New Year's recharge

Happy New Year to all Stone174 readers!

I've taken the opportunity during the seasonal time off to clean the van thoroughly - Stone Blue isn't a colour that works well when filthy!

After cleaning the van over I put the stereo on whilst shammy-ing off and decided to take advantage of 'hooking-up' to the mains to top up the leisure battery. It was at this point that I realised that I never really went into detail about the van's electrical system that was fitted at the same time as the interior.

So here's how it all works:

The mains hook-up point is discreetly located under the rear bumper - I was keen not to have anything in the sides of the van.

The hookup is then linked to a mains distribution box (1) where the input is fused and distributed to the 240v sockets within the van.

Mains electricity is also fed to a battery charger (2) which charges the van's leisure battery and main vehicle battery (after the leisure battery is topped-up).

The final box (3) is the CBE 12v distribution box where all the 12v sockets, audio and lighting are fused.

Other items in the electrical cupboard are:

A big 50amp fuse (4) which sits between battery charger and leisure battery (there's another one next to the main vehicle battery under the bonnet)

Eberspacher fuses (5) for the heater and control panel.

Leisure battery (6). This is an 85aH unit that I'm hoping to upgrade to a larger unit later this year.

Earth point (7) on the vehicle body.

All these elements are linked up to the CBE control panel:

More details about the functions of the CBE system are here in a previous post.

One of the best features is the 'at-a-glance' monitoring of battery condition:

Here's the leisure battery condition - reading 13.9v

...and the van's battery voltage reading 12.8v

The CBE kit came from Rainbow Conversions and so far it has been faultless.

So all we need now is some great camping conditions, I'm recharged and ready to go!