“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” said Benjamin Franklin. Having spent most of my working life close to engineering development projects I’m keenly aware of the need to have a clear objective before starting a project. There was no clear customer for this campervan build project but I wasn’t building it for me―I was building it as a hobby project.
Van Blanc and his little brother Black Beauty are both available for hire:
I’ve owned campervans for nearly 40 years, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t. One principle I have had to accept is that there is no right answer with campervan layout. Whatever you do it will be a compromise. When you’re stationary on site you want lots of space. When you’re exploring the lanes you want compact and nimble. During the day you want space for living and cooking and eating. When the day is done you want to be able to tumble into a big warm bed. No single layout can achieve all of these things. In choosing any layout we have to accept the limitations at the same time as we celebrate the upsides.
With the benefit of having the van to study and measure, I drew up plans for a variety of layouts and tested the concepts in my mind and with a tape measure―let’s have a look at two examples.
Spacious 2-berth
If I had been building the van for our personal use right now, it would have single rear beds with a garage below, like this. A front settee combined with the rotated double cab seat would offer a spacious L-shaped lounge area. Steps up to the beds would make climbing in easy, and allow them to be mounted high to allow for plenty of garage space underneath in the garage.
This layout offers a spacious living area, great kitchen space, permanent beds and lots of space in the garage.
The main limitation of this design is that there are only 3 belted travelling seats―as I said earlier, it’s always a compromise. And of course, it only has sleeping for 2. For many people neither of these would be a problem.
Flexible adventure vehicle
This is not exactly the van I built but it’s the drawing that inspired the actual build. It has virtually as much living space as the two-berth above, but has a forward-facing travel seat to the rear of the side settee and a flexible rear bunk area offering up to 3 bunks. Any or all of these can be removed to provide garage space more than 6ft (1800mm) in length. So we have a van that can be a spacious home for a couple, or accommodate a family of 5. All of the beds are full length.
The downside of this flexibility is that the main double bed has to be made up every night, using the side settee.
The final design
In reality there was no formal plan for the final form of the layout, but it evolved in my mind from the one above. Small changes happened as the realities of the build evolved. The drawings below represent what has emerged at the end of the process.
Daytime layout
You can see that this design is very similar to the flexible adventure vehicle above. The major differences are:
the kitchen extends all the way to the shower room, and the fridge part is logically separate, and different height and width. Continuing the kitchen furniture at the full width of the fridge would have made the passageway to the shower uncomfortably narrow. There is inevitably a bit of a pinch point between the fridge and the rear seat, but it’s very localised
the rear bunks extend all the way to the back door. It made sense to use all the space available
there is a wardrobe space between the rear bunks and the rear seat. The position of the rear seat was constrained by the need to attach it to chassis members, and it is located as far back as it will go. This offers a useful space for a wardrobe, with gas bottle locker in its base
Travel mode
In travel mode, if the double rear travel seat is required, there is a facility to remove the part of the settee in front of the travel seat to provide legroom for the passengers. That requirement made the design of the settee and the bed made from it much more complicated then it would otherwise have been. Of course, if the rear seat isn’t needed, then it provides a useful locker space.
Bed time
At night the van offers space for 5 full-length adults. The bottom-most of the 3 bunks is narrower than the others, and best suited to small people. The double inhibits but doesn’t prevent access to the side door, fridge and kitchen.
This is the story of my second campervan conversion. My first conversion, now known as Black Beauty, was a VW Transporter 4MOTION DSG. You can read about that conversion here. The YouTubes I watched to learn about techniques I used in that first conversion had the dangerous effect of giving me an appetite for a bigger conversion and my son had a LWB VW Crafter sitting in a field with nothing to do. And so we have the start of the Van Blanc story.
Van Blanc and his little brother Black Beauty are both available for hire:
And, come to think of it, why? There is a relationship between these questions, leading to more questions, such as who is it for? I wasn’t building it as a van for me. It was more of a hobby, or a challenge.
Getting the van home gave me a chance to see what I’d got, take some careful measurements and decide what Van Blanc would be. Interestingly, the only pictures I took in the early days were of the inside. That was to be the main battleground, and I needed to form my battle plans.
At 7m in length this Crafter is big. It’s also high, with full standing headroom, and the sliding door and the back doors are all full-height, so we had a very big blank canvas.
Clearing the ground
We could get on with the initial work without making any decision on the intended layout. Having been used as a works van for climbing-frame construction, there was a lot of stuff to be cleared out. Most of it was rubbish, but some of the hundreds of screws retrieved were recycled. Once the dirt was out it was time to remove the floor, the wall lining and the bulkhead. Much of this was useless, but some of the ply lining has found its was back into the build. Most of this preparation phase was relatively straight-forward. Removal of the bulkhead was a bit of a struggle because some of the fixing bolts were difficult to get at, and removing the floor was certainly challenging. Some of the bolts had to be drilled out, and even when the all the fixings had been removed, the ply floor was well stuck down to the van.
