a very good morning . i have been having a nitemare of a problem with my lunar caravan since i have bought it relating to battery being drained .the caravan is sited at cote ghyll in osmotherley and soon as i put the 12 v isolation switch on and switch on the lights the battery drops very quickly . i have a sargent fuse box and checked all fuses and all seem intact . i even bought a new battery from halfords and is still having the same problem just keeps on draining . im doing something wrong but god knows what it is can anyone help me if you need my mob number il be gladly happy to give . many thanks
At the very least you need a votlage and current meter.
By pulling each fuse and checking the draw you should be able to identify the issue, with rapid drop I'd start with disconnecting the fridge as this is a power hungry device which may be wired incorrectly.
Fault finding is nearly always tricky, with a 'protocol' of establishing known facts such as health and charge of battery first (a new battery is not necessarily guaranteed a good and charged battery, your actual battery needs verifying! ... and a simply state of charge voltage reading is rarely sufficient), then checking discharge currents to assess the scale of the problem etc. ect. .... then isolating various parts of the electrical system until the problem goes away (temporarily!). Then you have to fine tune which part of the isolated circuit is the problem until the culprit is found.
Fault finding from afar with virtually no information and guiding someone with no inherent knowledge is the stuff of nightmares IMHO! It amounts to little more than speculation, with constant toing and froing messages as some potential faults are systematically investigated. TBH, it's often more productive to pay a professional to check it out, if only once you've identified a likely fault, you'll possibly need them to fix it anyway! Professional caravan engineers can be mobile and will come to you rather than you taking the van into a workshop if that helps. It could take them minutes to find what may take you hours, simply because they know the ins and outs of caravans, and often the weak spots of any particular brand/model.
A big unknown is when someone else has had a tinker before, and modified the standard wiring/equipment in some way, hands on and decent knowledge almost becomes essential then!
I'm always slightly wary of advising people who don't know what they are doing to 'tinker', there are risks of damage, fire etc. if getting some things wrong, and if delving into the murky world of mains voltage, lethal shock added to to previous risks!
If you want to proceed yourself, you aren't going to get too far without a multimeter, to check voltage, current and resistance. Adequate ones are cheap enough at around £10-£12, available from a multitude of outlets like Toolstation, Screwfix and countless others. And as a principle NEVER take everything apart all at once, check and verify one part at a time, and reinstate as it was before, before moving on!
By all means give it a go if you wish, and we'll do what we can to assist you, but we are handicapped and reliant on you feeding us the correct information, and highly unlikely to straight off provide an instant fix.
I'm inclined to agree with everything Monty has said there. At the very least you need a good multimeter and the knowledge of how to use it.
It sounds to me that you have either a duff battery (even if new), or a serious electrical fault, if the battery is draining quickly. Hands-on by someone who knows what they are doing is the only way I'm afraid.
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Topic: battery drain problem
