[NWH]

I've never known anyone in my area have a problem with battery's with just powering a pump or 2,as soon as a diesel heater is introduced into the loop it sucks em dry within no time. A know a couple that have had all there pumps wired through to the vehicle battery on numerous vans,they've never had issues with the battery side of things.

[Nameless Drudge]

Seems a very costly upgrade,you could put 2  x  115ah in parallel and have 12v and 230ah  though unless you get an expensive charger you would need to charge them separately .But then if you are going to have 2 batteries then it's probably easier to have one dedicated to the heater and one for the pump or pumps,2 lithium even!

[NWH]

My thinking is to get this new one and use it for the heater only and charge it every couple of days,the battery's are 2x115amp in parrelel at the moment they still drain quick when charged.

[Nameless Drudge]

Are you charging them separately or do you have a charger that can  cope  x2 ? If you don't then the batteries are never being fully charged. The charger doesn't know there are 2 and it could be easily confused without getting in to a full technical explanation.

[NWH]

I have 2 inline both 115 amp split charged I think my main problem is that they are both never fully charged although 1 fully charged with a split charger should give me at least a couple of days.

[P @ F]

What heater do you have NWH ?
SAJ has had them in most of his vans , and to my knowledge he has had no battery problems , heater problems by the handful but no battery failure , he runs scr i think , hes too lazy to take them out .
I think he uses the Heatwave from Varitech , if the same i will ring him for you and find out what his setup consists of .

[Nameless Drudge]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CTEK-MXS-10-8-Stage-Battery/dp/B005O8YG44,
One of these,batteries connected negative to negative and positive to positive with sturdy clamp and cable,charger connected to the negative of one battery and the positive of the other so it thinks it's charging one big 12v 230 ah battery,split charge,which unless you are doing lots and lots of miles is neither here nor there,connected the same.Pumps and heater connected the same,negative from one to positive the other one and the CTEK  connected every night after individually charging each one to full to start on a level playing field.I think this should work well.

[Nameless Drudge]

Actually that charger doesn't quite cut the mustard,be good for 2x 95 ah though.

[Spruce]

Thanks for that like I say I'm having a lot of problems due to the diesel heater,the other day i put a 115amp battery on charge at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and turned it off in the following morning on a CTek charger. I probably only get  2-3 cycles of startup on the heater before due to the battery dropping by to between 11-11.5v on the battery it  switches it off I have to keep turning the heater on and off manually on the controller in order for it to start up again.

My first guess is this is battery related.

The problem with leisure batteries is that they require a tickle discharge and that's why they are so different to starter batteries.

Some of the new Numax leisure batteries are heading toward dual applications. They can be used as starter as well as leisure batteries as they have a CCA rating. So imho I would certainly try one of these batteries.

I have not been able to find any initial draw current specs on the Webasto diesel water heaters. My own is still waiting patiently on the garage work bench to fit an array of modifications I have dreamt up. More later.

I do have a Eberspacher Airtronic diesel air heater installed in the van. On start up it draws around 18 amps in pulses heating the glowpin up needed to fire the heater up. This lasts for approx 3 minutes which by then the heater is well started. The heater then draws around 2.5 amps until the cabin reaches close to the temperature set on the controller. It then kicks into reduced heating mode where it draws 1.5 amps.

Now as Webasto owns Eberspacher we can assume that similar technology goes into both products.  Webasto say that the 90ST draws a maximum current of 90 watts (7.5amps) on full mode and 37 watts (3amps) on tickover mode.
I can't believe that the heater would draw any more than 20 amps on startup but it could be fractionally higher because of the circulation pump.

So on start up using a single battery you will have a draw of 20 amps and if you are running 2 wfp pumps the current draw will be around 30 amps. That's heading out of standard leisure battery abilities.

