Flat leisure battery!

Yes, the alarm and tracker will have drained the battery. You don't say how big the solar panel is, but I had to supplement my 100 watt roof panel with an 80 watt one, sided in the front window, to get my battery through winter.

I think that you have a dead battery and that it will need to be replaced. I doubt it the battery is covered by warranty as you, albeit inadvertently, let it go flat.

I had this problem with the battery losing charge while sat in storage. Got a sparky with a meter to check out the electrics. He tested the fuse box and identified the control panel was drawing power continuously although it was off.

It seems it is not hard wired into the water pump and heating but connected to them by Bluetooth. So 24/7 the control box is sending out messages 'hello I'm here' and consuming power.

Simple solution was to pull out the battery fuse when it went into storage. Problem solved.

Put fuse back in when you want to use the caravan.

Tracker, if fitted, runs off its own hidden battery.

In a gold storage unit with three locks on the van so not fussed if the alarm does not work.

But your insurance company might think differently 🙁

When I stored my `van in offsite storage, I used to swap over the battery every month for a fully charged one 

The battery may be salvageable; if you've got a smart battery charger it's worth a try otherwise it's lesson learnt I'm afraid.

I find that if our caravan is in storage for longer than about 2 months I need to put the battery on charge. I never bother putting the alarm on anyway but if I did that timeframe would no doubt come down considerably.

Just read this on another forum.

Hi all
Got my caravan out of storage to prepare for our holiday. The battery was dead showing about 5volts (left a light on), from past experience this meant a trip to the battery shop for a new battery. I tried my charger (Aldi Special) and wouldn't charge. A friend suggested I borrow his Ctek charger. So after reading the instructions I connected it up and after 48hours the charger went through an 8 point charging cycle and now seems to hold its charge of 13.4v
Brilliant.
I thought i would share that with you all.
Regards

Tracker, if fitted, runs off its own hidden battery.

It very much depends on the tracker. The one fitted to our caravan was only intended to run it short term, in the event of the leisure battery being disconnected, not for several months.

Our Swift caravan has a 10W roof mounted solar panel as part of its original construction. It has unfailingly kept the battery topped up while in storage over winter. The motor mover also works after that period, so the battery is nowhere near flat. There are two alarm systems. One being a manufacturers fit tracker which has an internal battery with a five year life expectancy, after which the tracker contract expired. The fob alarm system has an internal control box with an internal battery floated across the van battery.

When our tracker contract expired we fitted a TruTrak alarm. There’s just two wires across the battery feed. It’s far more sophisticated than the original fit tracker, and cheaper and it does clever things like monitoring the battery state. I’m lying in bed so I’ve just checked on the van which is 4 miles away. The battery state is 13.07V. So there is an economic solution available without draining your battery.

We have a 2018 Swift Challenger with a 100W solar panel as well as alarm and tracker fitted. The leisure battery is now 8 years old and has been kept fully charged by solar energy, both in this caravan and our previous one.

Swifts have an isolation switch on the Sargent Power Supply unit which turns off all 12v supplies except to the alarm, tracker and motor mover, if fitted. If this switch is left in the ON position then there are 12v parasitic loads which could exceed the contribution from the solar charger, especially on short, dull winter days. The full features of the a Swift Command system are not available when the isolation switch is OFF but the alarm and tracker still function and the Locate and Battery State options are still operational.

Thats exactly what I did when my van was in offsite storage and still do now it is stored in my garden as i like to charge the battery properly