Day/camper work away van battery recommendation

Ursheeee

Ursheeee

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I need to install a leisure battery (or 2 in parallel) in my van for when I start a new job. I'll be working 3 days/nights on at a time and electric hookup will not be available where I park for the 3 nights.
I'm looking at installing split charge relay to charge the leisure battery(s). I will require enough life to run some 12v led lighting, a TV, phone charger, cool box and microwave and maybe laptop. So a double USB socket from an inverter I was thinking.
Shower facilities are provided at work so no need for anything other than the above and most of the electric is going to be used in the evenings when I'm not working but staying on site.
What battery, if any would you say would suit this application?
 
You'll need a massive battery and massive inverter to run a microwave. Especially for three days. And a way to get all that power back into the battery. Loads and loads of solar, or lots of driving to charge via a split charge relay.

Honestly, it's doable but it will be very expensive.

I wanted to run a modest sized electric water heater. Soon discovered it was a nonstarter without access to hookup or a huge battery bank, probably expensive lithium too. I suspect a microwave might be the same.

If your van is more modern you'll need a battery to battery charger, and you may find a split charge relay doesn't work very well. It's all about your vans alternator and if it's "smart".

I would very much encourage you not to run anything USB powered from an invertor. They are inefficient, by upto 20% or so. In the case of a phone you'll be going from 12v in the battery, upto 240v in the invertor, and all the way back down again to 5V in the charger. This wastes a lot of power. Much better is to fit USB sockets like the one linked below. Or a cigarette lighter type socket and use a USB adaptor in it.

Amazon product ASIN B07NV7579D
The best way to determine battery size is to work out how many amps you will need a day, and multiply that by three for your three days.

As an example, close to my needs:

Running a fridge for may take 30 amps a day, LED lights 6 amps a day, your phone 5 amps. That's 41 X 3 = 123.

For lead acid you'll need double because you can only discharge to 50% so you'd be best with two 120 amp hour batteries, minimum.

If you want a microwave you'll need much more, sadly. Like me and that water heater I wanted. I decided just to boil a gas kettle in the end! As advised by people on here who are much less novice than me.

I've not been doing this long but have converted a van in lockdown. More knowledgeable people than me will doubtless answer soon.

The best advise I was given was if you want to avoid hookup you need to avoid heating things with electric.
 
Sounds like you need a generator not a battery
 
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Don't use you batteries for heating or cooling, just light and recharging. If working in an office, charge your laptop up there.
Get a penny if you can run it without upsetting folk.
 
Can scrap the microwave it's not all set in stone. Can heat stuff on a gas stove. I didn't mean I would be combining the USB and 13a sockets, worded that all wrong.
Just looking at finding out what would people suggest best battery for 3 days worth of battery life. Not really keen on lead acid.

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I meant to say it will have mains hookup for when it's parked at home, won't just be relying on split charge.
 
Ursheeee said:
Can scrap the microwave it's not all set in stone. Can heat stuff on a gas stove. I didn't mean I would be combining the USB and 13a sockets, worded that all wrong.
Just looking at finding out what would people suggest best battery for 3 days worth of battery life. Not really keen on lead acid.
Click to expand...

Would make life much easier and what you described otherwise much, much more achievable.

No fridge and you easily get away with one or two basic 110ah lead acid batteries.

I hope you understand when I say lead acid I mean proper, sealed leisure batteries. My own are the calcium type.

What have you got against lead acid? Will you be having lithium instead? It would be expensive and I'm not sure it would be necessary for a TV, a few lights and your phone.
 
There's much more energy in a gallon of fuel than in a fully charged battery, and fuel is easy to obtain.
Whatever power you consume has to be replaced: by EHU, split charge (B2B is much better), or solar.
The more careful you are, the longer a given battery will last.
I used to be able to survive for a week on a modest battery but that was only for light (no TV).
You could get a second battery and keep swapping them around (charging one 'off-site').
 
