Charger on ehu doesn't seem to work properly

Hi there
I've got an Autosleeper Pollensa on a Peugeot boxer frame  (2001). I've had it since July and I've had quite a few issues with it! Mainly to do with battery but thought I'd got that sorted since I had an auto electrician look at it and he was able to sort it out. However, here I am only a couple of months later - been on my latest campsite for 3 days and yesterday noticed the battery was going down a little bit. By the evening, it was showing completely dead ( though the TV still worked?) though it did pop up a little to read 10 ( but still in the red). This morning when I woke it was completely dead again and nothing will turn on. I checked the electric charger yesterday and it was on but making a bit of a weird noise.

I'm currently running the engine to see if that helps but I'm screwed if not! Does anybody have any experience of this - any advice etc? I've checked fuses and they're all fine.

Thanks in advance

Couple of things  :-   Is the battery coming back to life with the engine running?       To rule out the EHU, is the MCB on the hook-up post okay -  it hasn't tripped??    Is there a light on the battery charger which would indicate that it is getting power from EHU.     It certainly seem a possibility that the charger is faulty.    Can you remember what the problem was that the auto electrician sorted.
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Good luck

On the later Pollensa control panel (Grey/black panel on the wardrobe wall) there's a three-position rocker switch that controls the charging when on EHU. Central is off, down one way charges the vehicle battery, pressed down the other way it charges the leisure battery. Earlier (cream coloured) panels are different & I'm not sure if there's a control. 

In addition to BobK's list, it would be worth checking the fuses - on our van a fuse blew, isolating the leisure battery from everything else, so on EHU the charger worked, but no power was going to the battery. 

If the charger is making an unusual noise that may be the culprit.  Something I hadn't realised is that when on EHU the 12v stuff (pump, lights, etc.) is still running from the leisure battery. The EHU runs the charger, which keeps the battery topped up. So basically the battery is giving out power on one hand, and getting topped up by the charger on the other hand. If the charger isn't working the battery will run down.  

It may be worth asking the campsite staff if they have a charger you could borrow; you could plug it into one of the van's 240V sockets (on EHU, obviously) and use it to try charging the leisure battery.

BobK wrote:Couple of things  :-   Is the battery coming back to life with the engine running?       To rule out the EHU, is the MCB on the hook-up post okay -  it hasn't tripped??    Is there a light on the battery charger which would indicate that it is getting power from EHU.     It certainly seem a possibility that the charger is faulty.    Can you remember what the problem was that the auto electrician sorted.
.

Good luck

So I turned the engine on for about half an hour and the battery is now showing as fully charged - I've used a couple of battery systems and they're working but are affecting the battery reading which makes sense it it's only nominally charged. The issue the auto electrician fixed was a loose connection.

I don't have the newer version with switches unfortunately I've got the cream panel. I suspect that it is the charger, one of the many people I took it to see when trying to fix the issues before said he didn't like the sound it made but it was a big job they couldn't do. Hopefully I can fix it without bankruptcy - I live in it and was planning to stay in the same campsite for a while over winter. Don't want to have to unplug everything to drive it round just to bump the battery every other day

Poppythepeugot wrote:
So I turned the engine on for about half an hour and the battery is now showing as fully charged

In case you're not aware, the circuit that charges the battery while the engine is running is not very effective on most/all A/S conversions, so the battery may appear to be fully charged, but it won't be. If you were to leave it for half an hour you would find that the voltage had dropped back significantly. Typically I would expect it to be less than a quarter charged in those circumstances.

However, what you were told about the changing the charger really isn't true - unless there is something odd about your model, it should not be massively difficulty to replace for someone who knows what they are doing.

As an interim solution, it should be relatively simple to buy a modern battery charger and simply run from that while you are on EHU, with the charger wired across the leisure battery to keep it topped up. The size of charger will depend on what 12V electricity use you have during the winter, but on most A/S models this is not particularly high as they (almost) all have mains operated fridges.