Help! Battery problem

Can anyone help? I'm in France with my Nuevo van and all the batteries are flat and I don't understand why. I'm at a campsite so I am hooked up to 10amps. I've got a solar panel and lpg as well. brand new van battery fitted in November. But the leisure battery is displaying 9.8v and vehicle battery now up to 11.1v but didn't start when I tried to start it 30 mins ago. Display panel says mains off, but I'm hooked up! Tried to cook my dinner and  gas and did light. Hungry, cold, tired and clueless

Have you checked the mains circuit breaker. Don’t know your van but you might find it in the wardrobe. Alternatively if you can access a different hookup try that.

Paddington wrote:Can anyone help? I'm in France with my Nuevo van and all the batteries are flat and I don't understand why. I'm at a campsite so I am hooked up to 10amps. I've got a solar panel and lpg as well. brand new van battery fitted in November. But the leisure battery is displaying 9.8v and vehicle battery now up to 11.1v but didn't start when I tried to start it 30 mins ago. Display panel says mains off, but I'm hooked up! Tried to cook my dinner and  gas and did light. Hungry, cold, tired and clueless

Are you sure the mains supply hasn't  tripped. If you thought you were on mains but it had failed then you could flatten your battery(s) at this time of year. As a starter can the campsite owner confirm you have power. Then check you haven't  accidentally actuated the shut down switch on the PSU, easily done on my Nuevo when under the settee.

Thanks all. Circuit breaker in cupboard was off. Now have lights and cooking with gas as they say

marconi wrote:As a starter can the campsite owner confirm you have power. 

Easiest way I've found to quickly check the power supply is to switch on the microwave.

Incidentally, on our van (and probably others) it also gives an indication when you have so called reversed polarity. (How do you reverse an alternating current?? )

Not that this bothers me in the least, but for those who do worry about it, if the polarity is "reversed" the indicator light on the wall switch for the microwave is illuminated whether it is switched on or not. The illumination is much less bright when switched off, but still quite visible.

And before anyone asks, I haven't a clue. I'm a bear of little brain when it comes to electrical theory! 

Maybe not reverse polarity, but reverse pos & neg, I have one of those check-plugs with 3 leds on the front, all 3 illuminate when all is correct, & also inform if neutral, earth or pos is wrong.

On the continent you may easily find that because of totally different national standards you will get a reverse polarity indication whichever way round the put is connected to the mains supply. In very simplistic terms in the UK our live is about 230v different from earth and neutral is anything between zero and 10v from earth. On the continent the two pins can both be 115v from earth but in opposite directions so that the overall voltage is still 230v. A reverse polarity indicator will react to any voltage of the UK 'neutral' pin relative to earth which is greater than around 50v.

Would this 10 volts between neutral and earth explain why, since I fitted LED bulbs, a few of my home light fittings have a very weak glow when switched off? The switch is definitely switching off the positive side. It was never apparent when the fittings had tungsten or halogen lamps fitted.
Al.

I think the afterglow is more likely to be capacitors in the led control circuitry. I have noticed this and it usually subsides after a short period.
In the UK Neutral is connected to Earth at the local sub-station. The 10v that I quoted is highly variable and as well as depending on distance from you to substation it also varies with the amount of current taken by the customer.

I thought capacitors Ron, but a few of my LED fittings are still glowing hours after switching off.
Al.

For the glowing LED when switched off problem, have a read of:

https://lamphq.com/led-lights-glow/

Very interesting reading Spospe, thanks.
I think my problem may be the parallel cable routing because the only LED's that are affected are the ones on our two flights of stairs, controlled by several switches on the landings.
I'll investigate further when I come back to the UK.
Sorry for going off track.
Al.

Al,
That link is probably correct. Nearly 30 years ago I was wiring up a timer switch for our downstairs lighting circuit. I switched off the downstairs lights breaker and removed the lcorresponding live cable from the consumer unit and took it to the switched live of the time switch. I then removed the neutral of the same cable from the neutral busbar. While connecting that to the time switch neutral terminal  and running a new live and neutral feed from the consumer unit to the timer input I touched a bare wire and got a full 230V kick - from the black neutral.wire!
That took quite a bit of figuring out! The problem was that the house had been rewired and the conduits between hall and landing were not big enough to take 2 three core plus earth cables for 2 way switching for hall and landing. A clever (?) electrician had solved the conundrum by wiring the hall light to get its live feed from the upstairs circuit and the neutral return through the downstairs circuit. The landing lights are wired the other way round - downstairs live and upstairs neutral. It sounds absurd but I do recall working out why it works. Because we have never hacked out the plaster to replace the conduits it's still like it!
Spospe's link refers to this as a cause for LED afterglow.