All wrapped up…

29 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in General, Maintenance, Modifications, Projects, Technical, Tips

Tags

Caravan, Caravanning, Caravans, Foam Solutions UK, Maintenance, Modifications, Project, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers

One thing we had noticed using the caravan all year round was the front wall between the caravan interior and gas locker and the window shelf above it always seemed noticeably cooler than the rest of the walls of the caravan. The cupboard under the front draws also was a lot cooler even though it had a blown heating pipe running through it. I’m not sure if it’s just a perceived thing that we think its cooler or if it’s down to the fact that the insulation in the front dividing wall my be a little thinner.

In an effort to try to cure this, I had been on the look out for some sticky backed foam insulation. Searching round the web gave a few results, but it was mainly for sound insulation rather than thermal insulation. However I did eventually discover Foam Solutions UK in Nantwich, Cheshire that offered a whole range of foam for various uses. When I started looking I wanted something that was anti-static and fire-retardant as it was being installed in the gas locker. Foam Solutions UK had just the product, a fire-retardant foam sheet that was designed for use under engine bonnets. I emailed Carole at Foam Solutions UK and she kindly sent out some samples, including a piece of the under bonnet material. A quick measure up and I ordered enough for the front gas locker and to cover the wheel arches inside the wardrobe and under the fixed bed.

First task was to empty the gas locker and give it a bit of a dust out…..

I thought I’d work from both sides into the middle where most cutting would be required. I’d have to make sure non of the gas pipes would be covered so that they could be inspected when it came to the annual service. I also had to make sure that the safety labels and notices were visible, so a bit of careful peeling would be required.

Measuring the first section, the foam was cut with a straight edge and a scalpel in an Exacto knife. I’d taken a couple of large pieces of cardboard to cut on to make it easier.

It didn’t take long to get the first few straight cut pieces installed. One thing though, the sticky back is really sticky and it took a bit of manoeuvring to get the pieces into the locker without sticking them to anything they touched.

I made sure that I left enough gap to inspect the gas pipe or to get to any screw heads that might require checking for tightness in the future. Peeling the labels off in one piece was a bit of a chore… I will probably try to get new ones at some point in the future.

The completed locker….

… and the underside of the window shelf….

After a bit of a sort out and removing some stuff we haven’t used for a while (saving a couple of kilo’s in weight!), everything was replaced back in to the locker.

The next job will be to do the wheel arches inside the caravan.

Lucky or what!

When I was feeding in the second piece on the right hand side I had to take it out to curve it to get it in position. When I removed it I spotted something stuck to the bottom edge ( I did say it was really sticky!)….. it was my Wedding ring! I thought I’d lost it somewhere between our last stop in France – Camping Risle Seine and reaching home back in October 2012. It could have so easily dropped through one of the various vents in the floor in the couple of thousand miles of towing since then, but there it was, stuck to my piece of insulation.

So another little job crossed off the list. I’m not sure how effective it will be, only time and a bit of cold weather will tell. It might very well be a placebo thing…. but as the supermarket slogan say’s “Every Little Helps”.

Contact Info: Foam Solutions UK, Haymoor Hall, Wybunbury Lane, Nantwich. CW5 7HD or http://www.foamsolutionsuk.co.uk or telephone 01270 842 228 or email Carole: carole_395@fsmail.net

Don’t forget you can follow Caravan Chronicles on Twitter and Facebook… the link do-hickey things are on the left hand side.

Relay, VSR, SCR… what’s the difference?

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in Electrical, Help Guides, Maintenance, Technical

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Caravan, Caravan Electrics, Caravanning, Caravans, Charging, Leisure Battery, Maintenance, Split Charge Relay, starter battery, Technical, Towing, vehicle battery, Vehicle Wiring

There is a lot of confusion over what the differences are and when to use each one. So what are they? A relay is just a simple switch that allows a low power electrical circuit to turn on (or off) a high-powered electrical circuit. An SCR or Split Charge Relay is a switch that senses voltage and switches over from one circuit to another at a pre set voltage. Finally a VSR – Voltage Sensing Relay is similar to an SCR but turns on and additional circuit at a pre set voltage. So what do you use each one for?

