I got chills...

[mchbiker]

First night away, a chilly night in Great Langdale with no hook up.

We parked up at 4pm. No problem the heater will cover that. Fridge on level 3 - keep the wine cool. Heater on level 1 - keep the chill off. By bedtime (heater was off 5.30 - 7.30 while we were in the pub) the battery was down to 20%. Oops that's not part of the plan. I turned off fridge and heater overnight to save the last 20% for a morning defrost but to no avail, flat battery in the morning. Blooming cold too! What are the realistic expectations and does a fault sound possible? Thanks.

 

[andyinluton]

Should last 3 or four days without hookup if your batteries are fully charged to start with.

Have you ever charged them from the mains? are you sure you've got two leisure batteries? If down to 20% you may have damaged the batteries. What else have you got turned on? anything plugged into the 240v socket? even an adapter plugged in there means the inverter will be running.

 

[mchbiker]

Brand new van. Put them on charge Friday for a couple of hours to check I could fathom everything out ok. Nothing on charge. As you say I expected circa 3 days maybe less in the cold but at least one night.

 

[WelshGas]

First night away, a chilly night in Great Langdale with no hook up.

We parked up at 4pm. No problem the heater will cover that. Fridge on level 3 - keep the wine cool. Heater on level 1 - keep the chill off. By bedtime (heater was off 5.30 - 7.30 while we were in the pub) the battery was down to 20%. Oops that's not part of the plan. I turned off fridge and heater overnight to save the last 20% for a morning defrost but to no avail, flat battery in the morning. Blooming cold too! What are the realistic expectations and does a fault sound possible? Thanks.

4 days with Heater and Fridge + Lights and iPad and WiFi, and that was before fitting the Solar Panel.

1. Takes more than a couple of hours to charge up 2 Leisure Batteries. Engine Alternator will only take them unto 80% or so.
2. Need at least 24hrs for 1st Charge and then at least 12-24 hrs every month.
3. When you had them on Mains Charge did you have the Plug symbol, Bottom R, on the Control Panel Display and was the voltage display about 14.4 v?

 

[mchbiker]

Thank you. They were at 100% so stopped mains charging. I'm running the fridge at present as an experiment. I'll then try another mains charge. Yes to all on point 3.

 

[WelshGas]

Thank you. They were at 100% so stopped mains charging. I'm running the fridge at present as an experiment. I'll then try another mains charge. Yes to all on point 3.

Switching the Heater On and Off uses more power than leaving it running at low.

Also the Control Panel is not that accurate.

One other thing. The 2 Leisure Batteries are wired in Parallel. The Battery Charger and 1 Battery is in the base of the Wardrobe and the 2nd one is in the base of the front passenger seat with the Leisure Fuse Box. There is a 80amp fuse connecting the two batteries.

 

[mchbiker]

Heater was just left at lowest setting and came on every now and then. If something is amiss I'll let VW look. At least everyone has confirmed expected life as I started to doubt myself that I dreamt it. It was a chilly first morning with no heating, spirits were low. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[mchbiker]

Now 30% after 4 hours on level 1 fridge so must be an issue.

 

[andyinluton]

Check the 80 amp fuse - I think if its blown you will only have 1 battery connected. Also check under the wardrobe, theres a hatch in the boot, make sure the 2nd battery is there & actually connected.

 

[mchbiker]

Van going into dealer on Thursday. Fingers crossed for a speedy resolution.

Hoping then we can enjoy more views like this in Great Langdale Cumbria.

 

[larrylamb]

First night away, a chilly night in Great Langdale with no hook up.

We parked up at 4pm. No problem the heater will cover that. Fridge on level 3 - keep the wine cool. Heater on level 1 - keep the chill off. By bedtime (heater was off 5.30 - 7.30 while we were in the pub) the battery was down to 20%. Oops that's not part of the plan. I turned off fridge and heater overnight to save the last 20% for a morning defrost but to no avail, flat battery in the morning. Blooming cold too! What are the realistic expectations and does a fault sound possible? Thanks.

An unfortunate first night experience, deffo sounds like a fault, hope you get sorted soon. Next time will be much better

 

[mchbiker]

My pal Archie waiting to set off on the first trip. With the cupboard behind the passenger seat, legroom is surprisingly limited. He seemed to enjoy himself.

 

[2into1]

Have you seen the huge thread by GrannyJen regarding premature discharge of the batteries? Make sure you are fully charged before reading it.

It does sound like a problem to me, but '4 days heater and fridge' sounds optimistic in the other direction. I'd need to know if that's using the heater for a couple of hours per day, or all evening & night.

 

[andyinluton]

I would suggest a read of all the posts on here regarding batteries etc
then search the downloads for the electrical schematic that shows how the batteries are all connected, you will then probably know far more than most of the dealers.


4 days for the fridge & heating shouldn't be too optimistic at this time of the year, the fridge has little to do & once up and running the heater doesn't draw much current, effectively its only a 12v fan

 

[WelshGas]

Have you seen the huge thread by GrannyJen regarding premature discharge of the batteries? Make sure you are fully charged before reading it.

