Leisure battery disaster...

My wife and I have just returned from a weekend break in our caravan at Normanhurst Court club site near Battle. The site is lovely set in trees and well laid out and deserving of another visit. 

We have a Bailey Rimini 2013 which we bought as our first caravan and have been touring, as work allows for the past three years.

Over this winter, I never got around to removing the leisure battery and found it tottaly flat prior to the vans annual service. 

So I removed it, took it home and charged it. So far so good.

The service was done and we went to Battle last Friday afternoon.

After the first night there seemed to be a strange smell in the van which I put down to the new memory foam toppers or dust on the heater unit. We went to the local pub for afternoon refreshment and on our return found the van interior stinking. We continued to blame the toppers and stripped the beds and put them in the car for the night.

that night, about 2am the carbon monoxide alarm bleeped, i sat up and could smell sulphur.The van was full of it and I woke my wife and opened the door and roof hatches. I could hear bubbling and then found the leisure battery to be steaming gas and very hot. Having shut the hook up off I managed to get the battery out and away from the van. It was still warm hours later. I was then able to hook back up and resume power-saved.

I was talking to a warden next morning and he did say he had heard of this happening before and was due to the battery deteriorating over the winter. My own fault and we felt lucky indeed.

I will now pay much more attention to wintering requirements and now we are looking forward to our next trip in June to Snowdownia.

Happy touring all.