Split Charge Relay – SCR

These are usually installed in 4 x 4’s that have a lot of accessories fitted especially electrical winches. The general idea is the winch is powered from a second battery so that using the winch should never flatten the main vehicle starter battery. As the winch uses a lot of power, it is necessary to be able to recharge this battery as fast as possible using the output from the vehicle’s alternator, so once the vehicle starter battery is fully charged, the output from the alternator is switched directly over to the second battery. Modern SCR’s are usually all solid state and some times have a bypass switch allowing both batteries to be directly connected for either starting the vehicle if the starter battery is flat or to allow the winch to be powered from the starter battery in emergencies.

SCR's are normally solid state, I have shown it as switches to make it clearer. — SCR’s are normally solid state, I have shown it as switches to make it clearer. Note: I haven’t shown any fuses or earth (neutral) cables. Never use the vehicle body as a conductor, always install correctly sized earth (neutral) cables.

How do SCR’s operate?

If you look at the drawing above, you can see the alternator output goes straight to the split charge relay. In normal operation the relay connects the output of the alternator to the starter battery. Once the engine is running and the relay determines the starter battery is fully charged, it switches the output of the alternator to the vehicle accessory battery. If the voltage on the vehicle starter battery drops, the relay switches back. However, these relays are slightly more sophisticated and have the ability to dual feed – i.e. charge both batteries at the same time or the ability to link both batteries for either vehicle starting or to power accessories under extreme load… heavy and prolonged winching for example. Expect to pay serious money for a good quality SCR with a remote bypass facility and battery monitoring.

A true ‘split charge relay’ is not suitable for charging your caravan leisure battery, but could be used for charging leisure batteries in motorhomes.

Voltage Sensing Relay – VSR

Voltage sensing relays were designed to sense the tow vehicles battery voltage and when the battery is sufficiently charged switch on a second circuit, usually the power to the caravan’s fridge. Some of the more sophisticated VSR’s allow the setting of the voltage the relay will operate at. The biggest draw back with these is if the electrical load with the tow vehicle suddenly increases – turning on the headlights, heated windows, air con etc, they can turn off the circuit to the caravan’s fridge until the electrical load is removed. It is for this reason they should be installed with an indicator light on the dash to confirm that they are actually supplying the fridge. With a caravan, if there isn’t a feed to the fridge, the habitation relay will not operate and therefore the caravan’s leisure battery will not be charged.

VOltsge — VSR’s can be a mix of solid state and mechanical switch or all solid state. Again, I have not shown fuses or earth (neutral) cables for clarity.

VSR’s work on the principle that they monitor the vehicles electrical voltage. The VSR’s sensor detects the voltage change when the vehicle battery is fully or near fully charged, it closes the contacts connecting the leisure battery in circuit and allowing it to be charged. However, if the vehicle voltage drops for some reason, the relay will open disconnecting the leisure battery.

Problems with VSR’s

Most of the time they are installed when the rest of the towing electrics are installed and are usually located behind a panel in the rear load area of the vehicle. Because of this, it is rare to see one that has a dashboard indicator light installed to show when it is ON and charging your leisure battery and consequently switching over the habitation relay allowing your fridge to work. The second problem is when they leave the factory the voltage that they are designed to switch on at is set at the correct level if it was installed near the vehicle battery. As it has been installed some distance away, the length of cable between the battery and VSR has its own voltage drop – dependant on length of cable and current through it. So one fault that is often reported is that the relay ‘vibrates’ or ‘chatters’. This is caused by the voltage drop on the connecting cable increasing below the “trigger voltage” when the leisure battery is connected and the relay is simply turning on and off repeatedly. Like most things you get what you pay for and the more expensive VCR’s have a timer circuit built-in so that they only switch over after a pre-determined time.

But wait…. there’s more!