When we eventually got there, we found a lot of space, some water leaks, but a basically sound platform to work on. In the next episode we move on to a decision on the layout, and the conversion process begins.
Having installed the electrics in my son’s VW I decided to add an inverter to my own Pilote motorhome. Up to now we’ve used a little portable inverter plugged into a 12V socket when I needed mains voltages while off grid (I like my electric toothbrush). I wanted something just a little more powerful and less inconvenient to deploy.
I initially fancied using automatic switching so that the inverter would feed all my existing 13A sockets when off grid and switch them to hookup when available. But on my van I’d need some clever wiring to avoid the inverter trying to charge its own battery via the built-in charger (which really wouldn’t be a good thing), so I settled for “keep it simple” and gave the inverter its own dedicated sockets instead.
Almost complete – testing it’ll power a little kettle
I used a 1,000W pure sine wave inverter from Renogy. It has an idle current of 1A, so it’s best to turn it off when not needed – the supplied remote switch facilitates that. The inverter fits nicely under the bench with the battery and solar controller. The sockets are conveniently on the front of the bench so there’s no nasty cable routeing involved.
Tests show it can power our travel kettle and travel hairdryer – but not at the same time! The only downside so far is that in the most convenient orientation the label is upside down – it’s under the seat, but I still know it’s there!
The kit didn’t include the breaker – I think it’s pretty essential for something that can dissipate so much power
Breaker installed
Good beefy cable
Sadly it really did have to go this way up
The dedicated sockets powered by the inverter – with USB sockets too
It was the tenth time the Cambridge Half has been run in its current form, and the tenth time I’ve run it. Moved to October due to Covid disruption, we were blessed with a lovely day for running.
Kilometre splits from my FitBit (click to enlarge)
My time was 2:21:20, which was not a PB, but better than last year, which at my age I regard as a result. I felt huge satisfaction from getting my pacing incredibly consistent after a gentle start, trying not to waste energy avoiding people. The flat terrain obviously helps, but I was very surprised to see just how consistent I was and that, although it was getting much harder work towards the end, my pace actually crept up a little. As always the little chats with people along the way and the amazing spectators who stuck around for so long were really motivational. I had been worried by my relatively light training, and as always by the on-the-day logistical uncertainties, like what to wear. It turned into a great day (in my own little way).
I tried hard to convince myself that I was a marathon runner for London 2019 – but I was certainly very happy to be a half marathon runner at Cambridge 2021. Here’s to the next one.
My son Pete told me he’d bought a VW van to convert into a camper. One day it turned up outside my house. And what a beast – long wheelbase, automatic, four wheel drive, and black. He’d bought it as a panel van but by the time he delivered it to me he’d already had some of the specialised work done. It was fitted with a rising roof and top bed, and windows. The inside had a floor, insulation, lining and LED lights (fitted but not connected). Not much to do then.
Early days. The RIB bed has been delivered. Everything is piled inside.
Inside were some large boxes. Further investigation revealed a very large solar panel, an MPPT controller for that panel, a seat swivel for the double front passenger seat, and a kit with curtains and runners for those curtains. Pete had been looking at his options for the conversion, and had decided that he wanted a RIB 130cm bed/rear seat – this crash-tested design gives 3 fully belted passenger seats, two of them with Isofix points for child seats. Equipped this way, the van has a total of six travelling seats – ideal for a large and growing family. These were the major design decisions.
When converting a campervan we can custom build the furniture from raw materials, but since this was a VW Transporter, and the decisions already made constrained the layout to be a conventional “furniture along the offside” arrangement, it made sense to purchase a furniture kit. This saves a lot of time, offers a good fit and and a professional finish. But before committing to ordering the furniture we needed to procure the bed – there was a shortage of parts for campervan conversion due to high demand and supply-chain problems.
After a lot of searching on the web I tracked down the required RIB 130, with upholstery to match the van’s front seats. The one I found was the up-market sliding version – even more expensive and with a little less storage underneath – but offering some flexibility in use. It came more quickly than promised. Very big and very heavy it joined the rest of the equipment inside the van itself.
Seat swivel
Twin passenger seat swivelled
I decided to get into conversion mode with something straightforward, so I looked at the seat swivel. That came with good instructions and the job appeared to be simple enough – a couple of bolts had to be shortened, but apart from that it was a case of unbolt the seat, bolt in the swivel and bolt the seat back on top. Everything was very heavy, and some pieces required a bit of persuasion to fit, but it all worked OK. So far so good.
