We've just been given a second hand stannah stair for a poorly relative. I have the stair lift in place and the mains are connected ok.

However the stairlift only moves a short distance up or down when trying to use it. Reading the trouble shooting section in user handbook it refers to issues with charging the batteries as a potential cause.

Unfortunately when I went to collect the stair lift an electrician had already disconnected all wires from the two 12 volt batteries.

So I'm not totally sure I have reconnected the batteries properly.

I have three cables coming from a circuit board within; a red, black and orange cable, latter has an inline fuse

There are two 12V batteries. Ian summaries well the setup with response below:

Related post: http://howtomendit.com/answers.php?id=449298 the stairlift has a rail that lifts at the bottom with two outputs as Ian described.

In an another search (http://howtomendit.com/answers.php?id=90690) I found another comment which due to the number of wires I have I didn't fully understand.
Quote: 'Stannah or any other battery system wires are connected red wire to red lead on one battery the black lead from that battery to red lead on the second battery then black lead on second battery back to the board.'

So two questions

1) how do I connect the three cables?

2) the batteries seemed to be holding a charge when checking with a meter, but could they still need replacing?

Aj, April 2014

Hi Aj..........[firstly always turn the white isolator switch back of carriage off before doing any work on lift as you could short/blow fuses on main pcb and turn back on when finished].......[[You should only have the red/black wires coming from pcb and the orange inline fuse linked between batteries]] 1/..Connect red/black lead to main pcb first ,where they were connected to in the first place then run the two leads so they come up between the two main batteries..connect Red lead to red terminal on one battery and Black lead to Black terminal on 2nd battery,,then to make the circuit between the two batteries you use the orange inline fuse connector which one end goes to Red terminal on one battery and the other to Black terminal other battery,,so in total you have connected two 12v batteries together making 24v"s to run the stairlift ....Also when testing the batteries on lift you need to put your meter leads on the red and black wires to show total voltage in your case 24v then test run the lift if voltage falls below 21 to 22 volts the batteries either need replacing or leave them to charge overnight.......Hope this will help.........paul/portsmouth/uk

paul, April 2014