Modern vehicles are sophisticated bits of engineering, electronics and software. In order to reduce emissions a lot of manufacturers removed things like hydraulic power steering pumps and air conditioning pumps and replaced them with electrical motors. This removed mechanical load from the engine and reduced the weight. The trade-off was the vehicle needed more electrical power, so larger alternators were fitted. As power steering and air conditioning wasn’t needed all the time and in order to prolong the life of the vehicle battery, the alternator is now controlled by the software in the vehicles ECU. So when the ECU detects the vehicle battery is fully charged it reduced the output of the alternator by reducing the voltage and therefore reducing the load on the engine and hence reducing engine emissions. If you have a VSR fitted, this drop in the vehicle voltage will stop the VSR working as it was intended to do. So even if the VCR has a timer circuit, it can still fail to work as intended.

Theres is an interesting letter posted in the September 2013 issue of Land Rover Owner magazine:

Article appeared in Land Rover Owner INternational September 2013. (c) LRO / Bauermedia — Article appeared in Land Rover Owner International September 2013. (c) LRO / Bauermedia

How can we reliably charge the leisure battery in modern vehicles? Well the clue is in the article above. If we can fool the tow vehicle to ‘see’ the leisure battery as part of the vehicles own electrical system the software in the ECU won’t reduce the voltage until both the leisure battery and vehicle battery are suitably charged.

Ordinary Relay

The most straight forward way of providing the leisure battery with a suitable charging circuit is also the cheapest. A simple 30 Amp 12 volt relay can be bought for a few pounds and it will be a reliable way of charging your caravan’s leisure battery.

Ordinary 30 Amp relay. Again, I have not shown fuses or earth (neutral) cables for clarity.

The circuit above shows an ordinary 30 Amp automotive relay being used to switch the leisure battery charing circuit. The relay is controlled by the ignition circuit, so when the engine is running the relay is energised and the leisure battery is being charged. As the leisure battery is in circuit all the time the engine is running, the vehicles software in the ECU ‘sees’ just one big battery and will keep the alternator voltage high enough to charge both batteries fully before reducing the output in energy-saving /emission reducing mode.

Some vehicles including a number of Land Rover’s actually have a connection on the main fuse board specifically to control this relay.

I hope you have found this useful.

Newsflash – NEC Show offer…

17 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in Cleaning, General, Reviews, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Caravan, Caravanning, Caravans, Maintenance, NEC, OLPRO, Show Offer

Did you read our “Testing Testing…” post a few days ago?

Right you didn’t hear this from me! I have just heard about a show offer. If you are going to the show this week at the NEC hi tail it over to Hall 1 and see Tamworth Camping. They and OLPRO have teamed up and will be selling the Bottom & Top and the more concentrated Bottom & Top Plus for your loo for a show stopping £5.99 so go and stock up for the season! All the other chemicals will be on offer too. If you have any questions one of the OLPRO guys will be on the Tamworth Camping stand as well, so ask him about the other stuff they do too!

PS… Make sure you stop by OLPRO’s main stand (5300, Hall 5) where you might just catch them all lounging about in their new natty pop up beach huts!

Create accurate POI’s for your Sat-Nav…

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in Gadgets, General, Help Guides, Navigation, Sat Nav

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Caravan, caravan site, Caravanning, Caravans, Chatsworth House, Navigation, POI, POI's, Sat Nav, Touring, Towing, travel, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers

Sometimes postcodes (zip codes) don’t just cut it with sat-nav’s especially when trying to find a caravan site. Often you see the warning “Don’t follow sat nav” on site directions which is a bit of a shame as you have exchanged quite a lot of beer tokens for a device to take the hassle out of navigating!

TomTom installed in our Landrover Freelander

In Europe it is common for the location of a site to be given co-ordinates (Lat & Long) but sometimes there is confusion on which format your sat-nav can accept these, in fact not all sat-nav devices allow you to input lat & long co-ordinates.

A lot of people check on the route to a site using Google Maps and this helps a lot, but it only gives you the results in a lat & long format. There are programmes that you can down load to do the conversion to create a POI – (Point Of Interest) and even manage them, but there is great on-line resource called “POI Editor” that I have been using for around four years now that I think is really easy to use and despite trying a number of the downloadable offerings, I keep returning to it.

