# County Class - Weak battery OR continual drain on battery



## Ourduckpond (Sep 10, 2007)

The habitation battery on our 9m old Surrey appears weak but without recourse to a heavy current battery test I am unsure whether the problem is with the battery OR is it being drained continually. I am reluctant to go back to the dealer yet as it would be 120m trip to the nearest Marquis where, if found faulty, they would have to raise a warranty claim which if accepted by A-S would require another 120m trip to have it replaced. Has anyone else experienced problems or could offer advice on my particular difficulty?

First, does anyone know why A-S chose to use a car battery as the habitation battery - its the same Merc/Varta model as the vehicle battery -rather than a conventional deep-cycle, leisure battery - unless its one of these clever dual purpose batteries - but there is nothing to indicate this on the battery labelling.

Second - The Problem - Settig out with a pre-charged battery on 70m trip to site we enjoyed 3hrs TV and 1hr reading under 1 x 10w halogen spot - next morning hab battery voltage was indicated as 12.1 v and 70% charge remaining. As the advice is not to run down voltage below 12v we had to take the van out for an unscheduled trip! Was it a weak battery or was it being drained unknowingly.

Previously, we had been concerned that when the LCD panel was switched on the "Stats" screen indicated discharging at 4/8ths rate, even without anything running. Marquis thought the LCD Panel was suspect and changed it for a similar one- but 4/8 discharged still being shown. As they thought it could then only be the Distribution Panel (DP) we came back to Newbury for the DP to be checked out/changed - afterwards, still indicated discharge but at 2/8ths - considered this discharged rate might be expected as soon as the LCD Panel switched on as unswitched circuits, eg TV & Booster etc, would then also be energised.

When back home did some self-help checks - each of the 12 fuses in the DP were removed in turn to see if their removal altered the 2/8 discharge indication - none did. Then the battery was fully charged, the LCD panel put in to "off" mode and only switched back on briefly to check voltage/life every 12hrs or so. After 49hrs "off" voltage had dropped by 0.5v and only 80% "life" remained. A loss of 20AH in 49hrs indicates a continual drain of 0.4amps - whether this is due to drain or no drain/weak battery it is concerning when one should be able to stay on a CL for 3 days without problems, and for having to charge up every week while on the drive between trips.

So - any thoughs - do I have a suspect battery or what circuits could be draining the battery when the LCD panel is "off" ?

Thanks in anticipation, Brian


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## weldted (May 1, 2005)

*battery drain?*

Hi as your van is only 9 months old it may be fitted with a cambus wiring system this in itself consumes a small amount of power just doing nothing on mine 2008 Swift Bessacar 765 it is .2 amp. if the fridge is auto select this will also use a small amount of 12 volt power even when on gas. A 10 amp halogen is roughly close to 1 amp per hour and depending on the tv anything up to three amps. if you have a 100 amp hour battery I would only expect to get 50 amps out of it at best as the capacity goes down the current goes up to do the same job. Is your battery sealed or can you check the levels, if it is the same as your engine battery they are designed to give a large amount of current for a short time and recharge quickly, unlike a leisure battery which is designed to give a smaller amount of current over a longer time. but this in itself can create a problem? The ideal charging system for a leisure battery is slightly different against a engine battery most on-board chargers are rated a constant voltage of 13.8 volts to prevent gassing but this does not fully charge a leisure battery. if you go to the stirling-powerproducts website there is a lot of information about battery charging. I have fitted one of their battery to battery charges and cannot rate it highly enough, it would also help if you had room to fit a second battery to give you more usable capacity. If you do have a leisure battery fitted it may not be a good idea to test it with a heavy discharge tester as it may damage the battery.


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## Wizzo (Dec 3, 2007)

It might be useful to charge the battery as fully as you can, then put a light on for a few minutes to remove the 'surface charge' and remove the battery from the van completely. Armed with a multimeter, test the voltage at the terminals and leave the battery to stand for a couple of days. Then retest and you may well have your answer.

From what you have said I would suspect the battery.

JohnW


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## Ourduckpond (Sep 10, 2007)

Firstly - Thanks to Weldted for the interesting information on Cambus etc and to Wizzo also - I have now carried out some further tests having bought a digital voltmeter/ammeter.

