Electrical Problems in Caravans. 2 dangerous incidents.

We had a visit last week by the owners of a caravan looking for the house sitters who we had while away. During our conversation he described the serious electrical problems in his caravan with an off road pack, that was manufactured by a well known Victorian company that mainly makes on road vans.

When he ordered the caravan he asked the dealer to wire up both his vehicle and the caravan with an Anderson Plug to charge the on board batteries while travelling.

Being an electrically challenged person, when things stopped working he went to an auto electrician who inspected the set up.
What he found was very disturbing.
Apparently both the Caravan manufacturer had used under sized wiring throughout the caravan and also the Anderson plug wiring that had not been protected by circuit breakers or fuses. Somewhere a short circuit occured and all the wiring burnt out between car battery and caravan and also within the caravan. The whole caravan required re-wiring, and was lucky to have not caught fire.

The other incident I was told about last night, was by a close friend who owns a well known brand purpose built off road caravan that was fitted with an inverter. When he had an electrical problem in his van he called in an electrician who made a number of tests and found that when the Inverter had been connected, it was done in such a way that the 240 volt power made the exterior inlet plug live. (The plug where you connect mains power into van.)
Fortunately this fault was found before any unsuspecting person touched the inlet pins.

It is amaising how so called experts can put unsuspecting caravan owners at risk.

Brian