Getting started…

Go to POIEditor.com and click on the “Register” link in the top right hand corner and create an account, it’s totally free to use…. (Don’t forget you can click on any of the images to see them full size!)

Start off by filling in some details….

You will be asked to confirm your email address. I have never received spam mail from this company. Follow the link in the email they send you to confirm your account.

Once you have confirmed your account you can now log in and you will see a page like this (below)… and you are all set to start creating your POI’s

Your first POI…

For this example I’ll go through creating the POI for the Caravan Clubs’ Chatsworth Park site which we recently visited…. First I typed in the name “Chatsworth Park CC Site” and I also added the post code for the site…..

Once you have the name and postcode entered, click on “Lookup” and a map pin appears on the map. Use the + and – on the map to zoom in……

OK, now you can switch views… click on the “Satellite” button on the map window….

You can now see that the map pin is located in the centre of Chatsworth House Estate grounds… the caravan site is actually north-west of the map pin…. lets zoom in a little closer….

OK we can now see the caravan site near the zoom slider. Drag the map pin from the centre of Chatsworth House Estate and drop it over the caravan site… you can drag the map around to centre the pin…

Now here is where we can make it really accurate. If we left the pin where it is, there is always the chance that your sat-nav could try to take you into Chatsworth House Estate via the main entrance, through the car park and try to navigate you through the estate… after all it will try navigate you the shortest or quickest route. If we move the pin to the entrance road to the caravan site, your sat-nav should take you there only choosing the main road. So we drag the pin to the entrance to the site….

We can zoom in a little more and place the pin right on the main road in front of the entrance…

When we are happy with the pins location, simply click on “Save Point”. The map will zoom out and you will see your POI (highlighted in red below) saved to your POI list.

If you want to add further POI’s click on ‘Add Point” and just go through the steps above for the next POI you want to create.

If you have finished creating your POI’s we now need to save the file and download it to your computer. Click on the “Save POI File” tab and you will be asked to input a name for your POI file…..

In this case it is called ‘My POI’ and you will need to select what file type you want to save it as from the drop down box. In this case I have selected “TomTom.ov2”.

Now click on “Download POI’s” and a file will automatically download to your browser download area.

OK now for a neat trick…

The screen shot below shows my POI for La Tournerie Ferme near Montignac, France. To get to the site there is a very detailed set of directions provided by the owner. So rather than doing a bit of map and instruction reading by the navigator, I created a number of additional POI’s or waypoints. Using the satellite view, I started at the point of the first instruction and for each turn I created a new POI. I now have a set of POI’s – La T App 1, La T App 2….etc and the final one is “La Tournerie Ferme”. (‘App’ is my short hand for ‘Approach’ so I know its not a final destination)

So in my GPS I now create an “Itinerary” starting from my first point “La T App 1” to my next point “La T App 2” and so on. Now when I want to go there, I simply program my sat-nav to take me to the the itinerary I created. The sat-nav now takes me to the first point, then the second and so on until I arrive at the site.

Next Step…

OK you now have your POI file downloaded onto your computer and you need to upload it to your sat-nav. As each model of sat-nav is slightly different unfortunately you might have to resort to checking out the instruction’s that came with your device.

That’s it… that is all there is to creating simple and accurate POI’s and storing them in a file for your chosen sat-nav device.

One of the reasons I use POI Editor on-line is no matter where I am, I can always log in and update my POI’s and download them. If I’m unlucky and loose my sat-nav, I still have the POI file I created to put back on my new one, even if it is a different make or model. While we have been out in the caravan I have been able to add POI’s… I added the stations for the West & East Somerset railways and the front entrance to the car park at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yoevil while sat having a coffee at our favourite site in Somerset – The Old Oaks.

I hope you found this useful.

Testing Testing…..

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in Blog updates, Cleaning, Maintenance, Reviews

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Caravan, Caravanning, Caravans, Cleaning, Drainage, Maintenance, OLPRO

I do like things that do more than one job. I like multi tools for example and I especially like things that do more than one job well. I’m also into things that save space and weight in the caravan, and I have been looking round for ‘stuff’ that does both.

