Hi all, Hope you can help. I charged the caravan battery on 240, disconnected the mains and checked the battery 12.45amps. Connected the c-pap machine rated at 6.67a with nothing else on in the van. At 11:15 battery read 12.3, 12:30 12.24 amps and at 2:45pm the c Pap machine had shut down and the battery box in the boot was beeping. I checked the battery and it read 12.10amps. Has anyone got any ideas what could be the problem please? Your help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers Havago.
Hi Havago What amp hour is your battery? Without knowing that you cant work out how long it will last for. Also are you using the humidifier on your machine. I have no problem running my machine all night but I do not use the humidification when in the van and I have 210 amp hours of battery. Landy
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I assume you are talking about volts not amps. If your battery read 12.45 volts after taking off the charger it was a long way from fully charged. I'd be getting the battery tested and if it tests ok I'd be checking out my charging regime. If your cpap uses over 6amps a 120 ah battery would be working hard to keep it going overnight
As Terry says, I think you are mixing up volts and amps. Anyway, I have an 100Ah capacity battery and my CPAP pulls approx. 6Amps like yours. If starting with a fully charged battery I can easily run it overnight, plus other loads such as lights and TV. Does rather sound like your battery and/or charger need checking!
Hi. Thanks guys for your speedy replies. Firstly I am not technically gifted so can mistake things. The battery I have is 120 amps and the C-Pap is a Phillips Respironics REMstar Pro C-Flex running 6.67 amps. To-day after charging the battery on 240 volts, I turned it off and, with nothing drawing on the battery, checked it at 12.84. We have gone asking questions at 4WD caravan places and Battery World and the idea seems to be the battery is old ( I've had the van for 4 years and goodness knows how long it was in there before that. We think when something is connected it drops off the top charge. Well the short of it is I will take it to Battery World and get it checked out and go from there. I haven't worked out how to turn the humidifier off on the C-Pap and I'm not sure it would be a goer with the boss. Thanks again. I'll let you know how it goes. Cheers Havago.
Hi all. We bought a Ultimate Xtreme 120 AGM deep cycle battery, topped up the charge on 240, battery reading 13:21. turned off 240, plugged C-Pap in and ran as the boss uses it at 10:00am. Turned the C-Pap off at 6:30pm and battery still running strong showing 12:33. So I think our problem is solved. We intend to charge the battery with 120 solar panels when off power. Thanks again boys, much appreciated.
Well done for solving the problem! Just another suggestion from me, make sure you unplug the CPAP machine when you're not using it rather than just switch it off. Mine for example, uses 0.4Amps DC on standby, which although is a relatively small amount, still needs to be replaced somehow in a caravan so is worth saving!