I'd be wary of the powered cool box idea. OK they can run from 12V (so you don't need to uprate through an inverter, lose efficiency, to downrate back to the cool box). Yes for small volume storage they can be very effective - I relied on a Halfords one for a couple of years whilst tenting, but primarily only powered whilst I was driving to and from sites, and with a couple of ice cooler block things thrown in to keep cool for 24 hours once I was pitched up But very few have any temperature control so they will continuously. My box says 40W input at 12V. If my figures are right that's 80Ah out of your battery over a 24 hour period.
 
Kannon Fodda said:
I'd be wary of the powered cool box idea. OK they can run from 12V (so you don't need to uprate through an inverter, lose efficiency, to downrate back to the cool box). Yes for small volume storage they can be very effective - I relied on a Halfords one for a couple of years whilst tenting, but primarily only powered whilst I was driving to and from sites, and with a couple of ice cooler block things thrown in to keep cool for 24 hours once I was pitched up But very few have any temperature control so they will continuously. My box says 40W input at 12V. If my figures are right that's 80Ah out of your battery over a 24 hour period.
Click to expand...

Do they really not turn off when "at temperature" and run continuously?

You're right at 80ah.

40w / 12v = 3.33amps
3.33amps X 24 hours in a day= 79.92ah!

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A generator isn't a bad shout to be fair.
I'm in this limbo of spend the money on a really decent battery and not worry so much if I drain the life out of it being off grid - not lead acid,OR have very limited items running off 12v system and lead acid batteries perhaps.....
I'll have to stay on site so want to keep entertained ie with TV and phone charged on an evening. I've got a little 12v cool box I use when camping plugged into cigarette lighter so was gunna use that.
Maybe I'm just over complicating things. What would you lot do in my situation is what I'm getting at anyway?
 
CamperJack said:
Do they really not turn off when "at temperature" and run continuously?

You're right at 80ah.

40w / 12v = 3.33amps
3.33amps X 24 hours in a day= 79.92ah!
Click to expand...
Probably you can get sophisticated ones, if you pay the price, with temperature control. The average ones are basic with a small fan (that will be quite audible), using something called the peltier effect, whatever that is. The Halfords 24L one I have (which has excellent reviews) just runs 24/7. Leave it running too long and it was capable of starting to freeze stuff.

If based at work, the OP may be able to find somewhere to plug the box in during the day (there are adaptors for the 12v to run off mains), so doesn't need to then be run evenings from the van?

Phone charging, perhaps get a USB based battery charger thingy. See something like Anker Power bank. Would keep a phone going for a fair few hours and again may be able to find somewhere to plug it in during the day.

Now you are down to a bit of power for lighting and TV and/or a laptop. Make sure its a standard laptop, and you should be able to run that off 12V. TV should also be a 12V version. Lighting, make that LED. Now you can probably get away with a couple of 100Ah standard leisure batteries - Varta LFD90 for the 3 nights, but you may well need to put it on EHU (hook up) once you are back home ready for the next time away. Remember that, unless you go for expensive GEL or even Lithium, most standard batteries won't last very well if you discharge regularly below 50% so you for 100Ah of use, you need 200Ah of standard battery.

Other consideration may be heating. Van will be OK spring through Autumn, but if you are staying out over the cooler months, will you keep warm?
 
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If you are not going to be near anyone that can be mad about a genny running , thats the way to go i reckon.
 
I would encourage you to look at your appliences and calculate your requirements. This is the only way to know.

Take your items watts rating, and devide them by 12v (your battery voltage). This wil give you the number of amps the item will use an hour. Then multiply that by the number of hours it will be used.

Say you watch 4 hours of TV. Your TV might be 35 watts.

So 35 watts / 12v = 2.9 amps
2.9 X 4 hours = 11.6 amphours.