 A good indication is going back to the caravan world. Will the leisure battery you are using support a caravan mover? For example, Platium leisure battery manufacturers advise against using their 75 amp  battery with one. Its OK for leisure camping but not suitable for wild camping.
http://www.alpha-batteries.co.uk/85-ah-platinum-leisure-battery-685l/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3MvH98i91gIVCrftCh32_gepEAQYBSABEgLoQ_D_BwE

I planned to add a third heat exchanger into my heater linked with a temperature controller. The idea was that when I'm busy talking the diesel heater will still be building up internal temperature. When the heater reaches reduced heat mode I want to program the controller to switch a pump on and bleed the excess heat back to the tank. This will be programmed to cut off  when that's done and hopefully by that time I'm working again.
(There are 3 different heating mode settings on 90ST diesel heaters. The common one is when the water temperature reaches 72ºC, the heater will switch to a lower output.  The combustion air motor speed and fuel pump delivery are reduced.

If the coolant temperature continues to rise by a further 10ºC, the heater will then automatically stop combustion, fuel delivery will cease and the flame within the combustion chamber will be extinguished.  The heater will then commence a 180 second purge cycle.

The heater is now in stand-by mode.  The green operation light will still be illuminated and the water pump will continue to circulate the hot water.  The heater will automatically restart if the water temperature falls by 15 C, going through the same start cycle as before.
So I would program my temperature controller to switch the third pump on at around 76 degrees and switch the pump off at around 67 degrees C  - within the reduced combustion/heat mode window and just keeping the heater on tickover.)

This will certainly reduce the number of stop and the restarts.

Ionics get around this by fitting a pressure relief valve on the delivery line which activates at 65psi. The problem with this is that the wfp pump runs continously.  When you are cleaning windows you will have enough pressure below 65psi to delivery water to your brush head.  When you switch off your water to the pole, the pressure will build up above 65psi and the pressure relief valve beeds that hot water back to the tank. So your controller needs to be set higher than 65 psi.

.

[P @ F]

NWH , you could just have the same problem that i had , my battery was 10 month old and was registering as fully charged on smartcharger every morning , it was struggling more and more , i took all solar connections off and ran as a normal system , it went from fully charged to BAT being displayed on flow controller in 1 hour .
I think the battery was totally sulphated due to not being properly charged , it was most likely only 50 % charged when i thought it was full .
You could well have the same problem .

[P @ F]

Doh  , Spruce just said that !

[P @ F]

Whatever happens , as you pull so many amps while working , you will i assume have to bench everything every night or have some serious SCR stuff on the van , i have learnt that keeping the battery as full as you can is the key to keeping it tip top .

[P @ F]

Given the choice i would rather spend £950 with the guidance of Spruce than on a lithium battery that could go the same way , and i could imagine the trouble it would take to get a £950 battery replaced under warranty , most of the companies see us not as leisure battery users but leisure battery abusers !
Spruce told me that , And when i got the Numax last week , the salesman said that " Any warranty is pretty much void for you as you are a window cleaner arn't you mate ? " ......... I just knew that was coming 

[Spruce]

Given the choice i would rather spend £950 with the guidance of Spruce than on a lithium battery that could go the same way , and i could imagine the trouble it would take to get a £950 battery replaced under warranty , most of the companies see us not as leisure battery users but leisure battery abusers !
Spruce told me that , And when i got the Numax last week , the salesman said that " Any warranty is pretty much void for you as you are a window cleaner arn't you mate ? " ......... I just knew that was coming 

Now Grippatank sell Numax batteries. They advertise a 3 year warranty. I wonder how the warranty works from their side?

.

[Don Kee]

Spruce/P&F, in your opinion are AGM batteries worth the extra for our type of usage?

[P @ F]

Dont ask me , all i did was ask Spruce , i just did what i was told .
I prefer to be known as the SOLAR GIMP 

But for what its worth , i did ask at a few places about using AGM , they all gave a  face and said best with lead acid .

[Spruce]

Spruce/P&F, in your opinion are AGM batteries worth the extra for our type of usage?

Hi Don.
I have no personal experience with AGM batteries. There was a member on here at one time (haven't seen him for ages) who replaced his troublesome lead acid leisure batteries with AGM and he was happy with their performance.

