I have turned the t6 on and the heater has come on. I have a leasure battery which I brought about 6 months ago so it's brand new. I'm check the battery level and it's green its on 2 bars so should be working. I don't under stand why I need to turn the van on for the heater 2 work. Its got enough power in the battery
This light has come on when I have started the engine
Yes I have just noticed if I start my van and the heater will start up and I can turn thr van off the battery is only 5 months old it had over half power. Weird
I agree that a BM2 will provide a more accurate indication of the battery voltage but it still won't rule out wiring problems to the heater. Also don't forget to check both +ve and -ve wires to the heater. If it is fitted with Eberspacher supplied loom it may be good to check the firmness of the fuse in the supplied fuse holder.@jamiemcc
If the heater is firing up when your engine is running, but not firing up when only pulling power from your leisure battery, then your wiring is ok, but this can only mean the leisure battery is below the voltage required to fire your heater into action.
It doesn't really matter that your leisure battery is relatively brand new at 5 months old.
Even a 1 day old battery can be run flat.
If it's down on power, it just won't work!!
As @rod_vw suggests, your control panel is a very basic indicator, your best bet is to fit a battery monitor like a BM2, which allows you to see exactly how much juice you have to power up your stuff from the easy downloaded App
For roughly £20 it's well worth it, in a lot of peoples opinion.
If you use the Forum search function, there are a few posts re buying & fitting 1
You can also rule out not having enough fuel if it fires up when running your engine.
Normally you need 1/4 tank of fuel to start up & run a heater.
The fuel feed to the heater from your tank is (should be) purposely set up like this, as a safety feature.
This is so you don't use all your diesel up whilst camping
In my opinion (without doing my own testing) if when the engine is running the voltage is rising enough to fire the heater up but it won't without then it's a voltage problem. He states that the leisure battery is almost new so provided that is charged the volt drop must be between the leisure battery and the heater but could be either +ve or -ve sides of the circuit. I always stress the -ve (chassis ground) as folks often forget that that is just as important as the +ve (battery) side of the circuit.
The light in the top picture shows the alternator (via the starter battery) is charging the leisure battery. The voltage readout for the batteries is useless when the engine is running as they just show the voltage from the alternator. You need to turn everything off and leave for about an hour for them to mean anything - even then they are very crude.
I'll only partly agree, it is more a case of understanding cable size, cable run lengths, correctly terminating cables and potential resistance points in poor quality switches and fuses however adequate fusing in the correct place in the circuit is essential. Going direct to the battery (or close depending on monitoring shunts etc.) will certainly reduce the possibility of problems but not always the ideal solution.A lot of these converters just bang the heater connections into an additional fuseboard/switch setup and introduce failure points instead of wiring directly to the battery as god intended.
