2020 Broadway - CTEK charger

If you set your control panel to smart charging it will look after both batteries so no real need for separate charger.

Is the Boxer cab cig socket live all times? Charger won't work if not.

The boxer  cab cig skt is only live with ignition on so not suitable for charger input.

R50MTW wrote:Our motorhome has a smart charger system built in, and also a solar panel which charges the batteries when not in use. Is it ok to plug in a CTEK charger (via cigarette socket in Cab) to charge/condition the vehicle battery? I use this charger for my other vehicles and it does an excellent job. 

A lot of campers only charge the leisure battery so i fit the cable to the vehicle battery and have the plug to connect to the ctek charger come out at the back of the seat so the vehicle battery can now be charged

R50MTW wrote:....and also a solar panel which charges the batteries when not in use. ..... 

The solar panel is only capable of charging the batteries if the EC700 PSU is active (not shutdown) with the solar charge set to smart or manually switched from one battery to the other on EC700 CP.  However, at this time of year the solar charge is less than the power consumed by the EC700 so if the PX300 is not switched on with the van connected to an EHU, both batteries will go flat.  The non-EHU solution is to shutdown the EC700 PSU when the van is out of use.  This will divert all the available solar charge to the vehicle battery which is generally enough, even at this time of year, to keep it fully charged, if it is fully charged to start with.  If the leisure battery is fully charged to start with, it will be fine without charge for at least 3 months but if you want to charge it and can connect the van to an EHU, turning the PX300 on for a few hours whilst the EC700 PSU is still shutdown will do the trick.  There is no need to use an additional mains charger. When the EC700 is shutdown you can see the leisure battery's state of charge on AS Monitor.

glyne lock wrote:
A lot of campers only charge the leisure battery so i fit the cable to the vehicle battery and have the plug to connect to the ctek charger come out at the back of the seat so the vehicle battery can now be charged

I did something similar but not to charge the vehicle battery.  I used a fused flying lead & socket from the vehicle battery as a way of measuring its resting voltage from inside the van when the EC700 was shutdown and therefore couldn't be seen on the EC700 CP or remotely on AS Monitor.  I removed the lead when I fitted the dual battery solar regulator as I could measure the voltage on that.  If I want to mains charge the vehicle battery without activating the EC700, I would use the connections under the bonnet for slave starting the engine.