Camper Trailer Battery

Hi All,

I own a pioneer campers argyle camper trailer. Its a hardfloor camper which has a full sized queen sized bed in it.

It also has a deep cycle battery in it which charges two ways

1) Through an anderson plug from the D22 via a a dual battery controller
2) Through a multistage battery charger which charges when plugged into 240v

The battery is a Trojan SCS225 (http://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/datasheets/SCS225_Trojan_Data_Sheets.pdf)

Its a marine flooded deep cycle with a rating of 130Ah over 20 hours.

I'm thinking that the simple charging system is possibly one reason why the battery has failed. When stored the battery was never trickle charged which probably hasn't helped things.

I've done a bit of reading about multistage chargers and the best way to look after batteries. I don't think the current charging is the best. Maybe a DC-DC charger would be the best fit.

The battery I think is stuffed as its about 10 years old. The ends are swelling. The question is what do I replace it with? Do I stay with a flooded deep cycle, go GEL, AGM or maybe lithium. Thoughts??

Richard

10 years is exceptional Richard, thats near double the normal life for that style of battery. I'd go for a AGM, Lithium is great if you can afford it. Check if your multistage charger has a float mode, then keep it charging at home 24/7. Your alternator will never charge it fully and maintain it like a dc/dc charger so invest in one of them. Also never let the battery get below 50% capacity, if this happens regularly the lifespan is reduced dramatically. You should see 5-7 years out of it if you maintain it properly.

Sounds like a good run for any battery, I have a 7amp Ctek charger that I top up our camper battery with at home, we have a 100 amp AGM in it and it's 7 years old now, plus the Ctek has a rejuvenate charge and it works wonders IMO

As above. 10 years is exceptional life for a flooded battery. Running a "Recovery" from a C-Tek charger on the battery a couple of times might give it back some life too, but really, flooded cells are only good for 50% of their rated capacity (in this case, that means you have 65Ah available before you damage the battery - but that's for a brand new battery not a 10 year old one). Grab a FullRiver AGM 120Ah and have 80% of its capacity available - 96Ah.

Going Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) is a very expensive move while the technology is still so new but it's worth it. You get more capacity in half the weight ... you can drain a 100Ah battery to something like 90% of its capacity without worry, and even go to 100% a few times without harm (or so I've read). They require new chargers and battery meters but everything else (all the wiring, and all the pumps, lights etc) work the same.