Camper van battery charging

[roofman]

I have recently fitted a charging tail lead from the main battery of my camper van for when its parked at home to keep it maintained and topped up. My question is will this small charge also be getting through to the inverter battery via the inverters split charge relay or will this battery need charging from its own sorce..I am not sure if these inverters circut needs ignition on for a charging path first.

 

[finyuk2005]

Most of them will do, depends on what type of split charge system you have, if its just a simple voltage sensing relay, then yes it will connect when either battery is above the set point,
the c-teck fancier one i fitted to a smart alternator van charges the main battery first and then starts charging the leisure battery

 

[Cobbler]

If it’s the same as ours, the aux battery only charges when the alternator starts to charge. There is a wire from the alternator to the relay to tell it to charge the second battery. The mains hook up lead charges the aux battery via a transformer, but doesn’t charge the engine one, to get over this I have run a lead between the two with a fuse holder in. To charge the engine battery, I fit a fuse in the holder when connected to the mains, I use a fuse, so if I forget to disconnect it before starting, it just blows the fuse. I hope that makes sense.

 

[finyuk2005]

I had a similar problem with that C-teck system i fitted, I cant quite remember how i got around it, I think I swapped the on board charger that works on 240v hookup from the leisure battery to the engine battery, and the C-teck unit was smart enough to start charging the leisure battery once the engine battery was fully topped up, but if the charger was connected to the leisure battery it wouldnt charge the main,
I like my dumb alternator and simple VSR better!!

 

[jmp49]

I leave the camper van plugged into 220v hookup when at home and the lesuire stuff takes care of itself, it has a victron unit that deals with the dc solar panel etc too.
For the traction battery, its isolated when the engine isnt running so I ran a set of leads from the living space to under the bonnet and have a small optlimate type charger plugged into the lesuire side 220v that keeps the main battery tended to during overwintering etc.
Now if only you could get a magic box to stop damp ingress into the wood when parked up outside resulting in you having to rebuild half the rear body, I'd have one in a flash...