Drinking and Lighting

I was sitting on a friend’s sofa the other night, drinking a beer (to her beers) telling her about my van project.   She was casually interested of course.   We have been friends for a few years and she is used to my strange ideas.  It wasn’t until I said to her, “..and, if I want to see a band or something, I could find someplace to park the van close by the bar and just plan to sleep there overnight after the show.”   Dawning realization spread over her face as she thought of the drinking implications of such a vehicle.   I thought I was going to have to promise to loan it out on weekends before I even have it done!

The correctly wired shunt.  Wired now to the negative side of
the battery.  Also, note the red heat shrink tubing around the
white conductor.  DC electrical circuits use red (positive)
and black for negative.  The red wrap reminds me these white
and black wires should really be thought of as red.

I had a great night of working on the van tonight.   Lots of things are finally coming together.

First off, before I did anything else, I rewired my mistake.   In the last article I mentioned I realized I had wired something wrong.   I was reading the instructions after I had already installed it and wired it in.   Dumb.   I am just glad I realized it myself and didn’t have to write into their support email.    That would have made me feel REALLY dumb.   Anyway, I got that part wired correctly now.   The photo shows you the correct wiring.   The shunt (thin metal bar) you are reading the amperage across must be placed on the negative side of the battery, wired directly directly before the battery itself.   I am glad I noticed that and the fix didn’t require too many changes.

I have begun the general wiring of the van.   Here I decided to cut a corner.  For the last two houses my family has moved to, we have moved with us, ninety feet of a one hundred foot spool of wire I bought about 25 years ago.   I needed about ten feet for a job I was doing right at that moment.   I had plans that would consume another fifty feet in a few months.   So, I went ahead and bought the hundred footer.   Then of course the later project went another direction.   It is heavy duty 10-3 with ground solid core wire.   What this means for the non-wire geeks out there, is three fairly large diameter wires that will each carry 12 volts, with a fourth wire that will be attached to the negative side of the battery.   —Also known as the “ground”.   But these wires are thick and solid wire very hard to bend.  If I was buying new wire I would be buy stranded (many thin wires bundled together) and flexible.   If I was buying wire, I would buy stranded because it would be much easier to work with.  But I already own this wire and I really didn’t want to move it again.

Running the wire through the unibody frame.

What is crazy to me is, though I have been wiring stuff for years.   Running wire all the way across a big old house, I don’t very often need thick wire.   Exactly once in my twenty five years, running from a sub panel to a hot tub have I had to have wire this thick.   But here, in this little tiny van, using a heavy gauge wire really makes a difference.   The reason for that is voltage.   Electricity moves much easier through thick wire than thin due to something called resistance.  It takes push to move electricity through a wire.   In your house, you have 110 volt.   Lots of push.   Thin wires are fine.   Here in the van I have 12 volts.   Not much push.   So thicker wire makes it easier for the low voltage electricity to pass through the wire and not get bogged down in resistance.    

But the wire thickness makes it really hard to bend around and get shoved through the areas it needs to.   I have a friend stopping by the shop tomorrow looking into building a table for me.   I need to remember to ask him to help me pull the cable through one spot.   I am running the wire through the frame above the side door and popping them out of the frame hole in front of the bulkhead.   It is easy to accidentally shred the insulation around the wire on the sharp edges of the frame.   The prevents me from just pulling hard from the bulkhead.   But pushing it I can only move it about two inches, then …out the side door, in the front door, give the wire a tug and it moves two inches, out the front door, in the side door, push wire, repeat.  Instead this could be a thirty second four-hand job, me pushing, him pulling.

That wire will be the cabin lights, the 12 volt plug-in and four outlet USB plug-in that will be built into the table and a 12 volt plugin at the foot of the bed where the TV will plug in.   On the other (doorless) side of the van, running the wire was much easier.   So I have the wire run that will power the furnace, refrigerator, and kitchen lights.   I will still need to get power run to the places I will install ceiling fans.

Fuse holder sans fuse.

But at the moment anyway, all this wire running is a moot point.   Someplace in my house, or in my van, or in my cubical or perhaps somewhere in between these three points I have lost the Baomain ANL-50A fuses I bought.   I had them.   I looked at them.  As far as a fuse looking cool, I gotta say they looked cool.  But that was the Amazon order I received back in January.   It is now March and I have no idea where them rascals have got to.   From what I read, I felt like fuses would be a better solution than a breaker between the inverter and the batteries as well as each end of the wire between the house batteries and the engine battery.  There is a surge of power that have to be able to pass through at times for it to work as designed.   These surges might trip a breaker but the fuse lets it work.  

Anyway, the fuse holders I got.  The fuses I ain’t.   Damn.   

One of the 4-awg battery
connectors.  Hammered to
cinch onto the wire. 

The missing fuses mean I can’t test the inverter/charger, nor can I really use the 12 volt system because I have no way to recharge the batteries.  My secondary battery charging method (running the engine) relies on the same fuses along with a couple of other bits I haven’t purchased yet.   Until I find them (I am holding out hope) or I find a local supplier I am at a bit of a standstill.

I am getting close to being done with the infrastructure part of the wiring job, at least until the solar panels come in.   One last task I have is to install something called a battery isolator under the hood, close to the engine battery.   What this isolator does is lets electricity flow from the alternator on the engine, to charge the house batteries.   When the engine is off though it disconnects.  That way no matter how wild of party I throw in the back, I won’t drain my engine starting battery.   I won’t be stranded.

