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Depends what your duty cycle is like. How much driving vs parked, any mains hookup etc.
Fridge would almost always be on the leisure circuit: being stranded is worse than having a few gone-off things in the fridge.
The battery designs used for cranking and leisure are different. Cranking batteries deliver high current but are expected to be recharged immediately after doing their work. Leisure batteries are typically rated for lower current but can be run lower before charging without completely killing the battery.
Emyr-
Yep, that's all stuff I know :)
Is there any reason having the cooler on while the leisure battery is charging (from the alternator, no mains for now) would cause issues? Then just disconnect from the starter when the engine's off and let it run off leisure?
No plans to run it all the time, only after a big fresh food shop and when we need to keep beers cool for half a day or so...
atk
We've had a few problems with our van leisure battery and such and I'm finally getting round to trying to fix it as we'll be selling the van in 6 weeks or so...
Current situation:
The leisure battery is probably dead (previous owners had bought a refurb and it's since been left flat all winter after having a whole bunch of mechanical/rust issues that needed fixing), so we're probably going to have to replace that. The wiring is currently set up as so:
We also have one of these little cooler things that runs off a 12v cig lighter socket thing.
I figure I can hook up a 12v socket (similar to to this) straight off the leisure battery terminals to power the cooler while the leisure battery is disconnected without any problems (we also have a 12 to 240v inverter thing which I'll wire in for the next people but doubt we'll ever actually use).
My questions:
Would the 12v socket-on-leisure-battery work and the leisure battery charge while the batteries are connected and the engine is running, or am I better off bodging something to run the cooler off the cig lighter on the dashboard while the batteries are connected and the engine's running and then switching over to the leisure battery when disconnected?
If that's a terrible idea and anyone can suggest a better way of doing it both cheaply (jaycar would probably be the source of components) and in relatively simple terms that'd be great :)
@Emyr you know about batteries and stuff...