Do this for everything, than add it all together, multiply by 3 for your three days and multiply the total by 2 because you need twice the capacity in amp hours because only 50% of a lead acid leisure battery is usable before you start to damage it.

That will give you the size of battery.

At a guess I think you'll be okay with 2 110ah batteries. But it depends if you get a fridge or not. How many hours you watch TV. Etc etc.

This video explains how to do the sums in a really simple and easy to understand way. It's what made it al click for me. It's brilliant!

 
I was at at a fun rally ,my first one , in Newbury, It peed down for three days batterys conking out.
I have an onboard genny on my hymer but didnt want to fire it up . Had a look outside and heard about five gennies going .

Fired mine up and sorted .

Have been in remote areas in Scotland with other vans low on power sharing the genny charging them .

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If I understand you correctly you want to charge up at home then whizz away for 3 days and then be back and charge again.
If you dont have solar and can afford the money then Id say 100ah lithium or more if you can afford it.
on ebay circa £420 - £450 at the moment then if in future you add solar/b2b you have some decent capacity with faster charging ability
 
We don't generally use campsites at all, so we rarely get to be on EHU. We have a 100 ah gel battery and 2 100watt solar panels on the roof. We don't really watch that much tv, but we do charge a lot of different gadgets as well as an ultra-light laptop. Of course, we run lights (but have converted everything to LED) as well as a SOG fan when the loo is being used. Even in winter with the heating on we've never really run out of power but we are quite disciplined on our power usage though.
At the moment, the only thing a 100ah battery and a single solar panel won't sort is your refrigeration. As we are in a coachbuilt we have a 3 way fridge which runs on gas, so avoids that draining our power.
What van do you have? Is there any way of installing even a small, secondhand 2 or 3 way fridge? If not, what is the fridge going to be used for? Could you use a fridge at your workplace during the day and a coolbox overnight?
What do you need the inverter for? If the laptop, are you sure you can't use a cigarette lighter style charger? It would save you a ton both in terms of cash and also wasted energy!
 
If you're able to use a generator the cost can be free , if this is temporary buy a good used one , I've got a Honda EU20i

I might never use it but I could sell it for what I paid in an hour , you can buy the most expensive battery in the world , but used, people will just assume it's knackered
 
Ursheeee said:
A generator isn't a bad shout to be fair.
I'm in this limbo of spend the money on a really decent battery and not worry so much if I drain the life out of it being off grid - not lead acid,OR have very limited items running off 12v system and lead acid batteries perhaps.....
I'll have to stay on site so want to keep entertained ie with TV and phone charged on an evening. I've got a little 12v cool box I use when camping plugged into cigarette lighter so was gunna use that.
Maybe I'm just over complicating things. What would you lot do in my situation is what I'm getting at anyway?
Click to expand...
If you'll be parked up on a work site where it won't disturb anyone, a genny is the obvious answer.
 
Another possibility is a Lithium PowerBank (can't think of the brands at the moment). They come with combined inverter and are portable. A universal solution (but not cheap), so long as you can top up regularly (which I think you can?).

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Shopping list for you😊:

2 x 150w solar panels
1 x MPPT controller
2 x 80ah gel batteries
1 x Mobicool FR40 compressor coolbox

Cooking with gas is great because it warms the van up 😎👍
 
Ursheeee said:
I need to install a leisure battery (or 2 in parallel) in my van for when I start a new job. I'll be working 3 days/nights on at a time and electric hookup will not be available where I park for the 3 nights.
I'm looking at installing split charge relay to charge the leisure battery(s). I will require enough life to run some 12v led lighting, a TV, phone charger, cool box and microwave and maybe laptop. So a double USB socket from an inverter I was thinking.
Shower facilities are provided at work so no need for anything other than the above and most of the electric is going to be used in the evenings when I'm not working but staying on site.
What battery, if any would you say would suit this application?
Click to expand...
Lithium Battery pack.
It does it all and portable.
Sssspensive though..
Mitch
 

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