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.