Hi,
I'm planning a 3 night stay in my Romahome in June and was wondering if I could get away without Ehu. The van will be static for 3 days and the leisure battery will run the fridge and be used for lighting and charging phones, tablets etc. Would a fully charged battery last for 3 days????
You can't run the fridge from 12 volt power unless you have the engine running so if you have no electric hook up then the only option is to operate the fridge by gas.
How long is a piece of string? How big a leisure battery, how old is it, and what type of fridge? If it's a 3 way fridge, as Tango says, run it on gas. However, if it's a compressor fridge it won't run on gas, but it will run much longer than a 3 way fridge on 12 volts.
Quote: Originally posted by romany on 28/4/2019
unless its a threeway fridge and runs on gas 3 days no chance
That depends. I had a compressor fridge on my boat and one weekend I forgot to turn off my batteries when I went home. A week later the empty fridge was still running and there was still quite a bit of power left in the batteries. Note the use of plural there though as I two good 110ah leisure batteries onboard and the fridge wasn't opened all week. Nothing else was switched on either.
What most drained our leisure battery when we went off grid was the water pump. I'd use a container for water, and I think you'd be ok.
You don't say where you're going in June, but the further north you go, the less you'll need lighting. You can read a book outdoors at Ullapool at 11:30pm in July.
When I had a little caravan it didn't have mains so everything was on a leisure battery charged up at home before leaving. However, I did run the fridge on gas.
The battery ran the lights, the water pump, the gas fire ignition and the fridge ignition. I did use the lights sparingly and only switched on a light wherever I needed it depending on which end of the caravan I was.
It easily lasted for a two night camping trip and would probably have lasted a week as there was hardly any power used when I checked it back home.