Club 80-90 Forums

Can the electric hook up be arranged so that it charges the leisure battery when hooked up?

yes

buy a charger from halfords and plug it in... then connect it to the leisure battery.

This is standard on the better conversions (Westfalia etc) but of course can be added.
Ideally you want a multi stage permanent charger installing 10A or higher, this will ensure you don't over charge (senses when fully charged so switches to trickle or pulse)
Something like this: second one down (just an example)

http://www.caravantechnology.com/carava ... rgers.aspx

Martin

Cheers folks - very useful

Ive been using a solar panel attached to the leisure battery on a permenant basis, it powers my sink pump and 3 12v lights and works fine (so far)

How is your solar panel wired up to the battery? What sort of output do you get from it? I'm asking because we have a small solar panel on the roof (came with the van) it is wired to the leisure battery I think, but I don't know how effective it is.

Cheers,
Donald.

Small panels are very ineffective at giving useful 'on camp' charging, typically these things are producing less than 2watts and that's on a sunny day. However, where they are useful is when the van is parked up in between holidays, trickle charging which prevents the lead/acid battery sulphating when discharged.
I have one of these small panels permanently plugged into a 4 gang cigarette lighter break out box just keeping the battery ticking over and preventing damage when parked for long storage periods.
It is possible to purchase more useful sizes but they are very large and expensive and still only produce sub 30watts charge output. These larger panels are therefore not going to fully charge a flat battery during the daytime ready for the evening but will go some way.
Martin