Battery and hook up.

[Marjorie71]

Hi

Hope this is in the right place, apologies if not.

We would like to install a leisure battery into our camper. Im a complete novice to this, can anyone explain in idiot terms what I need (I know a leisure battery!) and how to do it please? We would only run internal lights off the leisure battery.

Hook up - looking at a kit on ebay that supplies sockets and cables etc. We would like to run it through back of engine bay. Do the kits have all we need to prevent shocks from the van? The kit in particular has a n RCD. Is that enough? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321369251372?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sorry if the questions seem silly, but electrics confuse me :shock:

TIA

Sarah

 

[Happystamps]

Hi

Hope this is in the right place, apologies if not.

We would like to install a leisure battery into our camper. Im a complete novice to this, can anyone explain in idiot terms what I need (I know a leisure battery!) and how to do it please? We would only run internal lights off the leisure battery.

Hook up - looking at a kit on ebay that supplies sockets and cables etc. We would like to run it through back of engine bay. Do the kits have all we need to prevent shocks from the van? The kit in particular has a n RCD. Is that enough? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321369251372?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sorry if the questions seem silly, but electrics confuse me :shock:

TIA

Sarah

It's all entirely customisable and what you've specified isn't a huge amount. You can have anything from your interior lights to tv's coming out of the floor etc.

So, a simple 12V leisure battery just running lights would go something like-

Leisure battery with the negative side connected to the body of the van, and the positive side connected to a split charge relay. This in turn is connected to both the ignition switch, and the positive terminal of the "normal" battery.

The split charge relay is just a switch, but instead of being turned on and off with your hand, it's done by an electrical current. So in this instance, the "switch" is between your leisure battery and regular battery, and the "signal" is the power going to the engine when the ignition is on. When you turn the ignition on, the van charges the battery by virtue of it being connected to the charging circuit (the regular battery). When the ignition is off, the leisure battery is disconnected from the regular battery, and you can flatten the leisure battery and still be able to use your regular one to start up and drive away.

Still with me?

Now, you can fit an interior light that's just connected to your leisure battery, and why not. That'd just be... positive terminal of the leisure battery to a fuse (get yourself a cheap universal fusebox off ebay, maybe 4 fuses for 4 things), fuse to light switch, light switch to light, light to body of van (body is connected to negative terminal of battery, remember?

If that's all you want to do, that's all you need. You can add different 12v appliances to your fuse box if you like, things like a cigarette lighter socket for charging phones- or lighting cigarettes- a cool box or fridge, or you know, whatever. Your circuit would look a bit like this-




Sorry, I just scribbled it out at work. You'll also want (I forgot to drew it in) a fuse between the start/run battery and the split charge relay- a big sod, 20 amps or so.

As for RCDs and stuff, as I said before there's a world of opportunities with this stuff. A lot of people have chargers mounted in the van so they can plug it into the mains, 12V-240V adapters so they can run 240 volt appliances in the van, all sorts of business. RCDs, stuff like that are for the more complicated systems.

 

[Marjorie71]

Thanks very much for that. Made sense even to a numpty like me! Battery not as scary as I thought, We will probably also get a hook up cable and use it as we need for chargers and other things.
Thanks for taking the time to help,

Sarah

 

[VeeDubMan]

I'm installing a Zig CF9/240V hookup/split charge in mine at the moment. Just following this thread - http://forum.earlybay.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=52154

Some people may say the Zig unit is over-kill, but it allows your 12V (normally leisure battery driven) lights to be run off the 240V hookup and the 240V hookup will also charge your batteries. If you're going to campsites with EHU's, then it's worth doing imho

 

[Marjorie71]

Thanks for that. I'll look into it as two planned trips we've booked hook ups.