Leisure battery - How small is too small??

msmith · 2017-07-27 14:06:14

Im looking for a leisure battery to go ideally in the front of my Dispatch (engine bay) perhaps with a little jimmy-ing of the window washer fluid pipe! As I'm only looking to run a few lights (6 max) and a usb charger (iPhone) how small could I go, assuming i was only camping for a couple of days?

I been told a 40ah would do but also no smaller than a 80ah! Any help with this would be great!

Casper · 2017-07-27 14:55:39

MY last one was 75ah. Two night with 3-4 bulb (not LED) lights, radio and the odd bit power socket usage. 5pm till 1am ish and the battery was dead. Your 40ah may last a night.

Ricko · 2017-07-27 18:11:40

I was given a Yuasa YBX3054 12v 36Ah car battery by a mate, whilst it's not a leisure battery I'm only planning on running a couple of LED lights and a USB charger like the original poster. The dimensions are small enough that I considered mounting it under the bonnet.

msmith · 2017-07-27 23:21:23

Cheers guys. Im not looking for something that needs to last for hours in a row. A bit of bed time reading, a little music and a quick boast of power for the phone.

tee_cee · 2017-07-29 08:56:45

If you work backwards a little you can tell what capacity is needed. The figures are fairly rough, but it should help in making the decision.

Lights - if you use the 12V round aluminum surface mount types found on ebay, these are rated at 2.5 or 3 watts - which at 12V is 200-250mA. If you run 4 of these (probable overkill) then this would be 1A per hour.
For music a USB chargeable bluetooth speaker will consume much less than a car radio - say 500mA at 5V = 2.5 watts , which at 12V is 200mA per hour.
Likewise charging a mobile will be about 200mA per hour.
So for an evening, say 5 hours - lights would be 5A, music 1A, phone charge 1A max, which totals 7Ah.
Since you really should not run the battery below 50% - that would mean you need 14Ah, however if you assume that you only get 80% of the rated capacity, that would work out at 17.5Ah.
So if you had a 40Ah battery you would get 2 evenings on a single charge.
To be honest the 4 leds is overkill, most of the time I use a small LED spotlight which runs at 200mA.

I stuck my 80Ah battery in the engine bay, pictures are here http://blue-van.blogspot.co.uk/p/fittin … ttery.html

msmith · 2017-08-05 14:41:56

Cheers, yes iv come across what you did in your engine by and I would love to do the same, though I'm struggling to find someone that can sort it for me! I only want 4 small led spot lights in the back of my van running at Watts: 0.2 Each apparently so I'm hoping I can keep my battery size down, unless i can magic more room.

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#1 2017-07-27 14:06:14

Leisure battery - How small is too small??

#2 2017-07-27 14:55:39

Re: Leisure battery - How small is too small??

#3 2017-07-27 18:11:40

Re: Leisure battery - How small is too small??

#4 2017-07-27 23:21:23

Re: Leisure battery - How small is too small??

#5 2017-07-29 08:56:45

Re: Leisure battery - How small is too small??

#6 2017-08-05 14:41:56

Re: Leisure battery - How small is too small??

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