gustavo Moré Sica

Joined: November 5, 2025
Articles: 92

ELECTRICAL

Camper Van Hot Water: I Spent €1,000 and Got 20 Seconds

The shower it was all for. A €1,000 system feeding it, and in practice I used a kettle and a basin far more often.

Every guide to hot water in a van says the same thing about engine heat exchangers. Free hot water. Zero running cost. Uses waste heat you’re producing anyway. If you drive before you park, it’s the obvious answer. I paid…

gustavo Moré Sica
August 20, 2026

ELECTRICAL

Diesel Heater Power Consumption: The Startup Is Not One Spike

Vevor 8kW diesel heater installed beside a 150Ah AGM battery in a motorhome

If you go looking for how many amps a diesel heater draws, you’ll find numbers that don’t agree with each other. Eight to ten amps on startup, says one source. Seventeen or eighteen, says another. One to one and a…

ELECTRICAL

Your Power Calculations Are Wrong. Here’s by How Much

Inverter display showing real power draw in a camper van

Every van build starts the same way. You list your appliances, you add up the watts, you divide by 12, you multiply by the hours, and you get a number. Then you buy a battery slightly bigger than that number…

ELECTRICAL, solar-climate

MPPT vs PWM: Everyone Says PWM Is Fine for Small Systems. I Ran One.

The consensus on this is settled and it goes like this: PWM controllers are fine for small systems. Under about 150 watts of panel, on lead-acid batteries, save the money and spend it on something else. That advice is well…

BATTERIES, ELECTRICAL

Camper Battery Draining Overnight? How to Find the Parasitic Draw

Multimeter measuring parasitic battery drain in a camper van

You go to bed with a charged battery. You wake up and it’s low, and nothing was switched on. Two completely different problems produce that, and they look identical from the outside. One is something quietly drawing current all night.…

BATTERIES

Why My AGM Battery Died in Under a Year — With the Measurements

Leisure battery connected with a ground cable and a positive distribution busbar

My AGM battery is 150 amp-hours, it cost €250, and it is under a year old. It still works — and it will never hold a full charge again. Not dead — it still starts the day looking healthy. It…

solar-climate

Can You Run an RV Air Conditioner on Battery Power? The Real Numbers

Search this question and you’ll find the answer is yes. You’ll also find that most of the pages telling you so sell lithium batteries or air conditioners. That isn’t a conspiracy — they know their subject and their numbers are…

ELECTRICAL, solar-climate

12V Fridge Power Consumption: Why the Wattage Isn’t the Number That Matters

Almost every article on this answers the wrong question. They tell you a 12 V compressor fridge draws 30 to 60 watts. That’s true, and it’s nearly useless on its own — because that figure barely changes. A fridge in…

BATTERIES, solar-climate

Solar Panel Not Charging the Battery? Find the Fault in Five Measurements

Two solar charge controllers mounted upright on a wooden board in a camper van: a Victron MPPT 75/15 and an SRNE controller with a digital display

When solar stops charging, the panel is almost never the problem. Panels are the most reliable component in the system — no moving parts, sealed, and warrantied for twenty-five years. The fault is usually in the twenty feet between the…

BATTERIES, ELECTRICAL

AGM vs Lithium in a Camper Van: What the Difference Actually Looks Like

Two batteries labeled “100 Ah” can behave so differently that comparing them by that number is close to meaningless. One of them will give you 50 amp-hours before you should stop. The other gives 90. One will feed a 1,000…