Posted May 31, 2007 That's a lot of 12V power! Can you say why you need so much power, and what you're increasing from? Unless you have someting over 200Ah already, I'd guess you may need to upgrade both your mains charger and the vehicle alternator to cope with the charging load. They'll also take away a lot of your payload. There may be more economical ways to give the extra power you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vennwood Posted May 31, 2007 Author Share Posted May 31, 2007 Hi Brian, Just the man to sort me out. I currently have 2 x 110 however one is over 3 yrs old and the other 18 moths old - they are not deep cycle and are leftovers from our caravan days. The older one is failing so I need to change - so I thought I'd take the plunge and upgrade to something that would give me a reasonable number of days without hook-up. The 220 set-up gives me almost 2 days as we do like toast, watch the telly and use the laptop and run a small 240 v freezer through a 1000w inverter(the freezer is the . (we don't have a grill) I have a box that is 500mm x 500mm x 330mm high but all the batteries over 110ah I can find are around 521mm long so can't get any of them in. The 500ah is really becomming a dream so anything over 220 would be better than we have. The charger is a Sterling Pro Digital 30amp so that should be ok don't you think? Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Kirby Posted May 31, 2007 Share Posted May 31, 2007 PeteI honestly can't go further than I have. You seem to me to travel in a small city on wheels, and to need a trailer power station to service it! I'm afraid I'm a person who can last 4 days with no mains or other top up on 85Ah, and leave with the battery still going strong! All I can add is that ideally your batteries should be of the same type and age and, if possible, capacity. According to an article I read recently, for 500Ah you will almost certainly need a larger alternator and a larger charger, or else you'll have to drive, or hook up, for hours before you batteries are properly re-charged. However, I understand you risk overloading either, or both, your existing units if you seek to re-charge that capacity.Your query needs a response from Dave Newell, Clive, or one or two others, who really know what they are talking about when it comes to 12V technicalities. Sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davenewellhome Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 Hi Pete and Brian, I have to say I wasn't sure Peter was being serious at first. Why on earth would you want to make toast and run a fridge freezer from 240 Volts via a large inverter when there are much more efficient ways of doing both with gas? Like Brian I can last at least four days on a single 110AH battery with plenty of spare capacity. I use a 3 way fridge on gas when we don't have a hookup, we do our cooking on gas. We use lights water pump etc just like many others (although we don't shower in the motorhome) I have a 12 volt PSU for my laptop which we also use for television/DVD viewing. We don't have a solar panel either. I have to say Pete I thikn you'd be better fitting a 3 way absorption fridge and a gas grill for your toast. D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vennwood Posted June 1, 2007 Author Share Posted June 1, 2007 Hi Brian/Dave, Thanks for the comments and I'm pleased to hear you can both last for 4 days on your battery(s). We don't have a grill in our MH and we do have a fridge that works on gas when off electric. We also have a 240volt only freezer that we use when going away for more than 2 weeks - up until now our setup has worked fine. Unfortunately I have to change my batteries as I said at the begining (one is duff) and as I have to do this I thought it a good idea to "beef up" the system - hence my request for advice. As it happens I have found 160ah batteries from motorcaravaning.co.uk that will fit the bill and I can get three in the space I have. When we started camping (in a tent) some 45 years ago we enjoyed all the fun of primus stoves etc. but over the years we moved on to caravans and were delighted that they moved with the times and now even the cooker has electric plates and microwaves etc. Now we have a MH and leave all the primus stoves etc. to you younger folks and we like our creature comforts so anything we can do to make our remaining years more pleasant in our MH we are all for it. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basil Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 Hi Vennwood, The following page which is from the Varta UK site may be useful to you, or not! http://www.varta-automotive.com/eng/index2.php?p=4&s=2&content=batteriesuche/searchTechnical.html There is quite a lot of useful information on the site if you look round such as an amperage requirement for caravans calculator for instance see http://www.varta-automotive.com/eng/index2.php?p=2&s=4&content=produkte/antrieb_beleuchtung/antrieb_beleuchtung.html Bas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vennwood Posted June 1, 2007 Author Share Posted June 1, 2007 Thanks Bas, this is the sort of info I was looking for. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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