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Got a motorhome, campervan or caravan? Want to know how to care for your domestic leisure battery, how to charge it, maintain it and generally keep it going, especially in winter? Or worried about it losing or not holding charge? Here’s everything you need to know about your motorhome leisure battery.
Don’t forget to grab your FREE motorhome maintenance checklist below
Let’s be honest- most new motorhomers or campervanners don’t really think about their batteries until they have a problem. Either the power goes, or the battery isn’t holding a charge or they arrive at their motorhome or camper after winter to find everything is flat and there’s no way to fix it.
If that’s you, don’t worry- you’re not alone. But a basic level of battery maintenance is important to keep your leisure batteries healthy and happy for their lifespan- and make that life span as long as it can be. Your motorhoming will also be much easier if you understand what your leisure battery is there for and how you can help it!
It can also help on your yearly motorhome habitation check (or if you do your own) if you have a basic understanding of how it all works.
So, let’s start at the beginning and go over some basics.
If you have a motorhome or campervan, you’ve probably got both an engine starter battery (the one which starts your vehicle and is commonly found in the engine bay) and a leisure or domestic battery.
The motorhome leisure battery is usually NOT in the engine, and is found somewhere in the camper habitation area. Ours is under the driver seat, but on our last van it was under the floor near the oven. Check your motorhome manual if you’re not sure.
In this post, we’re going to be focussing just on the leisure battery, so you shouldn’t need to go anywhere near the engine bay! We’ll be talking about the basics of leisure batteries, how to choose one, how to care and maintain them (especially in winter!) and what to do if they are losing charge, won’t charge or seem to be completely dead.
Don’t worry- this post isn’t for experienced electricians. You don’t need to understand amp hours, volts or ‘deep-cycle’ in order to care for your motorhome batteries. And no maths is required (ok, a teeny tiny bit might be- but I promise you can do it.)
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The domestic leisure battery runs all the power in the habitation area of your van, whenever you’re not plugged in to mains power. It is used for habitation lights, water, toilet, blown-air camper heating, 12v chargers and anything else electrical.
In order to be able to provide that power, the battery ‘stores’ it. Think of it like a bucket of water. You need to put power into the battery. When it’s full, no more power can be stored. Then, as you use the power, it’s drained down. Once it’s gone, it’s gone until you replenish the power.
The big difference between your campervan leisure battery and the bucket of water is that you CANNOT completely empty the leisure battery- doing this will kill it. In reality, you can only use about 50% of the power in your leisure battery before you need to stop draining and start recharging.
You could, but the other job of a leisure battery is to smooth out irregularities in the power. Without this, you could end up damaging appliances due to power spikes or having appliances which need constant power (like alarms or trackers) going off and on regularly due to power fluctuations.
However, if you plan to spend most of your time in your motorhome, campervan or caravan on a campsite, you don’t need to buy a top-of-the-range leisure battery as you won’t be putting it through as many cycles as someone who mainly stays off-grid.
The other thing to understand is that the power in your battery is not like water in a sealed container. Just like water in a bucket left outside on a warm sunny day, the power in your leisure battery will slowly… disappear (no, it doesn’t evaporate like water!)
It’s like when you get a static shock and your hair stands on end. Eventually, that energy just dissipates. The same thing happens to your motorhome batteries (both engine and leisure).
That’s why you often return to your motorhome, camper or caravan after winter or a period of inactivity and find the batteries flat. Even if you’ve turned everything off and you’re convinced nothing is causing the power to drain eventually, over time, the battery will be fully discharged and/or dead.
But don’t worry- with proper maintenance and care, you can protect your batteries, even in cold weather, and use them for several years.
The two types are not the same and you should buy the appropriate battery for the job.
Leisure batteries are designed for slow release over a prolonged period of time, followed by re-charging. This is called ‘deep-cycling’. Leisure batteries are sometimes referred to as auxillary batteries too.
You cannot use a leisure battery in your engine (it doesn’t have the ‘oomphf’ to get the engine started), but you could use an engine battery as a leisure if you really really had to. But it will not be anywhere near as efficient and we don’t recommend it.
There is a type of battery which can do both jobs (an AGM battery), but it’s not commonly used for motorhomes.
On our last motorhome, we had an electric bed. We loved the idea of this, because it made life easier, but, in reality, that thing was stupidly power-hungry. For this reason, we decided to fit a second leisure battery into the motorhome (and it’s one of the many reasons we decided to simplify and downsize our motorhome.)
On our latest van, and in several vans we’ve used, there has only been one leisure battery- and it’s been perfectly fine. We love going motorhome wild camping, and stay off-grid away from campsites as often as we can, and we still don’t feel the need for a second leisure battery (although we do have a solar panel, which makes a big difference.)
For information on how to find good wild camping places, WHAT to do when you’re there and how to stay safe, check out our step-by-step guide for motorhome wild camping in the UK and Europe, complete with database of 250+ overnight spots we’ve stayed with our motorhome.
Don’t forget to grab your free wild camping checklist here
Of course, the more batteries you have, the LONGER you will have battery power for. Note that I say longer, not more. You can’t fit 20 12v leisure batteries and suddenly have 240v power.
Do you mean how long can you use electrical items in your camper before the battery should no longer be used? That depends on the size of your battery and how much power you’re using. The more you have switched on, and the more ‘power-hungry’ the appliance, the quicker the battery will drain.
The number on the battery (for example, ''110'') refers to ''Amp-hours'' (Ah) which is the capacity of the battery- or how much power it can store. In simple terms, it could supply 1A for 110 hours or 10A for 11 hours.
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