DIY SOLAR INSTALL | Upgrading our Fifth Wheel RV to Lithium (RV Life)

thank you we're creating our solar I'm this bad boy a lot like I'll give you the update I'll give you the quick and dirty so this rig already has a 200 watt solar panel it's already wired and everything we have an mppt charger it's wired for an inverter it doesn't have it but it's wired uh but we are increasing that like tremendously so we are going to a thousand Watts on the roof we're adding a 2000 watt inverter uh the mppt charger we're upgrading it to a 150 I think 70. um so that's a huge upgrade what else oh batteries Save The Best For Last we have partnered with Enduro power to provide us the spec guy We're Gonna Leave It to the spec guy you're the one with the data okay whatever uh we can go into the data later and all the specs yeah but this is just really high level I mean we had solar on our GL Pro and it was a game changer for us that was like the Ultimate Adventure mobile we seriously called it that because it was like Plug and Play you just get in you go it's adventure time although this is pretty much a tiny house on Wheels significantly larger than our geopro we still want those same capabilities so we just want to be able to get out we're headed out west hopefully and then eventually eventually we've been saying that forever I know but eventually we're gonna get out west and we just want to Boondock we just want that that capability so these tanks on the fifth wheel are massive so then what else do we need we need to be able to have power so and internet but thank you all right yeah thank you Elon yeah good morning want to do a solar upgrade this morning put some solar panels on the roof let's do it [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] it was at 24 feet that we need to try to account for so right now I'm just getting them lined up to make sure that the cords on here Will connect I also have a couple extension cords so I can use those if needed just like that mc4 connector really really simple beautiful sound it is okay so that's uh it's all connected now except for going into the junction box so now I'm just going to get in space exactly how I want them we'll mark the holes and then we'll go around together we'll put die core under there screw it in and put that core back on top and then you turn a bond the cords and uh solar is installed are you prepared to drill a hole into your home's roof absolutely not [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] then we have four solar panels by the way it's probably only like upper 60s out but it is so hot up on this roof yep we did it 1000 watts of solar so now I'm just going over everywhere we put a screw in I'm putting more dicor on top it's self-leveling die core it's good for the RV roofs and it'll just prevent any water from finding its way down into those holes we just screwed [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign make it out alive it did not the first time I crashed it [Music] day three of the install it's raining but I've got this great canopy set up now I table with all of my components and everything I need uh yesterday we got the solar set up today it's going to be going in the garage and wiring the mppt the inverter the cutoff switches the fuses the lynx distributor uh the only thing we won't be wiring is the batteries because they're not here yet but that's fine I'll get everything done and then we will put the Enduro power lithium batteries in there as soon as we get them foreign I think I've got everything wired up we're still missing our Good batteries but everything else is in we're going to turn everything on and make sure it all works okay so so far so good everything's working so what I'm gonna do is we're going to test to see if we have power right now going to the AC if not that's good if we do bad but then what I'm going to do after is then turn the inverter on and then we should have power so let's let's take a look so right now we shouldn't have power coming to this 120. and we don't and we shouldn't have power then as the output either and we don't so now I'm going to turn the inverter on and let's see what happens okay the inverter's on so again we should not have power to the outlet but we should have power coming out this chord right here so let's check no power good no power good power it's working so pumped so incredibly pumped but when you say good bad power no power here there could you give me a little more insight please all right let's go take a field trip okay so what I was trying to explain is this yellow cord this is our 110 so when we're plugged into 30 or 50 amp this has power this is the inverter so what happens is when we're not plugged into 30 or 50 when we're dry camping boondocking we get power from the inverter which converts the DC power from our batteries to AC power and the magic happens right here in this transfer switch so the transfer switch is able to detect if it's getting power here supplied by 110 DAC or not and that's what I was doing with this this little voltage detector right now we're on 50 amps we're getting voltage from both but if we weren't uh this would be dead because this is the AC side and this is the DC side so the inverter goes to the transfer switch the transfer switch says power needs to come from the inverter and it'll provide Power to this wire and this wire then leads to all of our inverted Outlets we have I think six or seven including the outlet that goes to the TV so anything that is connected to this this portion of the yellow wire is inverted [Music] thank you [Music] are you impressed with my muscles yeah you're pretty strong there they are shockingly light like I was expecting to like break my back come on labels out [Music] isn't that oh God they're light but not that light [Music] I could have used a key to open these boxes and yet you give me a machete oh man they even look pretty [Music] handles and everything handles and everything wow these are so nice [Music] all the stairs how easy are these to take in and out of their uh home well