It does sound like a problem to me, but '4 days heater and fridge' sounds optimistic in the other direction. I'd need to know if that's using the heater for a couple of hours per day, or all evening & night.

4 days over Christmas 2014, fridge on Level 4 and Heater on level 1 for a total of 89 hours. We were in the Van from 2200 - 0900 hrs each day using lights and WiFi.
Leisure Battery voltage dropped from 12.7 to 11.1 volts.

The fridge was cooled before we left whilst on mains, and heater started as soon as we arrived, so all the heater had to do was maintain temperature rather than warm up a cold van.

I regularly manage 3 /4 days without any problems when visiting my daughters small holding during the winter months and tend to leave the heater on low rather than stop/starting it. Oh, and I had the roof down because of the weather back in 2014.

 

[mchbiker]

Have you seen the huge thread by GrannyJen regarding premature discharge of the batteries? Make sure you are fully charged before reading it.

It does sound like a problem to me, but '4 days heater and fridge' sounds optimistic in the other direction. I'd need to know if that's using the heater for a couple of hours per day, or all evening & night.

I remember reading the post, but struggled to find it.

 

[Stoneybroke]

This may be the one you're referring to.

https://vwcaliforniaclub.com/threads/a-feeling-of-disappointment.11023/

9+ pages

 

[mchbiker]

This may be the one you're referring to.

https://vwcaliforniaclub.com/threads/a-feeling-of-disappointment.11023/

9+ pages

Thanks...a quick re-read reminded me of the plethora of possible causes. My VW dealer questionaire came through yesterday so they need to fix this before I reply. At the moment I have every confidence in them, ahem.

 

[cpjb@btinternet.com]

Apologies for a slight diversion here, but I hear in many posts that power level 1-2 on the heater is very effective.

I've found that I generally need to put turn it up to 4 or 5 to get significant heat into the van. Anybody else find that to be the case?

 

[WelshGas]

Apologies for a slight diversion here, but I hear in many posts that power level 1-2 on the heater is very effective.

I've found that I generally need to put turn it up to 4 or 5 to get significant heat into the van. Anybody else find that to be the case?

On the coldest days 3/4 by day and 1 at night. In shirtsleeves by day.
Run on 7 for sauna.

 

[mchbiker]

Van in VW on Thursday. All batteries tested ok. Cali expert at HQ said sometimes batteries needed a 2-3 cycles of drain/recharge from mains to be optimised. They asked me to try this. Not convinced as I think I've already done this but last night was the 2nd night of mains charging in a row. Let's see. On a positive note they washed it!

 

[shudycamps]

First night away, a chilly night in Great Langdale with no hook up.

We parked up at 4pm. No problem the heater will cover that. Fridge on level 3 - keep the wine cool. Heater on level 1 - keep the chill off. By bedtime (heater was off 5.30 - 7.30 while we were in the pub) the battery was down to 20%. Oops that's not part of the plan. I turned off fridge and heater overnight to save the last 20% for a morning defrost but to no avail, flat battery in the morning. Blooming cold too! What are the realistic expectations and does a fault sound possible? Thanks.

That is why I would always reserve a campsite with amp enough to power a weeny size heater.

 

[mchbiker]

Brief update - VW have changed both of the leisure batteries (even though they confirmed they were ok on the previous visit). I have told them I don't think it's the issue but that was their preferred next step. The after sales manager tried to convince me that it was realistic for the batteries to be discharged by running the fridge for the day. I said that didn't seem to be the experience of users on this forum (any additional views/thoughts welcomed?). The display seems to drop very quickly to 0% and bounce back to 100% after minimal charging so I'm think this is more likely to be the issue - a faulty reading. I've managed to run the heater and fridge for an hour on 0% without either cutting out. Unfortunately as the vehicle used daily I've not had chance to see when it would finally cut out.

Has one had an experience of a faulty read out?

 

[TwentyOneThirtyFive]

Just do the maths on the fridge. I have an older setup, but it is pretty much the same.

Fridge has a power usage of something like 45w? So that's just under 4amps at 12volts. The battery capacity I have is 160 amp/hours. I guess the modern Cali is similar? So in simple terms, 160/4 = 40 hours.

It's not quite that simple, not the whole 160a/h is available. But more importantly, the fridge doesn't run at max power the whole time. Once at the set temp it comes on for a few minutes, goes off, comes on, goes off, etc. It will run until the voltage drops to 10.5v.

I've run my fridge (set at 5c) for 5 days (at Langdale campsite!) without hookup or starting the engine. That was end of August one year, so there was minimal lights usage and I think we started the heater once.

The heater does use a lot of power during it's startup phase, but once running it's quite low.

HTH

 

[MattBW]

I have a Waeco CF40 and as you say the compressor isnt on all the time. I did find some average power draws for it which I used to work out my solar requirements. Seems pretty good from real world tests.

Will be different to the VW fridge but comparable maybe.

CR50 -
1.4 Ah/h at +25°C ambient temperature,
1.7 Ah/h at +32°C ambient temperature,
both at +5°C interior temperature and -18°C in the freezer compartment

CF40 -
0.68 Ah/h at +20°C ambient temperature,
0.83 Ah/h at +32°C ambient temperature,
both at +5°C interior temperature