12 volt power supply and leisure battery install

After 15 years of using second hand car batteries and a normal car battery charger in my camper for the supply, I’ve now decided to rip it out and start again but this time do it properly and also buy a nice new leisure battery. I’ve saved up a bit of cash and I’m also going to go to more sites without electric hook up.
I’ve started to do a bit of research and came up with a plan.

20amp 12volt power supply from eBay. £112
CTEK mxs 5.0. £70
Halfords 95ah agm leisure battery. £145

I haven’t checked prices yet but I have a discount card at Halfords so should get a good chunk off the battery and ctek.

First thoughts are to put the battery under the bed and to use the original switch gear (Westy Berlin)

Can I please have your thoughts on this plan.

 

There doesn’t seem to be a massive choice of power supply options.

 

I’m happy with my hookup system, Double pole consumer unit from extreme van, so this will be left as is.

 

I like the CTEK idea, smaller and removable if needed.

I use one for mine in a not so fixed position currently.

But I will be keeping it once I finally go down the hook up route.



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That`s silly money for the leisure battery , after a recommendation from @3901mick i used ....

Bugger ... ... Sorry , can`t remember - he`ll be along to fill in the blanks but they were spot on

 

It does seem a lot but that is for a large AGM type. They can have double the cycles of normal batteries and also perform better. This is just my first thoughts and I should get good discount from that price.

 

Taymar batteries lots of choice and prices are generally good

 

https://www.batterymegastore.co.uk/

 

That`s the one , cheers Mick

Think i got a 110ah VARTA leisure battery for about £85 quid delivered next day .
Your discount must be good to get anywhere near that

 

Free delivery on above and better warranty . I’ll see what discount halfrauds come up with.

 

What's the reason for the power supply? I would be tempted to pay a bit more for an mxs 7 or 10 and then run everything from the battery as the bigger charger will keep up with most things

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I could be wrong here so happy to take advice but this is the way I see it,

Most of my camping is on electric hook up and I run a power hungry westy 12volt fridge among various other things, lights, radio etc. I’m worried a combined charger/ supply might not take care of the sensitive agm leisure battery in the best way if it’s at full chat keeping up with a big demand.

 

im thinking it best to have a 12v power supply doing its thing and a nice clever ctek just looking after the battery for when it’s needed. We like to tour around changing sites every couple of days. I could have a couple of days without electric and turn the fridge off. I’ll fill it with ice instead

 

You cant really charge an AGM properly in parallel with a standard starter battery with a split charger. Although they have double the cycle life and can be discharged deeper, they are also more vulnerable if they are left discharged.


If you have an ancient fridge, you will never be able to run it for any time off any leisure battery you can fit in the back of a bay. You will also need a power supply or charger more in the 20A size if you know that 7A will be going into that fridge.

My setup uses a 10A battery charger and I have a compressor fridge that draws 5A when the compressor runs, about 1.25A on average. And 200W of solar cells.

 

Your right Mike. I think the westy fridge pulls about 7 amps. The power supply in my first post is 20amps with a temp. controlled fan. I don’t run the fridge when I don’t have hookup. I put ice or ice packs in it and they stay frozen for a couple of days. I wouldn’t bother splitting the starter battery charge.

 

I think you are right to go for ice packs.

And keeping the starter and the leisure system completely separate is one way of not mixing AGM and wet cell batteries - the only thing is if e.g. you use the stereo and it is powered off the starter battery when you are camping - then the starter battery may need a charge or topup too.

 

I’ve already got the lights and radio on the leisure side of things

 

If everything else is low draw e.g. LED lights etc I would probably go with the mxs10 or the M15 for similar money and a simpler system. Even better would be to go for a compressor fridge. Maybe more expensive outlay initially but it will cope with a 5 or 7 amp charger and brings the option of off grid as well with solar

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I’m pleased I started this thread to help make sure I get the best setup. More options now. Still not sure which way to go.

Won’t be changing fridge. It’s very practical, works really well and is a part of the original Westy setup.
An msx10 can be bought for about £130 and has a 10amp supply feature.

Suppose I’m camping for a week on electric hook up and I’m drawing above 7amps for most of that time. Will the msx10 cope ok? I won’t be able to have the leisure battery connected at the same time because the charge mode is a separate operation. I guess I would put a switch in the positive wire to the battery and charge it up the day before I moved on but I wouldn’t have a 12volt supply to anything else during this time so not ideal.