If you plug the van into an electricity supply, will that automatically start charging the van’s battery? Or do you normally have to press a button or something?

Leisure battery or starter battery?

In my old van, a Zig panel used to charge both. In my new van a CBE unit only charges the leisure battery (I think). All I ever have had to do is plug it in, although it could depend on your system.

Can you test the battery with a voltmeter to see if it is getting a charge?

Mine charges without me doing anything

Automatic on all the ones I’ve had.

Sorry double post due to broken stw hamsters.

It depends if you have a zig unit or similar fitted. My camper van has to be running to charge the leisure battery. On most zig units there’s a switch with something like driving and parked on it.

Depends if there is a charger fitted 🙂 my campervan has a mains hook up but this only runs plug sockets, the 12v and 240v systems are completely seperate. If there is a ZIG board or similar then there’s a good chance there’s a charger.

What’s a ZIG board? And this is a caravan so no starter battery of course.

The wiring is a nightmare on this thing. Complete mess. So the multimeter is coming out tomorrow.

On our old caravan there was a three-way rocker switch, Car-Off-240v. The latter starts charging the battery if the caravan is plugged into an EHU. On older caravans the charger is usually a separate item, wired or plugged into the 240v circuit. Newer caravans have the charger built in. If on Car setting, & plugged into the cars 7N (black) socket, it will charge the battery, but the split-charge relay will isolate when the car engine is off or sometimes if the engine rpm drops very low. Otherwise the car would take 12v from the caravan battery when it starts. The grey socket is just for charging the fridge, & needs a decent cable straight from the cars battery, via a relay. The Haynes Caravan manual is useful for sorting older caravan electrics. I’ve one if your anywhere near Lichfield/Cannock.

If your looking for info try the ukcampsite forum. There is a chap called Ratty, who is a mine of info, especially on older caravans.

Our caravan has a switch and a needle gauge thing that shows if its charging or how much charge the battery is delivering if switched the other way.

If you’re in doubt, buy a multi meter from maplin of similar. Mine was only £8 or something. really useful thing to have for so little.

They you could put it across the terminal’s (with battery disconnected) and see if there is a voltage there.

Right thanks for the info folks. There is no switch for 240V anywhere on the original electrics so that could have been a retro-fit. There are several dodgy looking boxes of electrical gubbins in dark corners which may or may not have a button to press or something, not sure. Will check more when it stops raining.