DIY How To Campervan/RV Electrical System Explained - Battery Bank, Wire Gauge, Inverter, Solar ect.

hey what's up everybody Caravan Cory when I first was building this camper van I was really lost at the part of the electrical system it was like racking my brain every single night I was trying to research and find stuff and I realized there's really not that much out there on how to how to wire up your RV or your camper van or you know whatever okay so we're gonna start off right here um use my batteries each battery is a hundred and nine half hours of peace so together it's two hundred and eighteen amp hours and to do that you need to wire your batteries in parallel means you take your positive take your wire to wire this is two long wire off Amazon I'll post a link in the in the description below this video this is to our wire you take one you hook it to your positive you run it it runs over right to your other positive do the same thing on the other side with the negative you connect the negative to negative now you still have 12 volts but you've doubled your amp hours if you do it the other way in series you double your your voltage so if you have six volt batteries you want to bolt them you want to hook them up in series if you have 12 volt batteries like mine deep-cycle marine battery so you get at Walmart you want to hook them up in parallel just like this okay now that we've talked about the batteries everything everything that you hear is DC you plug into a cigarette lighter is 12 volt so say this fan this endless breeze fan this has this end that's 12 volt these batteries are 12 volts okay so any of that stuff it can run right off that stuff if you want anything higher than 12 volt if you're talking about 120 115 you need a power inverter we'll talk about that here in a minute but okay so let's just let's let's do what I did I got the 12 volt system down first when I built it and then I did I hooked up to 120 stuff for your regular sockets just like this alright so let's just talk about these first or after you hook these up in parallel you want one of these it's an on and off switch if you can get on Amazon post a link for that and you hook this up to just one of your positives all right because this positive is the same thing as that positive see hook I ran a same tuag wire and that positive ran it over there to my on and off switch at the back of the on/off switch there's bolts you can tighten the wires on to it so I ran this side of the arm on and off switch into a 12 port fuse box panel I'll show you the closer link on description for that also this uses a small jump the linings not too great in there you use the small fuses now as you can see here all this wiring this stuff is not hooked up but all this stuff is ran in behind my walls that's 12 gauge wire okay that's ran in behind my walls and into my ceiling into my LED lights into my fantastic fan you know whatever you want you can run your wire anywhere you want for so all those wires connected to the LEDs and all that they run back in to their in behind the walls and they run into that fuse panel okay so that fuse panel connects it out on an off switch that runs into your batteries so when you get the lights on you turn that on and off switch you turn this switch and watch all your electrical is off now turn it back on okay that's pretty much the basics of the 12 volt system that's all you really need you don't need anything fancy everything at 12 volt you hook up to your 12 volt panel you have it on the on and off switch and you got it running to your batteries that are in parallel onto one side okay let's talk about the 120 stuff now such as like a my frigerator okay that's running off my power inverter right here this power inverter takes 12 volts electricity and it amplifies it into 115 volts or 120 volts this is a 1500 watt power inverter I got that on Amazon I'll post a link in description below also so I have this heavy duty extension cord coming out and it's running in behind as plugged in that refrigerator okay so that's pretty much the only thing that I have hooked on to this inverter this cord right here is just this power strip this power inverter is ran through and you can see that's that's the positive and it's hooked up to a fuse this inverter comes with that fuse so you don't even need to buy it comes with in the box so pretty much on the back of this view or on the back of this inverter it's a positive you hook it comes with all the wires you hook it up to positive you run it to your positive and you take your negative and you run it to your negative side you can see here I'm a positive guy my my inverter my my parallel wire connecting two batteries together and then this one running to my my on and off switch okay now for charging your batteries you can get a voltage sensing relay which I don't really recommend I don't really like them and voltage sensor relay it's okay though it's it's they're pretty cool they're good if you need it and they come in handy it's hooked up to your alternator of your engine and your alternate your charges your your starter battery you can hook this whole ting sensor relay up so when that vote the sensory relay gets like twelve point eight volts it kicks on and it'll charge these batteries only while your engines running and we turn the engine off you know it stops it doesn't drain your starter battery which is pretty cool I don't have that I had it and I actually returned it Amazon and I went ahead and I bought a 100 watt ready G solar panel and that's not hooked up yet I'm hooking that up today or tomorrow and that comes with a charge controller that's all you need for that you just need your solar panel and a charge controller so the solar panels on your roof or wherever and it's collecting energy and that's connected to the solar panel or to the charge controller and that charge controller trickle charges your battery so it doesn't overcharge them and you know it just extends a good positive charge into your that's all you need I'll post a link you can get the kit on Amazon takes 180 190 bucks and it comes with 100 watt renergie solar panel with the charge controller and all the wiring and everything and that's the same kit that I have actually a video of me unboxing it if you check on my channel and that's what's going to charge my batteries also I now have that AC unit in the back and I can either run Shore power for that where short power is you can plug in somewhere RV park on some but you have a buddies house that lets use extension cord I can plug my AC unit in there and I also I also can plug my extension cord a short power and charge my batteries you know if I needed to with a battery charger and I also have a generator now on the back there's a hit track on the back and I can start that generator up and I can power that AC unit or I could power that generator up and connect it to the battery charger you know and charge my batteries if I there's not too much Sun out my solar panels aren't giving me enough juice to run but you know I really don't run much that hair a mini-fridge doesn't really use much and that's the only thing on the power inverter and I don't always keep it on I only keep it off I got beer or food and as far as the 12-volt stuff just a couple LEDs in that vent fan and that doesn't use anything so I can go for days on these batteries even with no sunlight so that's really it looks and seen so much more harder and confusing than it is but it's really see it's really simple if you guys have any more questions I know I'm rambling if uh you I went to faster I didn't cover something just send me a message on here on Facebook or leave a comment below and I'll help you out as best as I can and good luck with you guys have bill glut with your electrical systems and feel free to send me a message if you need any help thanks for watching guys

Channel: Campervan Cory Strangz

Views: 651,397

Rating: 4.8643336 out of 5

Keywords: campervan, camper van, campervan cory, vanlife, van life, #vanlife, living in a van, rv, motorhome, boondocking, stealth camping, stealth camper, camper, diy campervan, camper van electrical system, rv electrical system, how to wire a camper van, how to wire a rv, electrical tour in van, campervan electrical, campervan electrics, how to wire a campervan, campervan 12v system, campervan solar, campervan shore power, campervan battery bank, campervan batteries, van life electrical

Id: gZY4BWEZ4ig

Length: 8min 43sec (523 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 11 2016