Club 80-90 Forums

We're looking at heading off this weekend for our first real trip in the van, so I'm checking over the electrics today.

We have a (reasonably new looking, red) Zig CF8 fitted and obviously 240V hook up. Before plugging in the 240V I've had a look at the mains wiring and it seems there is no circuit breaker between the outside socket and the Zig. There is a junction box splitting the feed to a double socket in a cupboard and the Zig though.
I assume I should really be looking to fit a consumer unit, but for the moment is there any reason not to use a plug in type RCD or even swap out the sockets for an RCD protected faceplate and the plug the Zig into one of those?

I don't really want to zap the family on their first excursion, but also would like to not give fuel for complaints should we end up a site with hook-up and it's another one of those things that doesn't quite work properly - i.e. they're not allowed to use it!
Or do I just take the moaning and don't use 240V until I can rewire and have it checked over?

I'd use an external fused RCD until you can rewire it, should go from inlet plug in double insulated flex straight to an RCD consumer unit with the shortst run, earth should connect to van chassis from inlet plug.
typically zig is fused/mcb lower than plug sockets

you could just use a standard home RCD in one of those garden waterproof boxes in the hook up cable outside van, fuse would then be in the plug.

Cool, so kill the power before it even reaches the van should there be a problem?
Makes sense - I was thinking of closest inside, i.e. where I'd put a consumer unit.
Thanks for the input

TheDocmeister wrote:Cool, so kill the power before it even reaches the van should there be a problem?
Makes sense - I was thinking of closest inside, i.e. where I'd put a consumer unit.
Thanks for the input

Yes thats normal to have a consumer unit with a main switch/rcd but until you can do that properly you can just use an external one.

Wire one of these into the hook up cable?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01JUN ... ref=plSrch" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

marlinowner wrote:Wire one of these into the hook up cable?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01JUN ... ref=plSrch" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That certainly looks like a neater solution than I was thinking of