Recent content by fluffyboxerfan

Hello All, Well have been doing my head in with research etc., and with a bit of help from my electrician son we have come up with another option, this time I'm pretty sure it will be okay. The Redarc 1240 and the BMS1230S2 will only handle an input from the solar panels of 32V UoC according to...

Hello all, I have read all the posts and suggestions, thankyou to everyone for the contributions, I now have some serious thinking to do again. I obviously need new batteries, I was thinking of going for two of these...

Thanks Condor & Jon, Thought as much! maybe we should get a boat? I guess $100 will buy just under 1/3 of one new battery :( . We bought the batteries in Dec 2013, started dropping power about Jan this year. We are going to buy a new charger, should we go for a 35V or 50V. I was told buy the...

oops it didn't include the titles of the pictures. first two are from one battery. 2nd two are from one battery (did two tests on each) 3rd is from the 3rd battery, he didn't think it was worth doing more tests on that one. He seems to think it is "user error" not battery failure? thanks again...

These are the results of the battery testing. I would be keen to see what everyone makes of the results and any advice concerning them. (3 x 130ah agm deep cycle batteries) Kind Regards, Karen

The charger we were using is a Projecta IC700 7 stage switch mode intelli-charger, which is supposed to deal with the sulphation issue plus lots of other things in the charging process. Would the batteries have still sulphated if not getting charged enough.i.e charger not large enough it does...

Thanks Jon, will keep that in mind, there's nothing to lose by overcharging them, can't make them any worse I guess. That hasn't been suggested before. And yes they do have a cranking capacity as Bill thought if ever the truck battery went flat he could use them to start it with, but that is...

Hello all, Well I have had the batteries tested, as yet haven't got the report at hand, will pick them all up tommorrow. It would seem they are as everyone has thought and not very healthy. Apparently they tested well below what they should have done, all 3 of them. The chap at Battery Power...

Yes Condor he said he will be testing them individually, apparently that's why it will take several days. He said he would test each batteries 3 times (i.e. charge and then put on load and then test and then charge again etc.,) to get an average? Should have a chart print out of each one. I will...

HI everyone, Bill asked me to post re testing of the batteries. I took them in yesterday, apparently he said they passed the initial quick test as in said they haven't dropped a cell, apparently one was a little down than the other two, but he is going to do a series of load tests on them, but I...

I have a diagram of how the panels are wired but I apparently need to have 10 post to upload anything.. grrrr. :mad: Not sure if it is series or parallel? Have a positive and negative coming out of each panel through a DC Isolater/removable fuse into charge controller then to the battery bank...

Thanks Frank, good to know about the Lithium ion batteries, but my pockets aren't that deep unfortunately. :lol: How are they charged?

Wow thank you everyone, seems like I have a lot of homework to do re charging and chasing down issues I never even contemplated. i.e. reverse discharge and diode faults on the panels. Unfortunately the best I can do for now is get the batteries checked, as I am heading away for work for 10 days...

Thanks Silver, I had thought of that myself but the panels and whole van in fact is washed after every trip and then stored in the shed for a maximum of 4 -8 weeks before the next trip out, so they should be clean before we start. Although maybe a slight layer of dust. :)

Providing my batteries pass a proper load/voltage check, would adding another battery of the same brand etc., achieve any difference? (Although it would be 2 years 3 months newer). I had a feeling that perhaps the battery charger was not fully charging them to capacity, so looks like I may have...