Anybody care to give me an idea what may of been happening here?
My cruiser has a starter and two 135 amp-hour leisure batteries on it's main engine. Both were new April 2006, are kept in the house over winter off the floor and periodically charged up. All the signs were that everything was fully charged before I went out, I then didn't run the engines apart from a short 20 minutes on Saturday morning, until the probem below sufaced. It has two alternators (the leisure charging one 90amp) and two 30W solar panels. I went out on Friday evening, and had the 12V fridge on, lights etc. Running the inverter Saturday evening the low voltage alarm began to beep. Later the fridge also cut out. During Saturday/Sunday night/morning in the early hours I was awakened by the water pressure pump trying to run but failing. When I awoke on Sunday morning I put my multi meter across the terminals of the two leisure batteries, both 0.00V. The digital voltmeter on the panel wasn't even showing anything, and the regulator for the solar panels also had it's ting light out. The starter battery was 12.7V. I was a bit concerned whether it was even safe to start the engine (what would happen if the 90amp alternator tried charging two completely dead batteries?) However, all was OK, (my clamp on ammeter only showed 25 Amps going in however), ran for 2.5 hours, then a friend brought his load tester down & the result was one was in near perfect condition, the other just off this.
I later put my multi meter in line and found with everything turned off there is still a draw of about 0.3amps.
I feel despite the load test being OK, and there were no further problems yesterday, I ought to buy new batteries anyway, as batteries shouldn't whatever be able to be 100% discharged without there being a serious problem.
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