Morning Now my bus Is running and mechanically sound, I want to start looking at set up for leisure battery electrics etc. Do people buy a kit or build their own? All of mine was striped out prior to me buying so need to start from scratch. Can anyone advise.
My take on the main themes I've taken away the many threads about leisure battery set ups on TLB are 1) work out how much power you actually need to calculate the size of battery, taking into account that a 100amp lead acid actually only has about 50amps available for use. 2) how are you going to charge your battery may impact on your choice of type of battery. For example, uf you are connecting your starter battery (and therefore your alternator) to your leisure battery via one of the many systems (I have a VSR) then it's better to keep the battery types similar i.e. both lead acid etc 3) the space for our leisure batteries is not that tall due to the spare wheel holder, watch out which way the battery terminals face and get the one with the negative closer to the well. 4) it's not necessary a bad thing that the po removed everything as there are lots of horror stories on here about dodgy set ups linked to mains charging. These are just my thoughts, hopefully not wrong and I'm sure once you figure out how you want to use your camper (off grid/always connected to power/ lots of toys etc) then ask away and the experts on here can help with specifics. PS I bought separate components and built my system slowly as my needs and need for power evolved.
Hello, What are the requirements exactly - what is the plan? Which consumers, which power sources are expected? I'm still on the road conservatively with propane/butane gas - price unbeatably cheap and easy manageable in technology compared to electrical energy. With 2x 5 kg replacement bottles last 4 weeks for cooking & cooling and gas cartridges for light. (But e.g. my 100-year-old house has solar and battery - I'm quite open-minded) A simple second battery, charge isolator, battery monitor in front of consumers, with a compressor refrigerator can be done quite easily. You can quickly sink a lot of money in such a camper and deal with many new problems - from the overstrained alternator to a cable fire or durability of the control electronics. The overall concept has to be worked out hard and expensive in some cases - also requires further conversion to economical consumers. I know bay windows that have put more than 10,000 £ or € into batteries and solar systems - and are still hardly used while I was in Africa and Asia. I also know a few who have done well - but they spend a lot of their own expertise, time and money. Or maybe go for an insulated/exchangeable set with a foldable solar panel and portable power station for your electrical toys. regards,
I run 2 lead acid 85 amp h batteries which I can switch on and off with a key system and charges via a vsr relay. I then use gas for fridge and cooking and propex heater - I have an lpg tank in the cupboard under the sink which fills from outside van at petrol stations and much cheaper than bottled gas prices. My tank has lasted me 3.5 months on this trip and I just refilled 3 days ago as cheaper in France than uk. I have 240 hook up and use if available. Phones I charge whilst driving as do I charge power blocks 20,000 mah which give me phone 4-5 full charges. Laptop for my wife I charge via usb c and run off 12v on the usb c lead ( my laptop I have a 12v charger) I have never needed solar and have camped without moving for 6 days without issue of running out of power just using my leisure battery. This said we don’t use much power as only really run phones and a laptop off electric
durite voltage sensing relay and a couple of wires and you'll get power to your a leisure battery. kits from about 30 quid on ebay including all the wires you need. i have interior lights (led bulbs), power feed for the cool box, radio, usb charge sockets all hooked up to the leisure so that is what is being used when we're parked up camping. i only have a small ish leisure battery but tbh its never run out. we don't stay in the same place long so i guess it gets topped up every time we drive around. i also have a hook up but tbh i've not used that for a long time. non hook-up pitches are generally cheaper/ easier to find. leisure batt gives us what we need. as its never run out i've never felt the need for solar either. if you have a proper fridge you may have greater power needs than us - tbh the powered cool box isn't great but we throw some ice blocks in there and its all we need - most campsites have a freezer you can use to chill the blocks. simple is best imho
some info I put together some time ago that might help. https://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads/leisure-electrics-12v.5390/ https://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads/leisure-electrics-230v.5526/ https://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads/fridge-types.11369/
I went down the rabbit hole of `research` and just got confused so decided on the cheapest 100w flexi panel i saw linked to an Epever 20w box of tricks with the idea of adding another panel if needed as the Epever would take 2 x 100w panels if i remember ?? Also fitted a Durite split charger to repace the cheapo rubbish one i had fitted - total outlay was about 200 quid as i already had a 90ah leisure battery ... Anyways , 4 years down the line and all`s good . Never needed hook up although weekends are all i get chance for lately but previously it`s been fine for week long jaunts running lights , occasional Propex use and a full time Dometic compressor fridge . Basically my suggestion would be to just fit a 100w flexi panel with a suitable control box and see how things go , others said it was fine for their use and it seems more than adequate in my `umble opinion .
If I had not been given two solar panels for my bus, I probably would not have gone down the rabbit hole. I began with a basic solar controller which I managed to smoke and repair in a few days after connecting it - so cheap it switched the negative side, and essentially connected the battery positive to everything all of the time, even the "load" output's positive wire was "hot" all the time.. Went to an Epever 20A solar charge controller as being good, and eventually used a cheapo VSR between the batteries. Because I used long thin wires from the solar panels I connected them in series rather than parallel, so my setup sees up to 40 volts going into the charge controller.
