Today I arrived at to visit my Avondale Orestes and was shocked it was no longer there. In fact it had been burned to the ground. At first I thought it was vandalism but after a few hours dwelling on the disaster, the following theory occurred to me:
On my previous visit to the van (as it is off grid)I had been experimenting with an 800 watt inverter (not pure sine) to power the vans 240v electrics from a separate battery with a view in the long term to keeping this charged by solar and wind.
Out of curiosity I switched on the vans internal battery charger for a few minutes to see if it put some charge in the leisure battery in the van, it appeared to work an power the lighting. Thinking back I noticed a slightly different smell from the charger.
On leaving the van I disconnected everything except the wiring between the charger and the leisure battery.
My theory is I had damaged the charger electronics by powering it using a none pure sine inventor and current from the battery had somehow flowed through the damaged electronics thereby causing the fire eventually......anyone any thoughts or experience of anything similar.
Can't recall the make of the charger on the Avondale but was a basic looking black box with on/off switch.
On my previous visit to the van (as it is off grid)I had been experimenting with an 800 watt inverter (not pure sine) to power the vans 240v electrics from a separate battery with a view in the long term to keeping this charged by solar and wind.
Out of curiosity I switched on the vans internal battery charger for a few minutes to see if it put some charge in the leisure battery in the van, it appeared to work an power the lighting. Thinking back I noticed a slightly different smell from the charger.
On leaving the van I disconnected everything except the wiring between the charger and the leisure battery.
My theory is I had damaged the charger electronics by powering it using a none pure sine inventor and current from the battery had somehow flowed through the damaged electronics thereby causing the fire eventually......anyone any thoughts or experience of anything similar.
Can't recall the make of the charger on the Avondale but was a basic looking black box with on/off switch.