DIY CAMPER ELECTRICAL MISTAKES (and how to avoid them)

last week will prouse put out a video that is his top 10 beginner mistakes when building a DIY solar system and I've actually had a list going on my phone for quite some time at this point uh talking about the exact same things and I got a chance to watch Will's video and a lot of the things that he had were similar to the things that I had but I had a few things that were on my list that weren't on his and he had a few things on his list that weren't on my list so I'm going to go over my top 10 beginner mistakes when building a DIY solar system so you can check out my video and then you can go check out his video and then you'll have all kinds of mistakes to not do welcome to explorers.life my name is Nate and I teach people how to build DIY campers let's get started mistake number 10 is going to be buying parts before having a plan it seems like every day somebody comments on the YouTube channel or sends me an email and says hey Nate I bought this random inverter and this charge controller in these solar panels and these batteries and can you make me a wiring diagram so that I can wire all this stuff together and the problem with that is sometimes those parts don't work together at all or sometimes they don't work together very well so just to get all these random parts and then try to come up with a plan usually leads to having to send back certain parts because it doesn't work period or sending back some parts because you're going to lose out on some big functionality or it's just going to have issues so Point here is come up with a plan and then buy your parts mistake number nine is connecting 12 volt components to a 24 volt battery Bank back whenever I had my private Consulting Group up and running I had several people within the course of and it's like three months or something like that they came to me with issues of their inverters not working uh ask them to send pictures of their system and after looking at it for just a minute it was pretty obvious that they had a 12 volt inverter connected to a 24 volt battery bank now when you do that it damages the inverter you know beyond repair and it's effectively just a paperweight at that point very very expensive mistake I don't see it very often but it's a very costly mistake that I want to make sure that got on this list so that that was no longer an issue mistake number eight is not understanding wire sizes or using the wrong wire sizes so for example we have four OT wire here and we have four gauge wire here four zero and four gauge very different in wire sizes here this one's nearly I don't know three or four times the the size of this in here and has much much greater ampacity or the amount of power that can actually flow through it than this one if you use too small of a wire on your component then it's going to heat up to a degree where it could potentially melt could potentially start at a fire it just may not work ultimately it's going to be a bad day building off of the previous example from mistake number nine with the 12 versus 24 volt components in that system whenever I was walking somebody through rebuilding that system to bring it back down to 12 volt and get it all back where it should have been they left all their wire sizes the exact same they didn't take my recommendation on changing wire sizes and when they fired their system up and did a stress test on it the wires going from the lynx distributor to the inverter heated up so much that it melted a hole in the side of the battery casing and you could actually see the cells so understanding wire sizes is very important manufacturers and their user manuals typically make a recommendation on wire sizes so use that and if that is not available I have a wire sizing calculator that should also help which I'll leave a link to in the video description below mistake number seven is going to be not using the proper tools and I would say specifically crimpers whenever you're crimping a wire lug onto a big wire like four out wire it takes a really big crimper to make that connection there's a lot of amps flowing through that wire into that lug and you want to make sure that that connection is nice and solid and so it's very much worth spending a few extra dollars on the proper tool to get a proper crimp you know there's other crimpers too for smaller Terminals and Ferro crimpers and more feral crimpers and all kinds of stuff and I've made a video in the past that talks about all the different tools that I use for all the different terminals that we have in a DIY camper van electrical system which I'll link to in the video description below but I would say that trying to save money on tools to the degree where you have poor crimps is definitely going to cause you a lot of frustration later on down the road whenever the crimp just comes loose or worse yet comes loose to the point where it heats up and potentially starts a fire or melts your components mistake number six is not reading the user manual and I have a few specific examples here of how not reading the user manual has generated questions for me that would have otherwise been answered in the user manual and the first one is the battery Bank being too small so for example the evictron multiplex 3K 12 volt inverter charger it has a minimum recommended battery Bank capacity of 400 amp hours so when somebody comes to me saying that