Solar panel
The challenges for the solar panel are:
mounting it on the roof
routing the cables from outside to inside
locating and connecting the MPPT controller
Some Google homework suggested that the panel could be attached to the roof using Sikaflex adhesive – the material was ordered. Pete had already asked that the mounting brackets be painted yellow, so they needed to be prepared. There was a rubber grommet at the rear of the roof, just in front of the rear doors – I removed this and explored where it led with the help of a spare bicycle cable. After removing an internal panel, slitting the van lining, and much persistent jiggling of the cable I managed to find a route from the roof to the inside. I pulled some string through, ready to pull the power cables.
The way in above the rear doorThe cable emerging from the trim. To its left are the wires for the internal lights
The yellow brackets for the solar panel
The brackets were rubbed down and painted with suitable primer and then the required yellow paint. We were getting to the point I wasn’t looking forward to – sticking a large rigid solar panel (2m x 1m) to a plastic elevating roof. I read the Sikaflex documentation, watched all the YouTubes and tried to convince myself to believe. But the brackets didn’t have a very large flat mating surface for the adhesive. It all looked rather frightening, and the idea of a large solar panel getting loose at high speed was not a pretty thought. I was also tortured by thoughts of how to get the panel in the right place on the roof with adhesive attached. I borrowed Pete for an extra pair of hands, and we applied the adhesive to the bottom of the brackets and then between us lifted the panel on to the roof. Job done, I hoped.
Now I could connect the panel to the MPPT controller and an old leisure battery and make sure it was working – and there it was, volts extracted from the sun.
And all was fine until I drove the van to pick up the furniture. When I got back I noticed that the front brackets for the panel were no longer stuck down. I think this was a combination of my poor workmanship, the flexibility of the rising roof and the fact that the brackets don’t have a good flat mating surface for sticking them down. I didn’t hesitate before doing what I’d really wanted to do all along, and put bolts right through the roof to hold the panel down. Phew!
Ordering the furniture
While all this was going on we were discussing the sourcing of the furniture. Pete had already decided that the best solution was to buy a self-assembly kit. What we hadn’t reckoned on was the supply-chain and demand disruption for van parts, including furniture. Everyone was building a van, and there were shortages of plywood. In the end we opted for a local company (and it turned out one of the people in the company had been to school with Pete). They had a lead time of 8 weeks for furniture – so we did a factory visit (one of the advantages of a local company) and got the furniture on order. This also enabled us to get the fridge and hob – the choice of these is dictated by the furniture. Pete had opted for a simple design for his van with no water system at all, otherwise the sink would have been included in this shopping list. Again, these items were in short supply, but with sufficient work they could be found.
The 8-week delay presented a bit of a hiatus in the build programme. It would not have been wise to commit to bolting in the rear seat without knowing exactly where the furniture was going to be. But we could work on the choices and procurement for the electrical system.
Electrical system
Starting to connect the major electrical components
The electrical system is based around a 12 volt leisure battery charged by various means, with a mains voltage system working alongside. The solar panel and its controller were already in place. I’ve fantasised for a long time about the totally gas-free off-grid camper, but for this simple conversion the huge costs of a large lithium leisure battery bank and high-power inverter for electric cooking were difficult to justify – as well as the space required to house these things in a relatively small van. If you keep reading you will find the twist in the tale of gas-free thinking.
So the design came down to a small lead-acid battery that would fit safely under the driver’s seat, with the solar panel MPPT controller, a battery-to-battery charger for charging while the engine is running, and a charger/inverter that would charge the battery while on mains hook-up (or shore power as the Americans would say). The charger/inverter incorporates a changeover switch so that the 230v outlets function both for hook-up and inverter power.
I thought long and hard about the location of the inlet for the mains hook-up. Traditionally it involves cutting a hole in the bodywork of the van – the end result is convenient to use and can look neat – but I was trying to have the least possible impact on the base vehicle. There are YouTube videos of some very ingenious locations under the rear bumper, or less clever ideas like under the bonnet. In the end I chose to put the inlet under the step – it’s a bit low to get to, and might get well sprayed by rainwater, but I could use existing holes in the body for the cable, and it all looks pretty neat.
I prototyped and tested the whole electrical system, mounted on a sheet of plywood. In the end, after the furniture had been put in place I could, with a few modifications, use the prototype as a part of the final build, locating the bulk of the components behind the driver’s seat, conveniently close to the battery. I had at one time been planning to put all this stuff under the rear seat, but that would have been a much messier solution and stolen a lot of storage space.
