Problems with leisure battery

Hi. Thanks for that link. When I put the system on the mains. (Which is the only way to get power to the leisure area) no lights come on the Sterling unit at all. Should there be?
No, the Sterling should only power up with the engine running.
 
Hi. Thanks for that link. When I put the system on the mains. (Which is the only way to get power to the leisure area) no lights come on the Sterling unit at all. Should there be?
No, you only get lights when it’s running and it will only run when the engine is running.
however……….., if you sit in the camper in the dark and watch the Sterling it does do a brief blue flash every 20secs or so to show it’s in sleep mode.
 
James, forgive me if I am wrong but I think you misunderstand what the Sterling is/does.
in a brief nutshell it is a device to charge the leisure battery from the vehicle battery, it has no connection to any other device such as mains hook up, your internal power box, and internal charger or fridge etc.
it is smart enough to only take power out of the vehicle battery if there is a charge going into it ( otherwise you would have a flat vehicle battery).
So it will only turn itself on if the engine is running or you have connected a charger to the vehicle battery. If it doesn’t detect a charge going into the vehicle battery it goes into sleep mode with a blue flashing (very dim) light.
sorry if you already know all this but I wasn’t sure.
 
Just to add to the above, the starter battery needs to be above 13.6v or maybe 13.1 nowadays to switch on. Mine took about 15 minutes on charge from my ctek charger to reach the 13.6v. Just running the engine won't achieve that.
 
No, you only get lights when it’s running and it will only run when the engine is running.
however……….., if you sit in the camper in the dark and watch the Sterling it does do a brief blue flash every 20secs or so to show it’s in sleep mode.
Ah yes. I saw that. Thanks that’s really useful - next task try it when it’s running. Thanks
 
James, forgive me if I am wrong but I think you misunderstand what the Sterling is/does.
in a brief nutshell it is a device to charge the leisure battery from the vehicle battery, it has no connection to any other device such as mains hook up, your internal power box, and internal charger or fridge etc.
it is smart enough to only take power out of the vehicle battery if there is a charge going into it ( otherwise you would have a flat vehicle battery).
So it will only turn itself on if the engine is running or you have connected a charger to the vehicle battery. If it doesn’t detect a charge going into the vehicle battery it goes into sleep mode with a blue flashing (very dim) light.
sorry if you already know all this but I wasn’t sure.
Thanks. I am a bit new to this. So when I turned the engine on these were the lights that came on. Marked with red circles

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James, personally I would firstly check that the leisure battery is connected to the system. The easiest way would be to turn on the internal charger whilst on mains hook up and put a meter on the leisure battery terminals to see what’s happening.
if you don’t have a meter then leave it on for a few hours and then look at the level on the control panel.

the Sterling would appear to be working but the voltages are very low so let’s leave this out of the equation for the moment and concentrate on getting some charge into the battery via the inbuilt charger/ hook up
 
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Buy yourself one of these, you stick it in the cig lighter and it will give you the battery voltage

 
Buy yourself one of these, you stick it in the cig lighter and it will give you the battery voltage

Thanks Nigel.
I have tried to charge the battery for a whole day. While it’s on the charger it shows all lights on the leisure battery (fully charged) but when it’s off the mains all goes off again and it won’t switch off.
 
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