Battery bank installation.

[Other-Power]

Hi all

Just a little camper topic for all you westy owners out there. and others who own a camper.

I love the idea of a camper and when it come to a westy camper its even better. mine has a fidge, fresh water tank, external LPG tank, gas hob, sink, secound battery, voltage stablizer, ebber heater and a camp site plugin for electricity.

The only thing its missing is a decent supply of power on the move. although as stated mine has a secound battery, it is as most people have a normall car battery. The option of fitting a small lesuire battery was turned down on two grounds: a. lesuire batteries are not really suitable for more then 20% drain befor the battery starts to have a reduced cycle life (number of time you can charge, drain and recharge a battery). b. its small capacity, although a 110amp hour lesuire battery says it can release 110amps for one hour or 1 amp for 110 hours, in really life they can not due to a combintaion of age of battery and paticular treatment of charge cycles. all very boring stuff as you can imagine.

The bank i have built, was designed around some free sealed lead acid (SLA) batteries i got given by a friend from his work. Althought 3 years old these batteries have not had a hard life so are more then usable for my requirments.

So i built a battery box to fit under my rear bench seat to house eight 12volt 24amp hour SLA batteries. wired in parralel for a combined power of 12 volts 192amp hours. by no means a small battery bank.

The power for these batteries is going to come from one of my 65watt solar panels that i will be mounting on to my pop top. using a charge regulator to control charging and an inverter to convert power upto the required 240 volts for most appliences.

what fiollows is some pictures of the battery box installed and the eight batteries place into the box.

Still to do:

Install solar panel on to pop top
Wire in solar panel and controller to batteries
Install and wire in inverter and 12volt ciggy socket.

hope this has been of some intrest, shall be putting another post up once i have done the panel.

Thanks Jon

[Dan Wood]

Please remember to fuse this lot as close to the batteries as possible.

SLA batteries have a low internal resistance, and hence can deliver very high short circuit currents that will have the rest of your wiring looking like a nice electric fire!

[Mocki]

that extra weight will cost you a fortune in fuel !
and you cant charge them from your alternater either . . . without a lot of jig ger re pokery as you cannot split charge gel batterys off lead acid !

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[Other-Power]

Hey Mocki,

The extra weight of those batteries is about the same as a very light person. I rekon that yes it will cost me more in fuel. I did think long and hard about the isues in putting a battery bank in my van, the added fuel cost and the isues of explosive gasses. To be honest i carry around an LPG tank on the underside and that weights more then the batteries not to mention the fridge, sink and hob. I rekon its the only think missing from the van.

I have got some isues with charging from the altornator that i have got to look into. Im thinkibng that a 12 volt to 12volt SLA charger from CPC or RS would be good but there expencive. I dont plan to charge from the car battery ie no conection between the battery bank and the secound battery.

Have you any sujestions on a suitasble 12 volt charger?

Jon

[T'Onion]

must of us run all the stuff that you have and manage ok with either a normal car battery or a leisure one ,
are you planning not moving for a while ? or i'm i missing the point ?

[kevtherev]

Aaah a westy.......is all this for a toaster?

[Other-Power]

Hey

T'Onion thats it, i dont intend on moving for maybe a week at a time and would like to use power still without starting the van up.

kevtherev maybe a small toaster

Plus its a bit of fun for me, keeps me of the streets

Jon