Curtains
Pete had already purchased a curtain kit deigned especially for the vehicle. It was well made and mostly fitted well – I had to modify the runners for the back doors. The process of attaching the runners was more traumatic than I had expected. Drilling the small holes for the self-tapping screws in a vehicle that already had the lining fitted proved challenging – it was difficult to mark screw locations on the lining, or indeed even to see the holes once they had been drilled, and the lining would bind around the drill bit and break it with monotonous regularity. I have been very pleased to find out since this experience that I am not the only person to have suffered these difficulties.
Furniture build
Test fitting the furniture rear unit – not bad!
The 8-week lead time for the furniture seemed a very long time, but it arrived pretty well according to schedule. The build of the flat-pack kit took an afternoon on my living-room floor, and all went very well. It meant that we now had to get it into place and see how the bed, fridge and hob would all fit in. Now we see why it was not a good idea to bolt the rear seat in place earlier – it had to be moved out of the way to allow the rear unit to be put in place. In fact it moved back and forth a few times as I mocked up the fitment. With the rear unit in place I could test fit the other units and the worktop, finally giving us the vision of how it would all fit together. With a few thumps to get things into place we could see that the kit manufacturers had done a good job and it was all going to work out OK.
Seeing the fully extent of the furniture – it fits
Now it was a case of pulling all the parts together in their final configuration and I could move on to the last major piece of engineering – bolting in the rear seat/bed.
Bolting in the bed
The reinforcing bar kit
I spent a long time reading and thinking about this. The rear seat/bed unit is a very sturdy crash-tested piece of kit that has to be properly attached to the structure of the van. While waiting for the furniture I had done a few trips underneath the van to explore how we would do this job. A large stainless steel box section reinforcing bar goes below the floor of the van under the rear of the seat frame, to take the major seat-belt loads. This is attached to the seat with bolts through the floor, and also to the van chassis rails.
The reinforcing bar under the floor
I had been rehearsing in my mind whether to drill up from the bottom or down from the top – either route gave a lot of scope for missing the target. In the end I simply lined up the bed in the right place in relation to the furniture and the the inside structure of the van, very carefully marked the hole positions, checked 100 times that I wasn’t going to drill anywhere bad in the underside – and then drilled a small pilot hole down through the floor. Frightening! That hole gave me a firm reference point to relate inside and outside locations – and I had the luck that while I hadn’t made any efforts for it to happen, it lined up with one of the pre-drilled holes in the reinforcing bar. That luck was key to making the rest of the job much easier. I was able to bolt through the seat frame and the floor and hold the bar securely in place for all the remaining holes to be drilled.
The front of the bed also needed to be fixed down, but that was structurally less critical than the rear mounting. The van is the 4×4 variant, so there’s a lot going on under the floor, but I was able to find locations each side that were accessible from the bottom, so I could drill through the seat frame and the floor for the large bolts.
Fixing the furniture
Bracket holding furniture to van – via rivnuts
The furniture not only has to be assembled, but it has to somehow be attached to the van structure. YouTube is strangely quiet on this topic. The professional companies which have so many “how-to” videos say nothing, and even the amateur builders don’t have a lot of hints.
The answer is rivnuts. I’ve never used them before, but they offer a secure way of bolting to the van structure. I bolted L brackets from B&Q to the van frame and screwed them strategically to the furniture bulkheads. I also screwed the base of the furniture units to the floor at various locations. This all worked out well, and the furniture seems well attached.
Fridge and cooker
The fridge, once chosen as a fit for the furniture, proved relatively undemanding. The door opening was swapped to the other side, and it was tested overnight with the electrics in their prototype form to ensure that we got enough charge during the day to keep it running overnight. Otherwise it just had to be screwed into its hole and connected electrically.
The never to be used hob
The hob was more problematic. I had bought it after the furniture was finalised, and it had sat in its box waiting for the furniture delivery. We had (fortunately) decided not to get the worktop cut out for the hob at the suppliers, but to wait until we could test everything in situ. I had been thinking about where to locate the gas cylinder for the hob. Strictly speaking this should be in a gas-tight container with a drop-out through the floor. The only location with enough space for this was behind the rear seat, which meant a very long gas pipe run to the hob. Once the furniture was in place I discovered that a Campingaz 907 cylinder fitted comfortably at the front of the cupboard beside the fridge, right by the hob location. I decided that since the hob was only item fed by gas, it made pragmatic sense to strap the cylinder in that location, with a gas drop-out, despite it not being gas-tight. The cylinder need only be turned on when cooking so realistically there was no safety problem, and in fact a shorter and simpler gas pipe run was probably less likely to have problems.
Oh dear!
