Can anyone advise me on 240v hook up??? I have my camper set up with a leisure battery but I also want a mini consumer unit with a 16amp breaker connected to a socket in the van, so if there electric hook up we can use it. Do I need to Earth the chassis into the consumer unit or not??? As the chassis is also the earth for the 12v circuit. Cheers Grum
Wire the earth from the consumer unit to the chassis of the van with suitably-sized cable. It doesn't matter that the van body is also the 12V ground return.
Cheers. Since I'm only using a single socket I just took the earth straight from the cable that feed the socket, earthed that to the chassis with the earth from the hook up too. Tested it & it seems fine.
Seriously if you don't know what you are doing either find out the correct way to do it before you start, or get someone who does know what they are doing to fit it all ie an electrician. You are at serious risk with poorly installed power in a van, you cannot rely on the hookup you are using for a working 30mA RCD so get on of those hooked up and tested to ensure it works and trips at below 40ms at 1x test and below 200ms at 5 x test, you can only check this if you have a suitable RCD tester, you owe it to yourself and your family/friends to ensure they are safe, as contact with something live whilst you are stood in a damp field with nothing on your feet making good contact with earth with no RCD to save you means bye bye. I cannot stress this enough!
Earth from the consumer unit. At the mo, if your cable's damaged, you may lose the earth connection. Also earth any large areas of metal, like the sink.
10mm earthing cable from the consumer unit. definitely at least 6mm. I also earthed the sink with 6mm.