now we don't need a kettlebell look at this I mean how's my form what would you say 45 pounds yeah about excellent workout like I just hear like like rock music in my head and like see lightning bolts like is that weird because it's electricity or what because sugar and like solar you don't [Music] so the final piece of our big bad solar upgrade has arrived we're part of Team Enduro power baby so our friends at Enduro power heard about the solar upgrade that we were doing and we decided to partner up because we've done a solar upgrade before with our previous rig but this time around we've got a bigger rig it's a little bit different we want the best materials for this solar upgrade so with teaming up with Enduro power we got just that basically what I'm trying to say is we're super excited to install these lithium batteries from Enduro power into this Beast so you're definitely done with me rambling right now so let's get them in the rig all right so here they are old battery new battery deep cycle 100 amp hours lithium 200 amp hours the nice thing about lithium is you can use 100 of the capacity so basically we're quadrupling our battery capacity with this upgrade uh now we're gonna see how much they weigh and see what we're either gaining or losing as far as weight goes so we'll put on the scale and see what they weigh so the old deep cycle 100 amp hours 39 on the DOT 39 pounds 39 pounds so times two that's 78 pounds now the Enduro lithium 200 amp hours so again quadruple the capacity check that out what do we add 42.6 40 to 0.6 pounds for this 39 for that so we're going from 78 pounds to call it 85 pounds so we're gaining seven pounds but we're quadrupling our battery capacity there we go so that's where they're going to sit I'm gonna put some brackets down to hold it in place and then some ratchet straps to go around the top uh that should keep it pretty secure and we are literally it's the same footprint as before if you look at this this was the battery tray from the old batteries honestly virtually identical as far as the the width that is taking up and it's now it's less high too but I doubt we'll put anything on top but we literally lose no space and we quadruple the usable capacity amazing so last thing that's super awesome about these batteries is we don't need to vent them this was for the old batteries they had to be vented so this had to be inside of a box cover on and then this hose would help to vent the gases outside of the RV this can go away now and you can mount these in any direction enclosed sideways apart so that's another win for the lithium batteries [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] first one season two we're back on the road we're gonna have a season we're not professionals yeah well we took the summer kind of off while the RV was getting repaired but uh that's an that's enough yes that'll come in the future but we officially finished our solar upgrade we got the solar panels on the roof all the electrical upgrades done and uh the Enduro Power Batteries installed and uh right now we're boondocking at a harvest host in Effingham Illinois yep it's a winery and uh so far it's pretty nice we've got a nice uh Corner Spot here in the back of the parking lot and look look at our neighbors so overall the solar install process I'd say it went pretty well it went very well yeah the hardest part was the preparation and planning but the actual install with all the planning we did was pretty easy and I mean I'd say it overall took a full weekend to get everything done make sure you take your time the total cost was right around five thousand dollars uh but we did kind of go a little bit over the top with some of the components and the brands but uh the way I see it you pay for Quality you only got to buy it once so the next video we put out will be probably a little bit of a introduction to who we are and what we do and how we travel and how we make money I know that's always an interesting question that I was always curious of when we first started so we'll share a little bit of that with you uh maybe show you some more of the the rig that we're traveling in and what our travel plans are do you hear that silence know why generator we got solar uh right now we're watching the Packers game in the parking lot of a winery next to a cornfield in Southern Illinois Harvest host with no hookups and again we're watching the Packers game we got the sound system going we made coffee this morning we were running our space heater which draws a lot of amperage uh what else did we do we had the propane heater going all night lights I mean we were basically living normal life um without any hookups and looking at the numbers this morning so we started with a full battery again we got 400 amp hours of lithium from Enduro power and now we're at 42 it is 8 54 in the morning so the sun came up about an hour and a half ago um but again we were running the the space heater a ton which draws down the battery a lot but we're still at 42 percent and right now we're getting 270 watts of solar we've got a thousand Watts on the roof and it's only 9 A.M so that's going to continue to increase but everything's gone super well we had the inverter on we have it on now to be able to watch TV and run some of the inverted Outlets but we're really happy we're really impressed and uh we're excited to take this thing out west and really Boondock for you know weeks so it's time to hit the road we are in Illinois we've got about five hours to drive to get to our next stop in Nashville hopefully this gave you a good idea of how solar can benefit you and your RV and um more to come so stick around we've got a lot more exciting videos coming up in this part two of our RV Journey so we'll be in Nashville we're going to be in Atlanta we're going to go to Florida and then we're gonna Head West so um stick around see you there bye [Music] thank you

Channel: Mike & Ash

Views: 14,221

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Id: utzuUb0HGSA

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2022