Then we discovered that Dometic had a safety recall on hobs, and ours was one of those to be recalled. Dometic couldn’t give any date on when a replacement hob might become available, so we decided that the best solution was, for the time being, not to commit to any cooking solution. A portable camping stove could be used off-grid, and perhaps a small induction hob when on hook-up.
Electrical final fix
All the electrical components had been tested in prototype configuration (in fact I was using the inverter as a power source for my tools during most of the conversion), but I now needed to connect all the bits properly, using a fusebox for the 12v parts and a consumer unit for the 230v distribution from the inverter/charger (which also feeds the hook-up power). It looked a bit messy while it was happening but it all fitted in and worked – and should be as safe as can be.
I’ve fitted two three-way switch and socket combinations, each of them with a double switch, a 13A socket and a 12v outlet (which can be used to supply USB chargers with a suitable plug-in insert). There was surprisingly little choice on where to put these so that they wouldn’t interfere with door opening or otherwise get in the way – a lot of careful thought went into their positioning before making a commitment to cutting holes in cabinets. There are three switches for the internal lights, and the remaining switch is used as remote control for the inverter.
The final piece of tidying up for the electrics was to hide the wiring as neatly as possible in trunking – partly for aesthetics and partly for robustness and safety.
Worktop and table
Danish oil – that’s a trendy thing, and the natural wood finish of the table and worktop demanded trendy. The end result looks good. The table is rail mounted on the furniture, and while I was initially concerned over getting the rail height correct to make the table horizontal, it turned out that the limiting factor was for there to be sufficient clearance to get the hooks on to the rail with the overhanging worktop constraining the space above. The good news is that it all works out just fine – so there it was.
Nothing left to do but one last drive which reminded me what a great van it was to drive, and told me that there were no major rattles from the conversion.
[I often think it would be fun to be a writer. First published to my Facebook account 21 August 2018]
It was the class summer outing to the seaside. There were 45 in the class – it was a state school and there was a shortage of teachers. Well, actually there were a few more than 45, but for various reasons some weren’t allowed to go on the outing – they’d been on holiday to France the previous year, or spoke with a Polish accent, or they were excluded in case the school inspectors saw them.
As they picnicked on the grass at the top of the cliff the teacher overheard some of the kids talking about jumping off. The football team had started it. Frankly most of them were better at bullying people who were brighter than them or shouting abuse at black kids than they were at classroom learning. They had become obsessed by the idea that having a picnic on the grass at the top of the cliff was somehow limiting their freedom. It had happened this way for the last forty years, but they wanted out – they wanted to take back control.
They had talked to a couple of posh blokes in suits after one their matches. The strangely chummy one with the carefully nurtured unruly hairstyle and crumpled suit said that if they jumped off the cliff they would all have free ice-creams for life. He’d just got off a large red coach. The rather creepy one in Harry Potter glasses and very smart suit said that staying on the grass at the top was all a conspiracy. If they jumped off magical things would happen, and they would have the power of flight for the rest of their lives. Wow – the kids had been conned for all these years.
The football team went to the teacher, and said that they wanted to jump off the cliff. The teacher warned them that it was very dangerous as the water was only six feet deep. But they went on and on. They had once heard this big word from a black kid they were punching – demoncrazy or something. “Ah,” said the teacher, ever well-meaning and seeing this as a learning opportunity. “You mean democracy – we’ll put it to the vote.”
“That’s it,” they all said. “We believe in democracy – we’ll have a vote and then it’ll be the will of the people, and you’ll have to let us do it.”
Still hoping to teach the kids something about how the world works, and convinced kids wouldn’t be stupid enough to vote to jump off a cliff, the teacher organised a vote. The football team told the class about the promise of free ice-creams and the magical freedom of the power of flight. The more reflective kids pointed out that these things might not be all they hoped, and jumping off would probably hurt a lot.
“Project Fear” said the football team. Think of ice-cream and the magical power of flight for as long as you live.
The teacher announced the results of the vote: “16 voted to remain on the grass, and 17 voted to jump. The rest were too interested in playing with their phones to bother voting. That means that the majority have voted for jump.”
“Please Miss – what’s a majority?”
“It means most people have voted to jump.”
“Please Miss – there are 45 people in the class. Surely 17 isn’t most of the class.”
“That’s just how democracy works – and don’t call me Shirley!” said the teacher, who wasn’t actually called Shirley. “So we must now respect the will of the people, and everyone has to jump.”
“The will of the people” chanted the football team. They like chants.
She was still hoping they would realise that actually jumping off the cliff on to the rocks below was not really very sensible. She thought that she could persuade them to just jump down a couple of steps on the cliff path. They would have jumped off the cliff, but remained alive. She didn’t tell anyone of her plans. “Jumping means jumping” she said enigmatically, while claiming to be strong and stable.