With the LCD panel in its "Off" state the current drain is 0.13 amps (about 3Ah every 24 hours) - this rises to 0.51 amps when the LCD panel is "energised" but no appliances are consiously switched on (ie. about 13Ah in 24 hrs, which is a serious amount to lose every day)

Removing each of the 12 x A-S fuses in turn there is no change to the current drain apart from when Fuse No. 4 is removed, when the current drain drops to 0.33 amps. This circuit supplies the TV booster and it taking about 0.18 amps seems about right. So, the 0.51 amp drain seems to be made up of 0.18A (TV booster), 0.13A unknown (LCD "Off") and 0.2A unknown (when LCD "On"). I'm presuming that this drain is due to alarm circuit monitoring eg. water levels etc and there is nothing I can do about this. Its just a pity that the electrical design takes out 13Ah a day!!!

I then checked my battery by a load test using a 55W headlamp bulb which would take about 4.5 amps (+ 0.51A drain making about 5A in total). Starting off with a no-load terminal voltage of 12.8v, which dropped to 12.6v on connecting the headlamp bulb, I found the terminal voltage under load dropped to 12v in 2.5hrs, to 11.6 after 5hrs and to 11.2v after 9hrs - at which point the test was terminated as I didn't want to take the voltage below 11v. 

Most advice is to recharge a battery if the voltage falls to 12v - in my case after 2.5hrs when just 12.5Ah had been used!! - and I'm going to lose 13Ah a day when we don't switch anything on!

I have therefore come to the conclusion that my battery is suspect and needs to be changed but also that A-S need to re-consider their policy of only fitting one leisure battery as standard when the electrical system has such high drainage levels.


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## delboy0127 (Mar 3, 2009)

Hi

We also owned a Surrey before upgrading to a Berkshire.

Look under the passenger seat and make certain the red light is on, on the Battery charger.

If all ok, the television I think you may find has no isolation switch, and the only way in can be isolated is buy pulling the 12v lead from the rear of the television. The aerial booster again cannot be isolated, but once the control panel is in the off position, the booster will go off.

As you may gather we to had a problem, but ours was due to a bad connection from the mains feed plug to the battery charger, the battery was not charging off the mains, only off the engine when running.

Autosleeper also fitted us an isolation switch for the TV

Regards

Delboy


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## sallytrafic (Jan 17, 2006)

Brian you may find this thread from Summer 2008 interesting>death of a leisure battery<


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## DeeGee7 (Jun 22, 2009)

*Re: County Class - Weak battery OR continual drain on batter*



> So - any thoughs - do I have a suspect battery or what circuits could be draining the battery when the LCD panel is "off" ?
> 
> Thanks in anticipation, Brian


Hi Brian, we have a Marquis County Hampshire which had the same sort of problem as you are experiencing. When you say the LCD panel is "off" have you shut it down completely? After pressing the "off" button in the bottom left corner of the panel we now also press the top right corner which brings up the "input code number" panel. After inputting the code, I think Autosleepers use the same number on all their motorhomes, the panel no longer draws any current. In our case before we did this the current draw was 0.25 amps. As you can guess it didn't take very long to flatten the battery. Hope this is of some use to you.


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## raynipper (Aug 4, 2008)

Hello Ourduckpond.
I am not giving a definitive answer as there are many possibilies and unknowns.
But modern vans with all their associated parasitic loads are sat on dealers lots for varying times and all will flatten one or more batteries.

If lead acid batteries end up totally dead as can happen when dealers don't notice this happening and just recharge ready for demo or sale. You the client can easily drive of in a new van with a knackered battery.

Ray.


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## Ourduckpond (Sep 10, 2007)

Thanks to DeeGee7 & raynipper - putting the LCD panel into the "sleep" mode does minimise the drain on the battery - we do this when away from the van but when "at home" need to put the panel into "off" or "on" mode to have circuits readily available. 

Meanwhile, my dealership has replaced the habitation battery with a new, deep cycle one which seems to hold its charge much better when parked on the drive - now looking forward to improving weather to see if we are able to exist for 4/5 days without hookup.
Regards, Brian


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## Mike48 (May 1, 2005)

My advice would be to opt for a solar panel with a Battery Master that channels any excess charge from the leisure battery into the vehicle battery which should also eliminate the possibility of finding your vehicle battery flat when you want to use it.


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