Water Our van’s water tank holds 70** litres. There is also a separate “cistern” tank for the loo. Some folk don’t like drinking water from the tank so they carry bottled water with them. We carry a few bottles of tap water in the fridge for use in an emergency (like an empty tank!) or … Read more
Finally battery charging When I replaced the PDU with my version I did not bother with a battery charger. As we never had a hook up, there was no point But last week we spent a few days on a campsite – with a hook up!!! Maybe we are getting old. We didn’t really need … Read more
I think we have been very lucky with our heating. We have a Truma Ultraheat which can work of gas or mains electric. We use it on electric on those rare occasions when we are on a site, but is usually running of gas. There is a fan fitted to duct air into the cab … Read more
Damned Technology UPDATE I managed to flatten my leisure battery! Bummer. I left the van parked up with everything switched off but I forgot to switch off the fridge and it was on battery power. Now the fridge is switched off when the engine is not running BUT I left the fridge door slightly open … Read more
A new Leisure Battery From Part 6 This is an experiment – I’ve tried a brand new highly esteemed 110AH battery from Banner. Now I’m running with a five year old 44AH starter battery from Alphaline! We shall see what we shall see. Well we saw! The wee 44AH battery may have been OK, but … Read more
The wee solar panel The solar panel is only a 10W item and mounted under the skylight. It seems to work as predicted, even better really. After a day of sunlight the leisure battery was showing 15.6V. This is what the CTEK battery charger information calls “A reconditioning charge” There cannot be much current from … Read more
Making a professional job I had established that the original system using relays to switch everything was inefficient and my original lashed up modification drastically reduced the load on the battery. The mod was implemented using terminal strip fixed to the struts under the seat (where the leisure battery and PDU are located) and … Read more
Four years on It’s around four years since I wrote the last article on the electrics. The mods have worked very well, we have used the van two or three times a month without any problems. But the Banner Leisure battery was starting to struggle. Sometimes we would see the lights flicker as the water … Read more
We use the gas for heating, the fridge, and water heating (for showers). We have two Calor gas bottles. Only one came with the van, a 6kg one. We found that we could just fit 13kg bottles into the van so we bought one. For some silly reason Calor will not allow you to swap … Read more
Murphy’s Law The saga continues SO after all of the calculations and planning, there we were ready to set of for our first festival at Moffat. We had been been happy with our new battery but while I was arranging the van I noticed liquid in the battery box. Yep, it was battery acid. … Read more