On paper AGM batteries for window cleaning don't seem to add up imo.  Why would I spend £175 on a 48 amph Optima AGM battery.
https://www.tayna.co.uk/Optima-Yellow-Top-Battery-YTR-3.7-8040-222-BCI-D35-YTR3.7-AGM-P9092.html

That's half the size of a 105 amph Numax leisure battery at twice the cost. With 2 pumps all day (4 hours each on an 8 hour day) running that battery there isn't much reserve capacity left. So I would have to charge this battery every night. No charging = no working the following day. what I would find more concerning is the few days a year we do a large commercail job and those pumps run longer than 4 hours each a day.

Again on another website they mention that a user shouldn't rely on the vans alternator to keep the battery in a fully recharged state. They also recommend a charger of around 10 amps to preserve the life of the battery.

They call it a high performance battery but what we want from a high performance battery isn't the same as what we require.  As numax say, window cleaners are battery.

It would be good to hear if someone else has tried this route. I'm sure there would have been lots of threads on the topic if a few had successfully tried them.

.

[Spruce]

Dont ask me , all i did was ask Spruce , i just did what i was told .
I prefer to be known as the SOLAR GIMP

But for what its worth , i did ask at a few places about using AGM , they all gave a  face and said best with lead acid .

I honestly believe your leap into solar has been a very interesting journey for all of us Rich, one which will continue for a while longer.  I have been just as curious of the outcome as I'm sure many others are as well. I'm sure its an inspiration to  many others as well as to me.
I thank you for taking us on this journey and look forward to your progress through winter.

Its been much more fun than painting your VW pink.    Saying that, if you could do that then there isn't much you can't turn your hands to.

[P @ F]

Dont ask me , all i did was ask Spruce , i just did what i was told .
I prefer to be known as the SOLAR GIMP

But for what its worth , i did ask at a few places about using AGM , they all gave a  face and said best with lead acid .

I honestly believe your leap into solar has been a very interesting journey for all of us Rich, one which will continue for a while longer.  I have been just as curious of the outcome as I'm sure many others are as well. I'm sure its an inspiration to  many others as well as to me.
I thank you for taking us on this journey and look forward to your progress through winter.

Its been much more fun than painting your VW pink.    Saying that, if you could do that then there isn't much you can't turn your hands to.

Aww shucks , stop it , i'll be in tears in a minute 
Its nice to see that people actually are interested in pushing the envelope a bit , I have enjoyed it so far , I was at one point thinking that nobody really cares either way , I have already established that it an absolute dead cert that i can go through the summer not benching , but as you say , now is the winter of our discontent 
I could well end up being "That bloke that tried " over the winter but hey ,we are all wiser or will be come the cold season .
But you and me mate  " We're doin alright , we're gettin good grades , the futures so bright , we gotta wear shades "   

[Spruce]

Dont ask me , all i did was ask Spruce , i just did what i was told .
I prefer to be known as the SOLAR GIMP

But for what its worth , i did ask at a few places about using AGM , they all gave a  face and said best with lead acid .

I honestly believe your leap into solar has been a very interesting journey for all of us Rich, one which will continue for a while longer.  I have been just as curious of the outcome as I'm sure many others are as well. I'm sure its an inspiration to  many others as well as to me.
I thank you for taking us on this journey and look forward to your progress through winter.

Its been much more fun than painting your VW pink.    Saying that, if you could do that then there isn't much you can't turn your hands to.

Aww shucks , stop it , i'll be in tears in a minute 
Its nice to see that people actually are interested in pushing the envelope a bit , I have enjoyed it so far , I was at one point thinking that nobody really cares either way , I have already established that it an absolute dead cert that i can go through the summer not benching , but as you say , now is the winter of our discontent 
I could well end up being "That bloke that tried " over the winter but hey ,we are all wiser or will be come the cold season .
But you and me mate  " We're doin alright , we're gettin good grades , the futures so bright , we gotta wear shades "   

 

We already know winter is going to be a 'challenge'; what we don't know is the size of the challenge. But until now you would have had to bench charge your battery every few days in winter, now you may still have to do it but not a often as you did.
.