I am looking at re-doing my interior over the next few months and will be fitting a leisure battery. I have read the posts from Matty around installing the electrics but I have to confess I still don't fully understand volts/ watts and amps. Am I right that you divide the Kw by the volts to give you the amps? (1000kw / 230v = 4a???) If I am right about that bit (Which I very much doubt I am) i'm still not sure how to work out how much of a drain an applicance will be. I would like to have some kind of fridge in the camper but I don't want a full sized camper fridge as I only really use it for milk, butter, bacon and eggs so I was wondering if something like this: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2719629/Trail/searchtext%3EMINI+FRIDGE.htm Or this: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2703446/Trail/searchtext%3EMINI+FRIDGE.htm would run off a lesiure battery and how much of a drain it would be?
They will be peltier effect coolers and will drain your leisure battery overnight Why not go for a cool box and ice packs instead i can keep stuff cool in mine for 3 days
In addition to the vans cool box I use an electric one, granted my leisure battery is an old car battery but would say it doesn't last long after the engine stops charging it. It's a good interim measure until you get to an electric hook up though. A proper leisure battery will obviously give more capacity.
We've used one of those, run it during the day if it's warm and turn it off overnight ...had a few days out of it that way.
You are right. watts over volts equals amps (Ohms Law V=IR) The first cooler you mention is rated at 247KWh/year. That sounds a lot but there are 8760 hours in a year so it consumes o.028KW per hour ie 28 watts, and therefore 2.3amps. If you battery is rated at, say 80amp hr it will run your cooler for over 30 hours although bettter to recharge before that. I only use the battery for my fridge when travelling. If on site I use gas or mains.
we freeze stuff, take it with us in a cool box and it lasts for ages this way (i do have a fridge now though) but the cool boxes packed with ice packs, and frozen food keeps thing very cold for the weekend away X
Have a read of this it might help i have tryed to put how long each will last but its very hard to workout as there are so many factors that have a effect A 80amp battery will only give about 40amph and you should try and not let the battery get below 1/2 or around 12.4v also as the voltage drops the amps go up so flatting the battery faster http://thelatebay.com/index.php?topic=12288.0
I bought a portable compressor fridge at a boat jumble - they are at least £300 new - mine was £40 with a broken switch. Its about the same size as the thermoelectric coolbox but there is all the workings off a 12 volt Electrolux fridge fitted in it. I used to use it on my boat, but now its in the camper van. As an added bonus it will get down to -10 degrees after a few hours of indecision. This uses 4 amps when its running with a starting surge about 10 amps, but it turns itself off about two thirds of the time. It still flattens leisure batteries if you leave it on. You will do better with ice and a proper simple cool box and forget the thermoelectric boxes.
