Invertor / Relay / Leisure Battery ??

[Parsy1972]

New to the forum and recently purchased a 56 reg MWB low roof transit which has been converted into a crew cab.
Im using it for transporting my bikes to race meetings and was looking to add a leisure battery and invertor to power a microwave.
Pretty sure this will have been covered a million times before but any help would be most appreciated.
Would like to go for a bigger invertor if possible in case we would like to boil a kettle at the same time.
Thanks in advance
Gavin

[hectors-tranny]

A 240V 1200W Microwave would need to draw 100A through an inverter - that's some serious power draw! (Even 12V microwaves draw a lot from a battery and need some heavy duty cabling.)

A 240V 1800W kettle would draw 150A !! You're better off boiling water with a calor gas cylinder.

[dumper]

Look on eBay seen a ad on their for a low power microwave and inverter I have the same setup and run it off 2 .140 amp leisure battery's seems spot on .if you get one do not use it with the engine running laid when battery was getting low and it fryed the split charger and not long after the alternator pack up but It had done over 100000 mls so maybe it was ready for replacement anyway

[EDDY99]

A low powered microwave just takes longer to do the job, so not much gain.
Cooking by gas is by far the best option and running low powered mains items of an inverter.

Eddy

[mistericeman]

We run a 3000w inverter powered by 3 x 100ah leisure batteries charged by a Durite voltage sensing split charge relay and 2 X 100w solar panels on the roof....
We use a microwave/toaster/kettle/slow cooker etc (obviously not at the same time)

Works fine for us as we move around a fair bit.... We've had the engine running with the inverter working without problems though the Durite relay is, pretty heavy duty...
I doubt one of the cheaper smartcom type would last long though lol.
A lot depends on what you want to do.... we didn't want gas on board so went all electric as we tend to wild camp off grid and didn't want to be running out of gas as, inconvenient points lol.

[dumper]

Yes mistericeman I agree my split charger was a light duty one so not really surprised it died but it all works ok now

[Parsy1972]

thanks for all the ideas. I was looking into a low wattage microwave as you can get ones for bout 600w. Its only to use about once or twice a week after race meetings instead of calling in a eating crap at McDonalds at 10pm at night. The kettle would have been a bonus but I guess you could warm up a flask of coffee in the microwave.
Should i then invest in 2 leisure batteries rather than 1 ?

[mistericeman]

thanks for all the ideas. I was looking into a low wattage microwave as you can get ones for bout 600w. Its only to use about once or twice a week after race meetings instead of calling in a eating crap at McDonalds at 10pm at night. The kettle would have been a bonus but I guess you could warm up a flask of coffee in the microwave.
Should i then invest in 2 leisure batteries rather than 1 ?

Check out the actual input power of the microwave your considering...as the figure given is often the output.

I've had a 800w that had an input power of nearly 1100w.

I'd count on two hefty leisure batteries otherwise you'll be taking a single one down to below it's 50% safe discharge in short order.