“Jumping means jumping” chanted the football team.
But as they walked towards the steps a crazy minority in the football team realised what she was planning, and insisted that the will of the people was to properly jump off the cliff on to the rocks below. That was clearly what everyone had voted for. The teacher explained that they would probably kill themselves if they did that.
“Project Fear” said the extremist few.
Then, who should come along but the two posh men in suits, one crumpled and one immaculate. It seems they had both gone to the same fee-paying school, but they believed in doing their bit for common people (or those as thick as potted plants, as the smart one had once called them) so they were now on the governing body of this state school. So that’s how they came to be speaking to the boys in the football team. Phew – there we were thinking the smart one was creepy and the crumpled one overly chummy with young boys. At least we don’t need to call the police! The football extremists told them about the teacher’s plan for a soft jump.
“That’s not good enough” said the men. They made it clear to the teacher that if she didn’t make the children jump off the cliff on the rocks, that wouldn’t be the will of the people, and they would see to it that she was sacked. It might not be a total disaster. If a wave came in at the right moment not all the children would die – at least, not immediately from impact with the rocks. They might die later from drowning or hypothermia, but that would be unlucky and anyway, they were only common people – plenty more where they came from. The posh men would be watching from their luxury yachts – registered in Bermuda apparently, for tax reasons.
That was a real dilemma for the teacher. She was fundamentally a good woman, a vicar’s daughter. The worst thing she’d ever done was to run through a cornfield – oh, and to throw a few immigrants out of her class because they hadn’t brought their passports to school that day. Should she act professionally and look after the interests of the pupils, or did she want to keep her job?
“Look, we’re flying – we’ve taken back control” screamed the children, as they hurtled towards the rocks.
The relaxation of Covid restrictions was perfectly timed for our planned visit to Carsington Water in the Peak District. Camping was now legal but people could only meet outside and in groups of no more than six. This was to be our first trip of the year, and indeed the first non-local travel for months.
Uppertown Farm is very much a minimum facilities site, but that is an observation, not a criticism. It’s beautifully located and the owner, Paul, could not be more friendly or helpful. It’s the sort of site we like – no frills but perfectly located for a range of activities, or indeed for simply sitting and taking in the view.
Paddle Boarding
I’d watched the YouTube videos of van-lifers serenely paddling on glistening waters in the sunshine, and I was keen to find out what it was like to stand on a SUP board. When I saw that I could hire a board just yards from where we were camping it was too much to resist.
It was only after I’d booked my session that I thought it through, and realised that the Peak District in April might not quite match the idyllic social media dream. After more on-line research on things like which way round to hold the paddle, and whether hypothermia was likely when wearing a wetsuit I was as prepared as I was going to be. They say that fortune favours the brave, and the afternoon of my paddle turned out to be the warmest and most pleasant day of the month. I fell in twice – once at the start, which enabled me to reassure myself that I could get back on, and once at the end because I let my concentration lapse. It was great fun, and the wetsuit did an incredible job of keeping me warm and comfortable.
Cycling Round the Lake
Fewer than six
It’s a very pleasant 8½ miles around Carsington Water on a well-surfaced track mostly shared with pedestrians. There are good views of the water for much of the ride, while travelling variously through wooded areas and pastureland. There are some fairly steep gradients but they’re not very long, so whether you walk up or engage a low gear, it’s not too challenging. A lovely way to while away a morning – and if that’s your thing, there’s a coffee shop at the Visitor Centre to top up on your energy levels when you’ve finished.
High Peak Trail
Click to enlarge
The High Peak Trail and the Tissington Trail were both within easy cycling reach of our campsite. I decided that the High Peak Trail was the one for me – it offered a variety of terrain and lots of industrial archaeology. As it says in the guide “the High Peak Trail follows the route of the former Cromford and High Peak Railway”. Don’t let that fool you into thinking there are no gradients, because this particular route has steep inclines to add to the interest – trains were hauled up these inclines on cables, and the Middleton Top engine House, which provided some of the power for this, still remains.
Steep inclines for a railway (Click to enlarge)
Trains were hauled up using this engine. No such help for bikes
High Peak – where rail meets canal at the bottom of the hill
Much of what I wrote in my earlier blog also applies to portable panels – in general, from the operational point of view the bigger the better, but with portable panels there is the downside of storage when the panel is not deployed. A degree of compromise is required.
Advantages
Cheaper and simpler to install – a decent portable panel will have a built-in controller so you can just connect it to the leisure battery (or indeed the engine battery if you want to charge that) directly via crocodile clips or a convenient socket.
