Power drain

My van is using 0.2 A when everything is turned off any suggestions to find out where its going

Well Dave, my parasitic current drain is down to 34 mA after some tracing and investigating. It was over 300mA at one stage. Below 50mA is considered acceptable. 200mA, like what you have can drain a battery in a few short weeks, especially with no solar in winter.

A bit of investigating should allow you to discover some culprits, although there may be no single outlier. It could just be an accumulation of many appliances.

First off, how are you measuring the parasitic current draw and is it accurate? If you battery monitor is reading that, confirm it by a inserting an ammeter In the battery supply or return path. That might not be easy for everyone to do. I have a battery isolator switch with binding posts that allow me to insert an ammeter before isolating the switch. You should use a good quality multimeter for this. Be sure there are no charging sources switched on when you do this, such as solar controllers etc. and that your split charge relay is in the isolated position.

So assuming you now have an accurate current reading. Now start pulling fuses in your fuse panel one by one and write down the residual current at each stage. You should be able to build an accurate picture of what circuits and appliances are drawing what.

In my case a big culprit was my pioneer stereo. When not on, it was always on standby and drawing 250mA, which is unacceptable. I have since installed and isolator switch for the stereo for when it is not in use.

I could get my parasitic current down to about 5mA if I wanted by putting an isolator switch on my propex heater, but I don’t want to do that as it would require resetting the propex ever time I switched it on. And, as I say below 50mA is good enough.

Goof luck. It is quite satisfying to get that current draw down.

Ok question for the Techies. What is the minimum wattage/amps/volts/hp/mpg/torque etc needed to keep 2 x 110 batteries topped up when not being used

Do you mind me asking if its the engine or leisure battery that had the drain?

Is it showing that when checking Dave?
It would use that much to preform the test,

With all fuses pulled and it is still drawing 200mA? Is it your battery panel showing this current?

I have 200 watt solar and still get a decent charge in the winter. The trick is to put enough on, so even in winter you are getting a return

A whole mine field Tommy. Ask twenty people. Get twenty different opinions. For me, I have the solar charging at 13.9 volts up until float charge. I then have it set back to 13.2 volts ( which goes against a lot of conventional thinking) There has been quite a few leisure batteries failing after a short life, and I think it could be due to being overcharged. At 13.2 volts, it will keep it topped off but won’t be stressing the battery. I’ll let you know in the coming years if it made any difference, good or bad

Yes

There's no tracker

I had to go back and double check how much current draw with the Pioneer on standby. I overestimated earlier. The figure is closer to 150mA. Still way to high.



With the stereo power disconnected, via an isolating rocker switch I installed in the wardrobe, the battery current sits at about 25mA, as seen on the Victron battery monitor. (The display resolution only shows 0.02 Amps flickering to 0.03 Amps - the actual current is about 35 mA as by Victron is about 5 mA out - no biggy).



And with the rocker isolator switched on, the Pioneer is drawing 160mA on standby -



With Pioneer switched on , and volume down to zero, over half an amp drawn.

I dont know , how would I check that ?

Agree with you on the 13.2v trickle charge

@rambler
Its a Schault EBL 220 box which controls everything so I dont really want to mess with it

And disconnect your mains charger to see

I take it that you are referring to the leisure battery side of things.

For Rambler,
The radio referred to is your "house" radio not your normal front dash radio.
You problem is that the radio is wired to a constant live positive.
It should be wired to a key off or main panel switch off controlled positive feed.
You have over came the problem by fitting a separate switch on the power feed.
Most appliances is snooze mode use similar power as to when they are working.

For Eirebus,
Disconnect you engine battery postive cable and about half hour later, check your draw. If there is a draw, I suspect that the relay for controlling the engine charge is stuck closed.
Modern van use a couple of watts per hour, for monitoring the alarm, mobilizing systems, ecu and so on.
If the relay is stuck closed, the habitation batteries will automatically be used with the engine battery, since they are linked together.
Unfortunately this relay may be part of the ehu charging unit circuit board.
I have heard of guy successfully soldering in a new relay to bypass the broken one.

I would first put a voltmeter across both sides of the split charge relay.



I know what that is but I don't know where it is

Dave, I never noticed your reply about to me about the Schault EBL 220. @rambler won’t get me unfortunately but @“The Rambler” will. I take it that means you have an integrated charge controller and so can’t easily disconnect the charger. That probably means you can’t get at the charge relay too easily either. If there is an easy way to put your voltmeter probes between the service battery positive, and the leisure battery positive, ideally you would measure 0 Volts (< 20mV) if the batteries are connected, and something higher if they are disconnected. The splitcharge relay is an ideal place to do that as the two battery positive terminals run to either side of the relay.

I’m going to see if I can get a manual for that controller. I wonder if the 200mA quiescent current is actually within the manufacturers spec.?

But Daffysparks suggestion to disconnect the service battery might still point you to the problem. The only problem with disconnecting that is well you know, you might loose your radio theft lock, radio stations, and possible knock on effects with electric windows, alarms etc. But if you could identify the service battery lead that feeds the split charge controller, it should be fused. So just pull that fuse.

Just reread your post there Ally. I’m not sure it could explain your solar constantly charging. Your Pioneer would be wired from the starter battery would it not? Or does your solar charge the starter and leisure?

Thanks guys I've parked this for the moment as I've ordered a solar panel and when it comes I'll have everything opened up and will get a better look at things, the biggest fuse I've found so far is 40A

Thanks Jon it's the habitation batteries, things got weirder over the weekend, parked up, fridge on gas drain was reading 300 mA not the usual 200???

The control panel gives reading of what power is being used and the batteries are losing power

Killiand, ammeter is set to the ‘amp’ range and in the usual run of the mill multimeters they usually have a max of 10a scale. The big difference when reading amps is that the ‘+’ probe is usually changed over to another port on the meter and the most important difference is that amps are measured in series and not in parallel........ if you read in parallel you’ll blow the crap out of the meter, or at least the protection fuse side of it.