The 12v supply, logically enough starts at the main van
battery. This is situated under the drivers seat, with a space for a 2nd
battery. I fitted a 2nd battery in this position, and decided to use the
battery chargers from
Sterling Power
Products supplied by
Marcle Leisure.
Two where purchased a
BBC121250 battery to battery (picture 1) charger, and a
ProBudget 12V 20A mains charger (picture 3 ).
The mains charger is situated on the side of the drivers
seat ( picture 4), feeding though an existing cable way to the main traction battery. The
leisure battery is then charged from the traction battery using the "Battery
to Battery" charger, thus the leisure battery is charged no matter what the
charge source is, alternator, mains charger, solar cell or external
battery charger.
For a fuller explanation of how this system works, please see the
explanation on the
Sterling
Power Products web site, who explain the system far better than I could.
The battery to battery charger along with 2 x 150amp
isolation switches
are mounted behind the drivers seat (will be boxed in later). One switch
isolates the 12v leisure supply, the second is to parallel
the two 12volt batteries together in the case of winter starting etc.
The leisure section of the van is fed from a home built switch panel (
picture 5 ) against
the sliding side door, at the top of the storage cabinet, which is fed
from the circuit detailed above via 20mm double insolated
battery cable
via a 100amp
fuse mounted against the charger. This feeds via the above cable a number of
"cbe" fuse plates.
Details of these can be found
here. The panel was "pre-wired" with the main interconnections before
fitting ( picture 6 ).