Can be placed in the sun even if you’re parked in the shade – good for keeping the van cool, or if you have no choice of pitch. You can also rotate it as the sun goes round to maximise efficiency.
Disadvantages
Storage space – by definition a decent panel is quite large, but there’s often a corner somewhere to hide it away.
Cables across the pitch
Risk of theft – it’s portable, so it’s designed to be easy to walk away with. You can chain it to the van, but then you lose some of the flexibility
Options for when your van is parked up
A battery maintainer
As another variation, to keep batteries alive while the van is in storage, you could consider a battery maintainer. Something as pictured above should keep either your leisure battery or your vehicle battery alive if you can locate it in a window that receives a reasonable amount of light. It wouldn’t provide enough power to be useful while you’re camping, but will do a good job replenishing battery leakage whilst idle. I’d go for a rated power of something like 10W.
…not when you’re choosing solar panels for you motorhome
In another blog I considered the sizing of solar panels for a motorhome. In this blog I discuss some of the other issues that you might want to consider before fitting a system with fixed solar panels. You can read about portable solar panels here.
When we decided to fit solar panels to our motorhome I spoke to the dealer from whom I’d bought the motorhome. He told me that they normally fit flexible panels stuck directly to the roof. These are lighter and smaller than the alternative rigid panels (as you might have on your house). Since he was an agent for Pilote, familiar with the vehicle and the ideal location for the panels and the associated wiring, I took the easy way out and let him get on with it.
When I collected the motorhome everything was fitted neatly, and there wasn’t much to see from ground level. It turns out that the system only charges the leisure battery – my dealer thought it would charge the vehicle battery too, but that’s not really a problem for me. We’ve now been using the solar panels for a few seasons, so we’ve learnt a little about our system and its implications.
How could we have done it?
The alternative to our flexible panels would have been one or more rigid panels. Our motorhome has a very flat roof and no roof-bars, so fitting a rigid panel would have involved sticking mounting brackets to the roof. A rigid panel would stand clear of the roof, with potential for damage and wind noise. If you have a campervan or motorhome with a roof-rack, or mounting points for one, then fitting might be even simpler.
What have we learnt?
The system has worked well, and never caused any problems. Even with solar we have occasionally suffered from a low battery in extended bad weather (otherwise known as summer holiday), but at least there’s a way back. It’s good to know that normally even without a hook-up or running the engine, the battery will be fully charged by the evening, so that late night TV binge or hours on the PC blogging will be forgiven. And I know from other people’s experiences that solar is pretty well a must-have for those with compressor fridges.
Our 300W installation. The cable goes straight down to a connection point in the wiring loom
Heat
I’d never really thought about this. Flexible panels stuck directly to the roof can make the inside of the roof surprisingly warm, despite all the insulation. We have one cupboard which is now not a good place to store a Mars Bar. There are three factors to this:
solar panels naturally get warm as a part of their energy conversion process
the panels are much darker than the roof, and therefore absorb more of the heat from the sun
if you want to benefit from solar battery charging you tend to avoid the shade
Weight
A rigid panel is significantly heavier than a flexible panel of the same power. In practice this is not likely to be a critical factor.
Cost
Flexible panels are about twice the price of an equivalent rigid panel.
Controller
The Chinese MPPT controller works behind the scenes and appears to do a good job. The whole system is pretty unrewarding if you like tinkering with electronic gadgets, because it just gets on with the job. A controller from a company like Victron Energy might be more exciting, because you can link to your smartphone via Bluetooth, watch all those lovely electrons being captured, and monitor your battery state. That might help if your usage is marginal at any time, but in truth “it just works” is perfectly acceptable.
Durability
I can’t really comment on durability – yet. Our panels are now looking as though they’ve spent too long on the beach, but still seem to be working fine. Flexible panels are unlikely to be physically damaged by getting stood on, or by falling branches – a rigid panel is more fragile, but sat in its frame it’s still a pretty robust piece of kit.
Should anything go wrong, I’ve heard that it’s not a pleasant job to remove a stuck on flexible panel, whereas replacing a rigid panel mounted on a bracket should be trivial.
Summary
The system has enhanced our usage of the van and overcome charge anxiety, particularly for longer stays and out of peak season. The hot cupboard is a bit of an issue when the weather is sunny (although I guess it would be good for bread making). Otherwise, now we’ve spent the money, there are no real downsides for us. If one of your motivations is to maintain your starter battery whilst in storage, you will need to check out the choice of controller and the arrangement of the wiring so that both batteries can be charged appropriately.
I have a problem. Actually I have a lot of problems, but the one that’s relevant right now is that I studied engineering, so things like amps and volts and watts don’t really bother me.