You know those days when you have a cup of coffee in one hand, mouse in the other and you are looking out of the office window at the rain wishing you were staring out of the caravan window instead? Thoughts turn to Googling and by one of those tricks that Google has of finding things you never knew you wanted and completely off the subject I was Googling in the first place found me reading about OLPRO. Continue reading →

Caravanning with the Devonshires…

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in General, Travelling in the UK, Uncategorized, Weekend Break

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Caravan, Caravan Club, Caravanning, Caravans, Chatsworth Estate, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, OLPRO, Touring, Towing, travel, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers

… not that the Duke and Duchess knew we were there of course! We had booked in at the Caravan Club’s Chatsworth Park site for a couple of nights. Considering the weather so far this year it was kind of a gamble as to what we were going to get. Friday 31st Jan started off dry although another front was forecast to arrive hitting the south-west and west coast up to the Scottish borders with strong winds and rain. As you can’t arrive before 1:00pm at the site due to the limited access road, we didn’t leave home till around 11:30 to pick up the caravan from storage, and we had just coupled up as it started to rain. The drive out of Stockport along the A6 heading out past Lyme Park and on to Chapel-en-le-Frith wasn’t too bad and by the time we turned onto the A623 just through Chapel we lost most of the traffic and with nothing behind us is was a pleasant run even if it was raining over the hills towards Stony Middleton. As we passed through Baslow, we turned left onto the A619 for around 400 yards before the right turn into the private road that leads through the Chatsworth Estate to the site. Continue reading →

Just click on print…

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in Gadgets, General, Technical, Tips, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Caravan, Caravanning, Caravans, inkjet printer, Mobile Printing, Printing, Touring, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers

You know, sometimes I miss the obvious. Someone on one of the forums (Swift Talk) was giving a tip about storing copies of important documents and forms electronically so that if you lost say your insurance document you would at least be able to print out a copy. Now that is a bit of good advice, especially travelling abroad. We have copies of all our documents and a lot of the caravan documents, manuals etc stored electronically. In fact a lot of useful manuals I have put on-line in the “Document Library” section of the blog. Continue reading →

2014 Manchester Caravan & Motorhome Show…

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in Camping & Caravan Show, Events, General, Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Caravan, Caravanning, Caravans, Glossop Caravans, Manchester Caravan, Moto-Trek, Swift Group, WiFi On Board

Heavy rain first thing this morning didn’t seem to dampen the opening of the 2014 Manchester Caravan & Motorhome Show at Event City. We arrived around 9:15 and managed to park at the back of the arena and make our way to the entrance just as the rain stopped. This year, the tiny coffee stand in the entrance hall that was over-run last year had been replaced by a bigger stand far more suited to the number of people expected and there were plenty of tables to sit at while we waited for the doors to open. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Caravan Chronicles…

11 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by Simon Barlow in Blog updates, Facebook, General

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

11 January 2012, Caravan, Caravan Chronicles, Caravanning, Caravans, Touring, Towing, travel, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers

Today it’s Caravan Chronicles 2nd birthday!

The first post “Hello World!” was published back on 11 January 2012 and started the ~~ball~~ caravan rolling. Back then we had a total of 695 views for the whole of January. So far in the first 11 days of January we have had over 3750 views taking our total to over 138,000!

In that time our caravan has travelled over 6700 miles on 30 trips and been on site for 82 nights.

What else has happened.. well we started a Twitter feed (@caravanchron) a few months ago and a few days ago we started our Facebook page – both of which are slowly growing.

So what are we going to do for 2014 – our third year? Well there are a few features planned…

An article on upgrading your caravan road lights to LED bulbs and the different types of bulb available (still looking for a company to help out with this)
Report on different aftermarket caravan stability systems (and possibly a DIY installation feature).
Report on what actually goes on when you have your caravan serviced by a main dealer.

Thanks to everyone that has followed, tweeted, liked, re-blogged or posted one of the 400 or so comments on Caravan Chronicles, I hope I can make the next 12 months as entertaining and informative as the last two years have been.

Simon