Dead Leisure Battery

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yankeebloke

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Hi ALL

found my leisure battery dead today (reading 2.8VDC) it will not charge on 240V shore power charger or via split charger with enging going (cruised up and down a bit but no joy under load either.

Swaped batterys and engine battery charged ok in leisure position, so i assume the domestic battery has just been run down too low to start taking on a charge? or register on the boats system? is this possible?

I say this because with engine or shore charging the battiries, the voltage on Engine (good one) battery goes up to 13.5v in both engine position and domestice position so both sides of the charging circuit are working ok? (sound correct?)

OK so i have taken bad battery home, and i need to buy a battery charger tomorrow to try and charge it up (its less than a year old) my question is this

The battery is a VARTA G1W Heavy Duty Commercial Battery

12V, 90 Ah, 480 cca

do i need to buy a special type of battery charger to charge this back up? or will a standard car battery charger from halfords do the job?

I dont want to kill the battery if it is not already dead.

BTW when engine battery was in domestic position i found the source of the run down, mid cabin light left of by my youngest:mad:, and boat been left, no shore power, domestic left on for the last week or so!!!! :eek:(my fault)

Any help MOST welcome!:D
 
you won't do any harm trying to charge it with a basic charger, it looks to be marginal in terms of it's spec relative to most car charger recomendations - if you had one of Halfords heavier grade chargers that would be better (recomended for diesels over 2000cc etc)

good luck with the charging though - I would have thought that your alternator would have provided a much higher charge rate than your charger will....and 2.8v is something I have never seen from a 12v arrangement in any condition!
 
with a bit of luck, it's not going to be too badly affected by being run down just this once.

Sometimes it's necessary to apply a high voltage (22v) low power 500 milliA for an hour or so, to get a battery back into action and capable of taking a normal charge.

Halfords have a reasonable range of intelligent battery chargers with multi stage charging, so check if they have a 'recovery' program. However, I reckon they are expensive.

Sealey also make good chargers, at a competitive price
e.g.

http://www.uktools.com/index.php/chargers-c-67_851_882
 
If it is less than 1 year old surely it is still under guarantee?

Take it back to the supplier without messing about with it any further

They will charge it, at least attempt to, and test it.
 
It was bought new for the boat by the previous owner, part of the purchase agreement, he would put a new battery in it.

I cant find a reciept for it in the paperwork!

but its would probably be more hassle to get the battery across the country to the place it was purchased for charge and test under warrenty than it would be to charge the thing.

Besides i need a battery charger anyway, if it wont charge, then i will look at warrenty claims
 
The VARTA G1W seems to be a starter battery rather than a deep cyclic battery.
I would think it has been damaged due to deep dicharge.
It maybe recoverable but how old is it ?
You are just measuring the output of the generator across a battery not the charging rate which will be in terms of Amps...have you got a clamp meter for DC current ??
 
yankeebloke said:
It was bought new for the boat by the previous owner, part of the purchase agreement, he would put a new battery in it.

I cant find a reciept for it in the paperwork!

but its would probably be more hassle to get the battery across the country to the place it was purchased for charge and test under warrenty than it would be to charge the thing.

Besides i need a battery charger anyway, if it wont charge, then i will look at warrenty claims
Click to expand...
Be aware that relatively cheap battery chargers wont charge a fully discharged battery. It is to protect the charger from putting out too many amps due to the flat battery
Stu
 
My one year leisure battery got down to 4v due to a problem and my charger wouldn't look at it - anything under 7v and it will not charge. I took it back to the chandler who put it on a Sterling charger. It recovered and has worked fine for the past two years. So make sure the charger can cope with really flat batteries.
 
Besides i need a battery charger anyway, if it wont charge,
Click to expand...

The trouble you may run into is that the relatively low output chargers that you will find in places such as Halfords may not charge a battery that is deeply discharged although they'll be satisfactory for other purposes.

Sorry I cannot advise on what type or size of charger is likely to be suitable.

