Understanding Caravan Electrics
Hi All,
I dont own a caravan but was roped into having a look at an issue with a friends earlier today. Lets just say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and being an electrician to trade I was expected to be able to help.
This is going to be difficult to explain since I dont know the caravan terms and also dont know the name of model of the caravan I had a look at but here goes.
Apparently everything was working on the caravans arrival to its new owner but after a heater caused a trip somethings didnt work again afterwards.
The 240v sockets were working, 2 wall lights were working but the majority of lights were spotlighs around the shelves which werent working. The electric roof panels also would no longer open.
There was a small electrical consumer unit similar to what I would usually see in homes which I believe controlled the heating, sockets and lighting. All 240v equipment seemed to be functioning making me believe that all of the other functions currently
out of service were from 12v supplies. I never had a multimeter with me but visually checked fuses and swapped where possible to try and find where the issue was.
I believe there was a 3 position switch that was set to "van" and "charger" set to on.
In the end I removed a 3amp fuse that looked like the supply to a relay or switch of somesort and everything began working when that fuse was removed, this made me believe that there was a basic switch or setting somewhere that I was missing.
I connected the fuse again and left everything off for the moment until I have had the chance to learn a bit about these systems.
Any help would be appreciated and please excuse my total ignorance to the world of caravans and especially their electrical systems!