Berlingo Forum

Hi all,

I have seen a few motorhome enthusiasts among the Berlingo crowd and decided to ask for an advice.

Not quite a motorhome leisure battery question, but kind of the same. I have a 680W solar panel setup for experimenting at home, solar charge controller, etc. I am currently experimenting with an old exide car starter battery, but of course it is 4 years old and it does not last that long.
So, I decided to upgrade with two deep cycle ones for a 24V setup and ~100Ah each.

The question is, has anyone got experience with any of the deep cycle batteries. I am mainly leaning towards Banner (https://www.tayna.co.uk/leisure-batteries/banner/95751/), Varta EFB (https://www.tayna.co.uk/leisure-batteries/varta/led95/) and the Exide ET650 (https://www.tayna.co.uk/leisure-batteries/exide/et650/).
As far as I am aware only the Banner one is a true deep cycle one, maybe the Exide as well.

As usual, if you read any forums, one would always find bad things said about any of them. Let me know if you have run deep cycle batteries in your Berlingo motorhome and have had a good or bad experience with any leisure battery. Any other recommendation is welcome as well.

Many thanks indeed.

I used batteries from a UPS, not sure if they were designed for deep discharge, but they certainly were not starter batteries! I took them & the split charger out after a year as I wasn't really using them and have replaced them with a Lithium jump start pack that I charge via the 12v Aux socket.

I use 'leisure' batteries for another purpose - electric fencing - and have found them to be excellent. The voltage can be allowed to drop quite low but they always recover well when charged. The last one I purchased - I can barely pick it up - was from EuroCarParts here in Ireland and they even gave me a fiver for a traded in car battery. It was around 80 Euro. Lion Leisure Battery 679 - 105Ah | Euro Car Parts

I intend to draw ~40% out of them each day and let them be recharged to 100% before drawing again depending on the sun. I suspect that is on the heavy use side of things. The UPS batteries are probably Lithium or maybe not and while they are very good and one can draw more than 50%, there is just a bit too much initial outlay, hence my leaning towards the lead-acid ones.

Every time I buy a car battery from eurocarparts there is something wrong with it. My overall thinking was to buy the heaviest battery, as they are more likely to be deep cycle, i.e. thicker plates allow for more cycles of charge/discharge.

Even my 4-year old Exide car starter battery is kind of OK. Drawing approximately 50% (difficult to say) out of it is ~12.5Ah and the battery is rated at 77Ah, but my battery status tool says it is ~65% state of health, so probably <50Ah left in it and 12.5Ah is probably about right for a starter battery. My draw ~25A, so 1/2h, but at lower current it will produce more obviously.

Maybe worth contacting Tayna via phone or FB and see what they suggest?