Another weekend

Peta and I have spent a lot of time on Tabitha again this weekend. We're trying to get the cab roof clean, so that we can rustproof it and insulate it. It's a really tedious chore, and it gets tiring really quickly, so we rarely get more than half an hour or so done at a time.

When not scraping roofs, I've been concentrating on the electrics. I finally realised that no matter where the two mystery wires that disappear under the van go (I think they reappear in the front of the cab as part of the 12v circuit), it doesn't hide the fact that there is in fact no split charge relay. This means that if something on the 12 volt circuit is left on, then first the leisure battery drains, then the starter battery - and then you can't start your van. So that's one mystery solved.

I have a rough sketch of what I want to do (mostly from the Electrickery link on split charge and fridge power), so I just need a visit to Maplins to get to work on that. Once I've got the circuitry covered there, I plan to revamp the 12v circuitry entirely, installing a distribution panel, getting the powered water pump up and running, and replace the van's reliance on 230v. A solar panel would increase our self-reliance too (although total self-reliance will require a lot more work to refit the entire bathroom water system and drainage).

The 230v circuit isn't much better than the 12v circuit really, although I'm not sure I'm so keen on tackling it just yet. I'm only halfway through replacing the inlet from a female socket to a male one - female inlets are smaller, oddly, so I need to increase the size of the hole to fit the larger male inlet. I need to do a lot more research to determine how best to rewire - although it has to be possible to improve on the following:

• 230v inlet comes in to a fuse
• from fuse, to 2 way adaptor
• 2 way adaptor goes to fridge and 4 way adaptor
• 4 way adaptor serves teasmade, interior light and 12v battery charger