Maybe buy yourself the best basic or automatic charger you feel like buying for routine use and then if that still does not charge it then take it to a battery specialists who can try charging from something more likely to succeed.

Any idea how this battery came to be so deeply discharged?


FWIW

I spotted THIS ONE on Halfords Website. They claim it will recharge deeply discharged batteries!
 
Last edited:
VicS said:
The trouble you may run into is that the relatively low output chargers that you will find in places such as Halfords may not charge a battery that is deeply discharged although they'll be satisfactory for other purposes.

Sorry I cannot advise on what type or size of charger is likely to be suitable.

Maybe buy yourself the best basic or automatic charger you feel like buying for routine use and then if that still does not charge it then take it to a battery specialists who can try charging from something more likely to succeed.

Any idea how this battery came to be so deeply discharged?


FWIW

I spotted THIS ONE on Halfords Website. They claim it will recharge deeply discharged batteries!
Click to expand...


I have purchased this exact one from Halfords today the battery is on charge now, the unit says it is charging, but it will be about a 25 hr charge time.

The guy from Halfords said it should take a leisure deep cycle battery thats really depleted back up, he seemed to know what he was on about, as i was considering just forking out another leisure battery at £140:eek:

But the guy talked me out of itand said the battery charger would do the job.

It became so deeply discharged by 2 errors.

1. My six year old left the mid cabin light on, and i didnt spot it!

2. I left the battery isolator on, planned on being back at boat next day......didnt make it back for 10 days!

Hence huge drain!!!

I will let you know how the charge turns out
 
fingers crossed

When batteries become this deeply discharged then its very difficult to get them to take a charge again. Ive been told that this is the result of some of the lead dropping out of solution. Ive tried all kinds of stuff to resuscitate them but long term they never seen to recover. Buy a new battery and don't chase miracle cures, sorry.
 
Appletree

Isnt that the entire purpose of a deep cycle leisure battery?

they are meant to be run down significantly and be recharged again.

Agreed standard car batteries etc will not be saved, but deep cycle leisure are supposed to be designed to do this.

we will see in a day or so
 
Leisure batteries are not true deep cycle batteries. They are, I believe, just modified starter batteries and more suitable for continuous low current drain . Like starter batteries they should not normally be discharged any lower than 50%.

However keeping fingers crossed for you.

As for lead coming out of solution . ????
 
VicS said:
I spotted THIS ONE on Halfords Website. They claim it will recharge deeply discharged batteries!
Click to expand...

I have one of these and, while it seems to be quite a good charger in several ways, it was unable to cope with a car battery that had gone down to 3.5V. It sat and "looked at" it for a few minutes, ran through a number of attempted charge cycles, then gave up and displayed its "battery knackered" symbol.
 
I keep my grandfathers battery charger for this very reason.

The regulator is a wire wound resistor and open circuit shows about 20 volts.

BatteryCharger.jpg
 
I've had similar situation,....... new fully drained battery having left light on etc.., no wind for a week so wind generator was no help and wouldn't touch it from zero.
My old battery charger couldn't do the job and another owner in the yard lent me his 20amp charger to get it started and since then it's back up to 12.9 and hopefully o.k.
 
Ruffles said:
I keep my grandfathers battery charger for this very reason.

The regulator is a wire wound resistor and open circuit shows about 20 volts.

BatteryCharger.jpg
Click to expand...

You can use a 50-60ohm wirewound "firebar" to do the same job with a cheap charger.
Just tap the output lead to the battery terminal along the firebar to give the charger's rated output and give the dead battery a kickstart until the battery voltage rises and the charger can handle a direct connection.
 
If not said before - get a Sterling charger - even their 20A is a cut above the rest of the Halfords, ASDA junk
Get an ADVERC system with a splitter diode installed - you can do it yourself and the cost is about the same as a set of new batteries.
Not an area to skimp on, penny pinching pound foolish - well it seems that way to me
 
as i was considering just forking out another leisure battery at £140

Look about on eBay and similar. £140 seems an awful lot to pay for a battery. Managed to get 2 110Ah for less than that - but we'll see how they last
 
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