Something I plan on doing a little different.  Something I haven’t seen on anyone else’s van project is I am going to put a bypass on the battery isolator.  I know some people will say I could just wire the battery isolator to a switch on the dash.  I flip the switch, and it closes the relay on the isolator.   I had one setup like this in a green 1973 Chevy Caprice Classic back in the day. I had two batteries setup in it so I could listen to the radio all day on the starting battery, flip a switch and self-jump.   It failed. But there was no real way to know it had failed until you *really* need it to work.   Then you find out the solenoid has been stuck in the off position.   What I am going to do in this van is mount a 50 amp switch like I have in the back as my main switch, on to the dash.  I will wire it in parallel to the isolator to act as a bypass.   This will allow me to jump start the van from the house batteries in case I leave the headlights on. —Something way more likely than me having a wild party in the back.

A question I am routinely asked is why Six volt batteries?   Here are the reasons.   They are lighter (each —combined they are actually heavier) so doing battery maintaince, moving them around is easier.   They are cheaper to build the same amp/hr configurations.   They have half the number of cells (3 vs 6)   So less work to maintain, check water levels etc.   There is another factor I have read about but am not sure I understand.   So, please fact check me before you go deciding on this point’s behalf.   That point is the number of parallel connections are fewer and for this reason you will have fewer long term problems.   I think the point of this is when you are using two twelve volt batteries, you hook the two positive polls together, and the two negative polls together, there are two parallel connections.   I have gotten the feeling in my research that parallel connections are more trouble in some way.   Maybe they corrode more?   Anyway, I have carried the bucket this far, do your own research from this point forward.

I did a fair amount of shopping around when I was looking into what batteries to buy.  The industry leader is a company named Trojan and that is what I eventually ended up going with.  The reason for this is four days a week this is my primary residence and six months a year it is a frozen wasteland just outside of the metal skin of the van.  But if you are willing to take some chances, you can save some money. 

Batteries are also available at Costco.  And, frankly, I really would have liked to have purchased them from this company.   They pay their workers much better wages.   The CEO is taking a pretty modest salary.   They seem to be quite an ethical labor company.   Stacked on top of my moral obligations,  these batteries are quite a bit cheaper than other “name” brands.    The trouble is they are Costco branded, but manufactured by any number of companies.  You can get quite a sense of this if you read product reviews.   Some people say they are great.   Other people say they suck.   I am guessing they are both right.   This month company X might be building and labelling Costco batteries, but next month it is company Y.    Company Y might be quite a bit different in the quality of battery they manufacture.   

In my profession they used say “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”.   I am in a cold climate.   I am going to be away from my van three to four days a week, really wanting it to be fully functional when I return to it.   I wanted that security.   I suggest you look at your situation.   If you don’t live in a battery-failure-causes-death-by-frostbite state, I suggest you give those Costco batteries a serious look.   Odds are still in favor of you getting a good set and when you do, you will have paid just a little over half what I did.

From the customer review research I did the only battery that came even close to the Trojan was the Superior Par One.  They have some thicker lead plate technology Trojan doesn’t use.  From what I read that makes their battery ….if you pardon me the play on words, superior.   I contacted the company through their web site and found a local dealer.   I contacted the dealer and told the sales droid I was interested in either the Trojan or Superior and asked for a price.

Here is the reply I got:

Thanks for the request!  We stock the T-105 and two options from US Battery for your application.  These are an excellent quality battery that is designed to deliver great run time and last for many years.  The US Battery product is our main stocking inventory and offers a step up in quality to the Trojan or Superior Battery.

I have a few problems with this.   First off, I never told him what my application was so this is a form letter reply.   Second, it is tough to find a good product review for US Battery.   It seems like they have a lot of unhappy customers.  I suspect he makes a great commission though.   I decided I didn’t want to deal with that company and that was Superior’s one shot.

Now lets talk about the batteries themselves.  What I will be using is called a deep cycle battery.   It is different than the battery in your car which is made to discharge the maximum amount of power over a short period of time to run the electric motor that starts the gasoline engine of your car.   If your car is in good running condition usually this is a pretty quick process.  Even if you have to crank it a few times on a cold day, you don’t really take much charge off the battery, maybe only five or ten percent.   Then, once the car has started, the battery is immediately charged right back up.  But say for instance your car doesn’t want to start right away, so you keep cranking.   Or, maybe you leave the lights on while you are off in the pub.   You can drain out the battery this way.  In battery lingo this is called a deep cycle.  A deep discharge.    Your car battery can do this a couple of times but if you do it several times, the battery is ruined.

The batteries I am installing are specifically made to be discharged more than your car battery.  Still though, the more I discharge them, the harder it is on them.   The shorter their lifespan.  If I discharge them down to 50% of their capacity each time, they will last about 1200 charges.   If I discharge them to the maximum, 80% of their total charge they will last about 750 cycles.   I would like to shoot for closer to 50.

I will start getting some of my thoughts in here about solar panels.   That will kind of be the next phase of the project.   To that end, financing has already begun.   I sent out an email to my four children a summary of their iTunes spending since I billed them last.   Telling them it was time they paid the piper.