V = IR seems entirely reasonable. Even v2 = u2 + 2as is fine, because it’s Newtonian mechanics. I do come relatively unstuck when Einstein gets involved and nothing is quite like you think it is, and I get even more uncertain when Heisenberg joins in (that’s a very bad physics joke).
But I digress. When I was writing my blog about solar panels for motorhomes, I realised that my terminology might confuse some of my readers – if indeed I have any. So I thought I would put together a little explanation of some of the terms I used in that blog and attempt to use a plumbing analogy to explain some of the logic.
The plumbing analogy
Water tank
The diagram above shows a bath filled from a water tank above it. That water tank in turn can be filled from a pipe marked “Input” which is fed by a stream. There is a tap on the input pipe which can be turned off to stop the tank overflowing. The water level in the tank is 12 ft above the bath tap. The tank can hold 100 gallons of water.
This water tank is equivalent to the battery in a motorhome electrical system.
I’m worried already that I’m just confusing the issue
Bath
The bath consumes the water from the tank, fed through the pipe marked “output”. The flow of water into the bath is controlled by the tap.
Terminology
Volts (V)
Electrical volts are equivalent to pressure in our little plumbing system. The pressure at the bath tap is determined by the height of the water in the tank above, which is 12 ft when the tank is full. If the tank was higher the water would come out more quickly, and vice versa. The effect you might notice with your motorhome is that when the voltage is low things run sluggishly.
Please don’t look too closely at my logic, especially if you understand these things. It’s falling apart already, I know. It seemed so simple when I started!
Amps (A)
Amps are the measure of electrical current (or the flow of electrons through the wire). In our plumbing model, the current is rate at which the water is flowing. Just to make it more confusing amps is short for ampères, which is usually spelt without the grave (down-slanty) accent because it’s French and no-one knows how to type one.
Watts (W)
A watt is a unit of power. My analogy falls apart at this point – but it would work if you were playing with a water-wheel under the bath tap. If you ran more water through the tap the water wheel would go faster and generate more power. If you know the voltage (around 12V when you’re running from the battery of a motorhome) and you know the current, you multiply volts x amps to give you the power in watts. So that 5W LED is consuming a current of around 0.4A (5 ÷ 12).
I do hope I’ve got my arithmetic right. I’d look such a fool if I divide when I’m meant to multiply
Amp hours (Ah)
You will have seen this in discussions of batteries. This is a measure of the capacity of a battery. It’s equivalent to the capacity of the tank in our little diagram. When you’re off-grid it’s all you have available to power your electrical equipment. Our tank holds 100 gallons. Your battery may hold 100Ah or a little more. Without any means of refilling, when it’s gone it’s gone. You can recharge your battery from a mains hookup, from the vehicle alternator when the engine is running, from a generator if you don’t want any friends, or from solar panels.
If our bath holds 80 gallons, we’ll be OK for one bath if the tank was full when we started. Similarly if your 100Ah battery was fully charged and your requirement while off grid was for 80Ah it would be able to supply your needs. This could mean delivering a current of 1A for 80 hours, or a current of 80A for one hour, or any other combination which gives 80 when multiplied together. In theory your battery would power that 5W LED for about 10 days!
Watt hours (Wh)
Watt hours are another (slightly more scientific) way of measuring electrical energy. When we use watt hours we’re taking account of the voltage, so our 12V battery of 100Ah contains 1200Wh of energy (100 x 12). This is 1.2kW hours, or 1.2 units of electricity, as your supplier would describe it. Your battery can supply enormous currents, but working at only 12V (as compared to 230V mains electricity) that still doesn’t add up to a lot of energy.
Note to self: Just don’t mention AC and DC – that would be the final straw
What does solar do for us?
When the sun shines on your solar panel, it’s the equivalent of turning on the “Input” tap. The tank (or your battery) starts to fill. So if the water runs into the tank for long enough with a high enough flow rate, your tank level will be replenished and you’ll be ready for another bath. If this happens every day, it will look as though you have an unlimited water supply. As an added bonus, you can run your bath quickly, even if the input is quite slow, or temporarily unavailable. And the same with your motorhome electrical system – you can draw 100A from the battery (for a short time) just as long as it will get refilled over a longer period. That 100A might sound a lot, but you really want that hair drier, don’t you?
Of course, you don’t want the tank to overflow – that’s what the tap is for. This is the equivalent of the solar controller in your electrical system. It will automatically control the “tap” to top up your battery as fast as possible, and stop when it’s full.
The trick with the solar charging system is to achieve a balance between the input (from the panels) and the output through your electrical devices, not over the short term, but aggregated over 24 hours – you’re always hoping the sun will come up tomorrow (as it has every day so far in my life), and 24 hours is the horizon for new solar energy.
