Planning a Leisure Battery - Phase Three

So by this stage I will have a leisure battery wired into my electrical system. It powers all required accessories and will not drain the driving battery when it runs out of juice. It can be charged by driving or by plugging into the onboard charger. At the moment getting mains power into the van entails running a power cord in through the window. Cheap, not very tidy and not great when it rains. The next step is to sort out a mains hookup.

I need to look further into this when the time comes but in a nutshell it seems you get a socket attached to the body of the van - preferably under the van so as to not cut into the paintwork. The outside mains plugs into this. This gets passed into some safety circuitry and then connected into the internal wiring of the van. In this way you can power everything and charge everything simply by plugging the van itself into the mains.

At this stage it would probably become sensible to put a ZIG panel into the mix. This is an LCD readout showing the state of all the electrics in the van. It would be built into the side panels somewhere.

A HUGE thanks to the members of the Brick yard forum for their help figuring all this out, especially EnergySolutions, McGuyver, T5-KTM, ECB and Acijai!

Planning a Leisure Battery - Phase Two

The next phase is to build all the phase one stuff into the electrical system of the van. This will need a professional outfit to do and will require that I pick a location for the battery and charger to live permanently inside the van. Picking that location will be key as it needs to be as efficient as possible in location.

In order to make sure that the appliances which are plugged into the leisure battery don't drain the driving battery you need a split circuit relay. This stops the main battery from being used to power your fridge and stuff and costs about £30. This gets added in when the leisure battery gets wired into the main wiring system.

So now when driving the alternator charges both batteries but when stopped the leisure battery disconnects from the rest of the system and powers all the accessories connected into it. The charger is still only connected to the leisure battery and only charges that battery, but the main battery is charged when driving as it always was. When the charger is hooked up all the accessories running off the leisure battery run effectively off the mains power.

At this stage I'll need to decide exactly how many 12v sockets I want and where I want them and have them wired in place in the back of the van. I'd also like the light circuits to be connected to the leisure battery so that I can leave them on for long periods of time without risking the driving battery. Same applies to the stereo so this can be left on for hours whilst parked up without affecting starting the van. Again this is stuff the pros will have to do.

This phase will cost about £30 in parts for the split charge relay and then I expect fairly large costs for a professional to wire everything up. I'll also no doubt need to pay a bit for the housing to hold the battery and charger in a permanent place inside the van. Some thought needs to be given to exactly where this is going to go.

Once this phase is complete I'll have not much more than at the end of phase one apart from the fact that everything will be built into the van and neatly tidied up and invisible, plus the leisure battery will also automatically be charged when driving but will still have a mains charger available built into the van.

Planning a Leisure Battery - Phase One

Something I like about campers is the ability to run lights and fridges and laptops and such all without the chance to drain the driving battery. I've been looking into this. It seems there is a lot to consider here. You need a secondary battery which is not the same type as the main driving battery. This leisure battery is designed to cope well with slowly being used up and going comepletely flat and then being recharged. It is very different to the starter battery in cars which deliver huge power for a very short time and then like to be recharged straight away by the alternator. The Leisure battery will cost about £95 including delivery.

In order to safely connect 12v appliances to the battery you need some addons: I'm going for some Quick release terminals which are very secure once fitted, safe and will allow multiple sockets to the attached to them. These are about £7 for the pair. And then to enable my 12v appliances to be plugged in I'm going for these water proof 12v double sockets. They have an inline fuse built in and simply attach to the battery via the terminals. They are about £10 each including delivery.

All that gives me a standalone leisure battery which I can plug two appliances into safely. However after a few hours this battery will eventually run out of steam. So I need a way to charge it. As a first step I'm not going to plug the leisure battery into the van's electrical system, it will be standalone. So it won't get charged by the alternator. I'll need a separate charger for it. I'm going for this ring smart charger which will enable me to charge the leisure battery by connecting it up to the battery with jumper leads (and with something more permanent later) and then simply plugging it into the mains. With the help of a mains hook up cable (see Accessories) I will be able to charge the leisure battery and power all the 12v accessories I connect to it from the mains when on a campsite. The charger is about £59 including delivery.

Once this phase is complete I'll have a leisure battery which can be charged from the mains, is totally independent of the driving electrics, is safe and which has 2 x 12v safely fused sockets attached. And I can leave that all at home when driving around and pop it into the back of the van when going camping, along with the 12v coolbox and other accessories on the list.

Total cost of this initial outlay would be about £95 + £7 + £10 + £59 = £171 parts. There is no labour charge as nothing is being done by anyone save me.

The trouble I'm having here is trying to source the specific leisure battery I have my eye on. It always seems to be out of stock. So I'm now looking around the net to find a suitable replacement to this battery.