Club 80-90 Forums

We are just about to have new electrics done in our van (has none now) and I wondered just what the plug sockets could be used for when the hook up is not on and it is just the leisure battery, could I boil a kettle for example? and does the fridge run from the leisure battery or only when a hook up is connected?

Fridge can run for a while, if you have a 12v kettle you could run that, but they take a lot of power or are slow. You obviously can't run 240v stuff without an inverter and a 240v kettle never- they use 3kw!!!

When the hook up is not on, the sockets are dead, you cannot use them for anything, they only work when "hooked up" to the mains.

By the way, you cannot boil an electric kettle off a Leisure battery (via an "inverter" which changes the 12 volts from the battery to 240 volts for "mains" equipment such as kettles and toaster etc). anyway because a battery is no where near powerful enough (in simple terms that is, but conveys the facts). The basic rule is = you cannot get any decent amount of heat (kettle, fan heater, hair dryer etc) from a leisure battery without flattening it in a matter of minutes.

Bumblemum wrote:We are just about to have new electrics done in our van (has none now) and I wondered just what the plug sockets could be used for when the hook up is not on and it is just the leisure battery, could I boil a kettle for example? and does the fridge run from the leisure battery or only when a hook up is connected?

What sockets are you having fitted?
There are two types. 12 volt d.c. and 240 volt a.c. or ''car battery/cigarette lighter'' type and ''domestic mains''
If you are talking about 240 volt 13 amp sockets, they are not connected to anything if you do not have a mains hook up so they will not do anything at all. It is common practice to run a battery charger from your hook-up to charge the leisure battery and this is usually hard-wired into your Zig unit and connected permanently to the leisure battery.
If you are talking about 12 volt d.c. sockets, they will not supply enough power to run a domestic electric kettle. There are some 12 volt kettles available but they only boil tiny amounts of water and take ages doing it. (about 20 minutes to boil one mug of water) Much quicker to use your hob burner. Think more of charging your phone etc on these sockets. The lighting and where fitted, a propex night heater, is the usual main use of the leisure battery. (The battery only powers the fan and ignition circuits, the heat comes from gas) You can buy an 'inverter' which converts 12 volt d.c. to 240 volt a.c. but they can only be used with low wattage appliances. These can be hard wired also but usually connect to the battery terminals directly
with ''crocodile'' clips.
With regard to your fridge, if it is the usual silent 3 - way absorption type of fridge, it will only run on 12 volt from the main battery and should only be used when the engine is running (ie when travelling to the campsite.) When on a campsite with 240 volt hook up it can be run on mains electricity. When camping without the benefit of mains electricity, the fridge uses gas to run.
Because batteries only supply relatively small quantities of electricity compared to domestic mains, think of 'lighting' from them and 'heating' from mains electricity or gas.

What they said

I have an inverter to run 240 volt stuff, but it only gets used for occasional laptop charging, its not much good for anything else.

Boil your kettle on the stove, and your fridge off gas (if it works off gas) and use 12 volt stuff for everything else

Bumblemum,
I don't have the answers but here are my ramblings on this subject.

I'm new to all this VW/camper malarkey, only having bought a T3 a few weeks ago, so one of the many things I've looked into is the electrics, and is on my 'too much to do list'. The van I bought has a load of 3 pin 240v sockets, 2 behind the driver's seat, 1 by the floor in front of the r&r bed and 2 more high up on the wardrobe in the back. I'm a little confused as to why it has so many, because if you are traveling/camping in a T3/25 where space in limited so why would you be carrying loads of 240v items and need 5 running at the same time.
From a noob's point of view there are 2 options, fully optimise the 240v sockets or concentrate on a 12v setup, but I've not yet decided which way to go yet.

One option for 240v is a high power invertor that auto switches mains hook up and leisure battery, but they can be expensive. An example is the Waeco SinePower range that can provide up to 2.5kW, the 1.5kW version is about £1k. The downside other than cost, is that the at 1-2.5kW a leisure battery won't last very long.

You are wasting your time trying to run anything 240v of any consequence off your leisure battery.

Yes you can buy inverters that will handle 1, 2 or even 3kW of power but the battery can't supply it. 1kW of power will require your poor little battery to shove out a rather hefty 84 amps continuously while the load is connected. Even if the battery could handle it you'd need cables the size of a baby's arm to supply the inverter.

I have a 500W (0.5kW) inverter which I use for my laptop and to charge phones (other peoples mostly) but if I ever needed to run anything as heavy as 500W I would start the engine and let the alternator supply the 44 amps the inverter would want. The cables feeding my inverter are 10mm2 by the way....

Tufty_B wrote:Bumblemum,
I don't have the answers but here are my ramblings on this subject.

I'm new to all this VW/camper malarkey, only having bought a T3 a few weeks ago, so one of the many things I've looked into is the electrics, and is on my 'too much to do list'. The van I bought has a load of 3 pin 240v sockets, 2 behind the driver's seat, 1 by the floor in front of the r&r bed and 2 more high up on the wardrobe in the back. I'm a little confused as to why it has so many, because if you are traveling/camping in a T3/25 where space in limited so why would you be carrying loads of 240v items and need 5 running at the same time

I suspect that the 'number' of 230 volt sockets in your van is more about 'choice' of where to plug something in...rather than anyone intending for them to be used all at the same time. Trailing leads are a pain in such a confined space so it's much easier to have a socket close to the thing you want to power.

IMO, Yes...you need at lease one (two preferably) 230 volt mains sockets for those camps when you have the luxury of 'hookup'. And to be honest, I don't think we would want to do without ours on a 'winter camp' when we have a 1.8KW oil filled radiator on constantly (when paying for the privilege) and why not!. but this can only be done through a mains setup.

However.....everything else is better off being 12 volts and using appropriate adapters.

Martin

Martins van gets very steamy with his radiator on....this is from when I was camping next to him....