hi gb it as been said before run straight of the van battery i have been doing this for the last 6 months with out any problems what so ever and my round is only 7miles a day. when i was using leisure batteries i got so fed up with running out of power and getting though batteries like no tomorrow i did what some one advised me to do on here and never looked back and by god you don't have to worry about charging another leisure battery ever again. i could not go back now and if it knacked the van battery and i had to buy one off those every 15 months then its cheaper than buying 2 leisure batteries every year.
dave
Hi Dave,
There are some on here including you who recommend this way to go and dispense with their leisure battery altogether. For you it works. On my sons Partner van we put a change over switch on, so he could go to the van battery 'in the case of emergency'. The switch got accidentally knocked so the van battery was the souce battery as well and within a few days his van battery wouldn't start the van - thankfully he was on a hill and managed to push start it. He has a Shurflo pump with a varistream controller.
But our main customer base is only about 2 miles away so the battery will never get fully recharged after a days work with a 5 to 10 minute drive home. For us the leisure battery route is the only way we can go, but the downside is that we have to make battery charging a standard part of our regime along with filling the tanks with water.
I do appreciate that a starter battery is designed differently to a leisure battery and will accept a faster charge. I have toyed with the idea of replacing a leisure battery with a standard starter battery, but still feel that the mileage we travel is too low to warrant this.
Spruce.