Caravan electrics.

Bollocks! Gas is the most common way of powering a fridge when ?off grid?.

Tim

Been there, done that (in the past). Modern fridges with electronic ignition are much easier to use.

Tim

not if it's in conduit.

They have moved on since then, to electronic ignition, you just push a button and hold it in until it ignites. If trying to run on gas, I make sure to bleed all the air out first - turn a gas ring on, until that burns steady, then light the fridge up.

Agreed! Often the problem is poor install by the caravan manufacturers. Heat from the fins at the back, needs to be disposed of quickly for best efficiency, whether on gas, 240, or 12v. The builders ignore the fridge manufacturers to add a deflector panel above the fins to funnel the warmth out quickly - Heat gets trapped behind the fridge, despite the vents. A simple cheap bit of alloy panel funnelling the warmed air out, as advised in the fridge install instructions, makes a tremendous difference.

I have even heard suggestions that its worth wile adding a small 12v computer fan, worked via a stat, to the fins to improve the air flow in really hot weather.

Tim+ pretended :

Correct!

Nonsense. French motorhomes have the systems.

You aren?t in the vehicle on the ferry.

Nonsense.

Oh dear, you really don?t have a clue.

The question is what GBH has been done to it that makes it in need of a rewire in the first place? From what I recall they tend to have inverters in the posher ones but this only feeds certain outlets and has dire warnings about max load and devices that need very good sine waves etc. A lot of lighting was low voltage on a different circuit. There were also all sorts of switching choices about the leisure battery or batteries and some use just big deep discharge lead acid while others were more sophisticated with other types of battery. Some even had wind generators and solar cells fitted. Its seems to me that you could pimp up your grockle box with expensive add ons. Brian

The modern ones are automatic. Our previous motorhome (2011) you just selected the power source and it did the rest. The current one (a few months old) you can either select manually or put on auto and it switches itself.

I?ve read various stories of rusted ?burners? etc in fridges.

Some say that is true of modern ones but....

As I?m sure you know, the fridges need to be all but level. Our drive has a slope. Just before our very first outing, I was trying to discover if the drive was too steep for the fridge to work. I popped some water in the ice cube tray in the freezer compartment. No joy, it wasn?t noticeably chilled after several hours. I forget about it when we set off but we had already established our routine of : vents closed, windows locked, fridge to battery.... etc and we drove for about 90 mins to the site. When we arrived the water was frozen.

The fridges in motorhomes/caravans have improved dramatically. Conversely, the ovens seem as basic as I remember from staying in a caravan 40 + years ago. I suspect the reason is, in Europe, they rarely fit ovens, it is mainly a UK special item.

You're probably correct, I hadn't really put my thinking hat on properly when I said that. However I'd quite like to know which regs. Is there actually stuff in BS7671 about caravan wiring?

Or in my case a boat

Absolutely, just about all our boat lighting is now 12v LED, just a couple of 'old favourite' mains lamps left which are used when we have mains power.

We also have a standard (and thus cheap) mains fridge with an inverter. The price of 12 volt fridges is ridiculous.

We have gas heating, used to be diesel but since we have gas for cooking anyway it made sense to use it for heating as well with a 'room sealed' heating unit.

We have a little built-in gas cooker from Thetford (brand, not place), it has a gas oven, grill and three burners. It works well.

We have three 260 watt (i.e. standard UK domestic panels) on our boat and they handle the fridge and a few more bits and pieces quite happily with (large) batteries to keep things going overnight. Thus, in the summer we can be quite independent and not need mains power.

We hav a 2kW (or is it 2.5kW) generator converted to run on LPG (which, as I said we already have on the boat) but we needed it so little on the boat that it's now back home.

You aren't allowed in a caravan that is being towed in the UK.

Brian Reay submitted this idea :

My caravan has an oven, I don't really think it can be improved on what it is. Turn the setting know to the gas mark you want, push and hold, press the electronic igniter button. What more does an oven need to have? It came with a known fault - after it ignited, if you closed the door, it would go out until warmed up and air circulating. Snipping a small section of the door seal away, fixed that.

Gas toaster took forever to grill anything. I found the gas jet marked with the correct size, had not been drilled the correct size, using watchmakers drill bits I re-drilled it out to the correct size.

From 17th ed (as I don't have 18th ed)

The wiring systems shall be installed using one or more of the following:

(i) Insulated single-core cables, with flexible class 5 conductors, in non-metallic conduit.

(ii) Insulated single-core cables, with stranded class 2 conductors (minimum of 7 strands), in non-metallic conduit.

(iii) Sheathed flexible cables.

dennis@home formulated the question :

Brian was discussing motorhomes.

Make that 721.521.2, the perils of non-copyable PDFs

Chris Green presented the following explanation :

My caravan has 16 recessed downlighters scattered around it, plus two

Quite so. However I gather that some recent models won't actually power on gas without having a 12 V control supply present.

Chris

We don?t use ours much but, going by others? comments and the odd time we tried our previous one, the temp control tends to be poor as does the insulation.

We carry a small, two slice, electric toaster.

That aside, grills are another thing people seem to complain about. Ours seems ok.

Chris J Dixon formulated the question :

My fridge has to have the 12v to run on gas. That is the only way to ignite it anyway.