their system's shutting down or not functioning properly I always ask if they have at least 400 amp hours of battery Bank capacity and I would say 90 of the time they have 300 amp hours or less if they had just read the user manual and followed those instructions then they wouldn't have been having this issue in the first place the next example is having a solar array voltage that's simply too low if the solar array voltage is just a couple volts higher than the battery Bank operating voltage then a charge an mppt solar charge controller might not even turn on you know depending on which brand of solar charge controller it is it might vary a little bit but victron solar charge controllers they the solar array needs to be at least five volts higher than the battery Bank operating voltage for it to even turn on so if the solar array voltage isn't getting high isn't isn't getting high enough then the charge controller is not even going to turn on and the batteries aren't going to charge via solar third example is improper settings and I would say this is probably the most common issue that I see with an underperforming system is having settings that are set up not to the rest of the components specifically with the BMV 712 battery monitor if the BMV 712 battery monitor isn't set up for the battery Bank charging characteristics then the battery monitor isn't going to show a proper state of charge because it's going to think that the battery is either more full or less full than it actually is and there's going to be an inconsistency between the two so going to for example battleborn batteries their website they have the BMV 712 specific parameters that you should be plugging into that device so that their batteries work perfectly with the victron BMV 712 So reading the user manual it's very important for settings and lastly is simply not understanding how the system works so the specific example here is going to be trying to charge a full battery Bank from solar you know somebody will say hey Nate you know why my solar is not putting out any what's why is it it's like well when what is your battery state of charge you're like well I just unplugged from Shore a few minutes ago and batteries are full but I'm not getting any Watts from solar it's like well your batteries are full you can't fill up the bucket with the hose whenever the bucket's already full so that's something that's explained in the username manual that would have you know answered that question before they had to ask me mistake number five is not reading component warranty terms now there have been a few battery manufacturers come on the market recently that our batteries aimed more at the stationary market so like off-grid cabins houses stuff like that now in their warranty terms it says that those batteries are to be mounted in an area where they're not going to be subjected to vibrations and so I've seen people start putting those into Camper vans and RVs where I don't know about you but I'm going to be subjecting my camper van or RV to a fair amount of vibrations and if I had an issue with that battery the manufacturer is going to ask where the batteries are installed maybe some pictures and stuff like that and when I send that over they're going to be like oh it's installed in an RV that's not what these batteries are just dying for and so it says that in our warranty information and so we have to deny your warranty claim and then now you're out a thousand bucks or so mistake number four is using low quality or the wrong types and sizes of fuses or Breakers so early on in this channel I was a lot more liberal in which fuses that I would recommend I would recommend some of the lower quality fuses and over time I just kept seeing fuses where they were getting so hot that they would melt the actual fuse holder that they were attached to and that's not good it's not good for anybody it's not good for safety because you know something that's creating that much heat could potentially start a fire but then the system doesn't work and that just kind of sucks to have to redo something because you've used a low quality fuse the other part about that is is using a fuse that's not designed for the purpose that you're using it for for example just a even a high quality breaker could installed in between the solar array and the charge controller let's say the breaker is rated for 48 volts and you're pushing 120 volts from your solar array down through that breaker to to your charge controller well that's too many volts for that breaker to handle and if that breaker trips the voltage that's coming through that it might not be able to extinguish the arc which would melt the breaker and lastly is simply using a fuse or breaker that's too small for the current that's going through it I think that's a little self-explanatory if you're trying to push let's say 30 amps through a 10 amp breaker well it's going to just keep tripping over and over and over again and so that is still a problem but I would say the low quality fuses is by far the most common issue that I see and something I always have people change and often fixes problems when troubleshooting a system so at shop.explorers.life in all of our solar array wiring kits and camper van electrical kits that we've got we only use high quality fuses from Eaton Cooper bussman blue sea victron and other quality Brands because we know they're going to work and