On Tue, 2009-01-06 at 22:16 +0000, dave hearnden wrote: > For what its worth my comment is. > > You need to make sure the out put of the charger will be high enough, the > diesel heaters do actually take a lot out of the batteries, I know through my > own experience. > > We had a lovely Durite charger 12 amp four stage was running for 3 or 4 > years, but when the Makuni diesel heater come along (MX60), I was finding my > charger was on nearly maxmium all the time and if it was very cold, or we sed > the Makuni more often then 12 amp per hour was just not enough.
The Eberspächer technical manual says that it consumes 50W when running (120W during start up), so that's about 4 amps. In the current temperatures it's probably running about a quarter to a third of the time - say 7 hours a day. So I need to put back into the battery about 30 ampere hours per day. So, allowing a bit extra for the startups and some other electrical stuff on board, I need a charger delivering an average of 2 amps 24 hours a day. Are my assumptions/calculations above correct ? Thanks Steve -- Follow our waterways wanderings on www.justheaven.org.uk [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
