EXTENDING BATTERY LIFE

Most of the equipment in your motorhome is powered by electricity, but there are ways to extend your leisure battery's life and keep it all running smoothly

- By Peter Rosenthal

The modern world really can't live without an electrical supply, and everything from your weekly shop to parking apps rely on it to work. Your motorhome is exactly the same and, while a flat habitation battery won't leave you stranded, it will mean an early bedtime, limited toilet use and a warming fridge. Not the end of the world, then - but not ideal.

So what can you do to avoid the issue? Well, the obvious answer is to only stay on sites that have an electric hookup. In this scenario, your leisure battery automatically receives charge from the vehicle's inbuilt battery charging system.

The 240V AC mains supply powers a transformer and is converted to a 12V DC supply, which tops up the leisure battery - usually at 10-20A, depending on the brand of charger. This is easily enough to keep pace with all the usual 12V drains on a motorhome, such as the fridge, LED lighting and so on.

SAVING ENERGY

These days, most leisure vehicles are pretty efficient in terms of their energy consumption, and they all come with LED lighting as standard. If you have an older 'van that's still fitted with any incandescent bulbs or mini fluorescent tube lighting, it's well worth ditching these for an LED unit.

If you look online, you'll find a large selection of LED lights in all manner of different shapes and sizes, to suit most applications at very reasonable prices. But there are only a handful of vehicles that do not already use LEDs, so this won't apply to many.

LED lights sip electricity and you can add more lighting to an older vehicle while still decreasing the net energy consumption - which is an easy win.