when a fuse works that's obviously great for all of you because then you don't have to mess with your system but that's also great for me too because you're not in my tech support email anymore mistake number three is going to be just general poor workmanship so over the summer we went to open roads Fest and I went around to quite a few different campers people who were having issues with their systems and they wanted me to check it out see if I could see anything that would fix their system and I would say 40 of the time it was a settings issue which were able to resolve pretty quickly but then an additional 40 percent of the time was just general poor workmanship these are things like not clamping the wires to the walls not even securing the components to the walls they were just laying there haphazardly using the wrong types of terminals or connectors for the components that were being used and just generally having kind of a mess of an electrical system with no regard to putting in effort to making it look nice and clean now it doesn't take you know really any dollars to make something look nice and clean it's just a matter of slowing down paying attention to what you're doing and doing it right the first time so you don't have to do it again later mistake number two is trying to save money without considering the actual costs the first example I can give of that is the victron links distributor like you see in all of our wiring diagrams and all of our system designs and everything like that it's two bus bars and four fuse holders wrapped up into one nice neat blue package and people see the 200 plus dollar price point on that and they're like wow I'm just going to get two bus bus bars and then I'll just get some fuse holders and it'll be way less expensive well that's not really the case if you buy high quality bus bars and then high quality fuse holders and all the lugs and jumper wires that it's going to take to wire all that together it's actually going to be about the same price as the victron links distributor but it's going to have about twice as many connections which connections equal potential points of failure and then you've spent a lot of time making all those connections as well whenever you could have just got the victron links distributor from the get go and then faster and just a better product all around the same concept can be talked about on an inverter Charger versus an inverter with a separate charger you had to figure in the extra wires the lugs the heat shrink the external transfer switch and all that good stuff so if you're trying to pinch pennies and compare one thing to the other be sure to take into account all the extra stuff like lugs wire heat shrink fuses and stuff that may be necessary to make it work and the number one mistake that I see is people trying to reinvent the wheel and what I mean by that is somebody would come to me and say hey Nate I've got this diagram it's got 600 amp hours of battery Bank capacity victron multi-plus inverter charger 3K 12 volt 1200 watts of solar and alternator charging and short power would you take over my wiring diagram to make sure it's good to go and the thing is is although I love teaching people how to design and install this stuff I already have a lot of these diagrams and systems ready to go and they're already very well checked over and very complete including the wire sizes the heat shrink sizes the feral sizes the lug sizes the stud sizes on the various components and all that kind of stuff and so to have somebody come to me with a wiring diagram for me to review it's one of those things like how much did you how much time did you spend on doing this thing that is ultimately in my experience going to be fairly incomplete whenever I already have a plan a diagram and then a full kit to make it work properly and yes that is a Shameless plug for our store shop.explores.life where we have all of these kits ready to go and we have Hands-On all of the products and parts and lugs and fuses and heat shrink and everything that we have so that we can verify that everything works together because not all lugs are the same the lugs that we have we verified that these four lugs actually fit inside the Victorian links distributor whereas if you go to Amazon they might not fit you know we do this so that we can ensure that whenever we send a kit to any of you who are purchasing it you get parts that actually work because we physically check them and that pretty much wraps up this video now as a reminder be sure to go check out will process video that's pretty much on this same topic because he and I said a few of the same things and if both of them said the same thing then it's probably pretty important he also had a few different ideas and mistakes that he had noticed that didn't quite make it onto my list and they were pretty good so be sure to go check that out we'll see you next time

Channel: EXPLORIST life Mobile Marine & Off-Grid Electrical

Views: 117,898

Keywords: explorist, explorist life, explorist life electrical, explorist solar, explorist life wiring diagram, explorist.life, explorist life solar, explorist life blog, diy campervan, diy camper van, do it yourself, do it yourself camper van, diy electrical, diy electrical wiring, diy electrical projects, electrical wiring mistakes, explorist.life youtube

Id: ZHFxLUOG8UE

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022