How to Ensure That Your Caravan's Batteries Are Ready for the Upcoming Season

The holiday season is ahead and you will be dreaming about pleasant trips into the countryside with your family aboard your trusty caravan. Now is the time for you to make sure that the vehicle is ready for these adventures, however as you don't want to risk a breakdown during one of those getaways. In particular, you will need to look at the power system and the batteries to ensure that all is well. What do you need to consider here?

Preliminary Checks

Firstly, you will need to check how the batteries are charging and should plug the van into the mains power outlet before letting it run for several hours. When this is underway, check to see if any of the charging cables are warm or hot to the touch. They shouldn't be and it could indicate some wiring issues, if so.

How to Assess Individual Condition

You need to determine the individual condition of each battery by disconnecting it from the inverters and the mains power. Remove all the cables carefully and tape the ends with insulating material, so that they don't touch anything and short out. Once everything is disconnected, have a look all around the battery to look for cracks or bulges, stains or corrosion. If you find any of these or any leaks, the battery will need to be replaced.

What to Look for

With all the batteries disconnected from any cables, test the voltage of each using a multimeter. If you have two or more batteries connected in parallel, then the voltage should be roughly the same for each. If you find an issue with either of them then you need to replace both, as you should always swap out the entire set when any anomalies are discovered. It's not a good idea to match batteries of a different age, as if you do so and one is more efficient than the other, it can put the "better" battery under so much strain that it can cause a failure, anyway.

How to Get Additional Help

If you find anything that you're not happy with and are not sure how to proceed, you should take the vehicle to a caravan service centre, so that they can do a comprehensive load test on each individual battery. The centre will have a special device that can figure out if one battery is over-performing and whether each has the ability to deliver current, while also retaining voltage.