How to Wire a Camper Van - Budget Build Electrics Ep15

right it's time to run the first fix electrics into the van pull all the cables in that are going to be buried in the walls to their various locations I've gone through this before on previous videos about wiring in a moving vehicle you need to use a multi-stranded cable you can't use solid core Cable in a moving vehicle because what happens with the vibration and movement over time that solid core cable could snap and then obviously you've lost all your power so with a multi-stranded cable you've got a number of different cores in there loads of little cores that make up the cable I'll put a better picture up on the screen here so even if one of those cores happens to break you've still got the bulk of the cable still intact so you must use a multi-stranded flex and the best one to use is a double insulated so the individual cores are insulated and then it's insulated again with an outer sheave and then what I like to do because a lot of these metal edges on your van are very very sharp and if you just leave a cable rubbing up against that over time you're traveling around that could quite easily cut through the cable and then cause a short circuit so anything that's buried in the wall of the van I like to protect it with some of this flexible plastic conduit especially where it goes through past the sharp metal edges okay we've got a couple of different types of cable the Arctic blue cable you've seen me use before I'm going to use for my 230 volt Mains off of my inverter to a couple of three pin sockets in the van so that's what we'll be using there and then I've got a rubber sheaved cable which is just a two core cable which I'll be using for all the 12 volt supplies it's good practice to distinguish between the different voltages with different types of cable because then when you've done your installation you can easily identify what is what I know that this will be 230 volt Mains and this will be 12 volt DC so it's very easy to tell which is which and then another cable that we're going to be using is these battery cables they're single core they're flexible again they're multi-stranded the same as the rest of the cables and these are what we're going to be using to run from our batteries to our blade fuse holders now previously I've mounted the blade fuse holder close to where the batteries are and then run all of my cables out to all the various devices from there but obviously that involves a lot of cable work so what I've done in this installation to keep the cables down to a minimum I'm going to locate the blade fuse holders at a point where they're going to be used so for instance I know I'm going to need a lot of power suppliers over by the kitchen for lighting and for the water pump Etc so I'm going to put a blade fuse holder over this side of the van and then I'm going to run a cable one cable from the batteries to the blade fuse holder and in all the cables in the kitchen area are just going to be relatively short and local so that way I don't have to run loads of cables to that point and it's just going to save me a lot of money on installation at the end of the day quiet so let's get it pulled in now you'll have already seen me install the solar panel cables when we did the solar panel installation video If you haven't seen that one I'll put a link in the top corner here for you to watch so the next cables we need to install are the battery cables from the van starter battery to the DC to DC charger and I've got a different route to take for that underneath the van to get access to the battery cover it's in the passenger footwell undo these little screws half a turn some of these might already be open so there's two 13 mil nuts what bolts should I say at the front here first that removes the cover [Music] and then to remove the battery I suggest disconnect the negative First mine's got a little quick release on on the terminal there so that's the negative out of the way and then take the cover off the positive it should be one there's a 10 mil not just there holding that terminal on so we'll get a spanner on that and do this 10 mil nut s that releases all the positives and then we can take the battery out watch this will be heavy and then if you want to remove the actual battery box again it's four 13 mil bolts that hold that to the van that frees up the entire box to come out we'll Mark where we want the cable gland to come in here for the DC to DC battery cables and then we'll take this box out I'll drill it um when it's outside be easier and then we can get that cable connection made so this is the battery box out of the van there's not much room here and the positive connections are here so it's a bit tight this end there's plenty of room at the negative end here so what I'm probably going to do is put a hole through in about this sort of location and then put this gland in and then the flexible conduit will push into this gland so I'll make a really good cable conduit for that so I'm going to just drill a hole here it's 25 mil gland put that in there [Music] there's just a nut on this gland goes in the other side that's it and then the flexible conjure it will just push into there these little barbs here will just keep hold of that here we go foreign on the positive connection we need to fuse both those wires so it's a 30 amp DC to DC charger so I'm going to put 40 amp fuses in so I've got two of these fuse carriers with a 40 amp fuse in there and then we'll wire one of those to Leisure battery positive and one to the van battery positive foreign [Music] so there's that plastic gland in the battery box with the flexible cable pushed into it I've rooted it over the top of the diesel tank around the bracket tree and then clipped it along the chassis rail of the vehicle all the way down the van this convenient locations where you can put cable ties so it's nicely secured it's not going anywhere and then that cable runs all the way down to the back of the van and then I'll show you where it goes into the vehicle so the bottom of this rear light pillar inside there's a boxing made out of the structure of the van and then right at the bottom on the outside there's quite a big hole and it's used to ventilate the van when you shut a door on the side it would create like a load of positive pressure in there there's no way for that air to go and on these rear pillars there's some vents inside and all the air vents out for a hole in the bottom but it gives us a really convenient location to run our cables into the van I'll show you from underneath so there's our flexible conduit coming round and then right at the bottom of that pillar there's a hole there and you can get your cable flexible conduit in to the back of the van there and then inside the van here in the rear corner there's that light pillar and that conduit is now coming up there Up From Below and that's our two 16 mil battery cables so down inside the battery box now there's that plastic gland that we cut in there's the two 16 mil cables coming through the gland through that conduit under the van and then we've got that 40 amp fuse there just tucked in in that space there there's plenty of space down the back there and then coming off of it with another battery cable and then this will extend right away to the positive end of the battery and there is a spare terminal I've just put some tape on that ring terminal at the moment so it doesn't touch anything until we've made safety other end so that'll get connected there and then similarly there's that 16 mil negative cable from the DC to DC and that will go on one of these spare terminals here and again I've just taped up the ring on that just for now just to make it safe until we get the other end of the cables tucked away right it's time to pull the cables in for the blade fuse holder it's not going to be located down where my batteries were in the garage because that would mean I'll have to pull loads of cables back into the garage so to save us doing that I'm actually just going to install one positive a negative from the batteries all the way up to this location which is going to be in a Cupboard above the kitchen and I'm going to have the blade fuse holder here and then it can run out from here to the lights the lights under the cupboards and it can run down this pillar into the kitchen cupboards for the water pump so that keeps all these cable runs a lot shorter and saves us a bit of money now it's no good just running say a 1.5 or even a 2.5 cable from the garage up to this blade fuse holder because I could have 30 or 40 amps worth of lights and other things running from this blade fuse holder so I need a larger supplier to it so I've done some calculations on what I'm going to have connected to this and I've worked out that I need some 10 mil cable so I've got about nine meters of cable here which is a lot more than I probably need so we need to run this through some conduit initially because we're going to bury it in all these little ways here and some of these edges are Sharp put it in some conduit and then pull that conduit through to this location back down to the batteries just from previous experience I've always found it easier to put your cables into the conduit first because you can hold the conduit out dead straight they go in easier and then once they're in the conduit then put them into your van I'm just taping these together so they'll slide from the conduit a bit easier and then it's just a case of feeding those all the way down to the other end that is just a case of taking your time feeding it through this box in making sure you avoid all of the cables for the lights and that you don't want to get those snagged just keep feeding it up so we've got our 12 volt supply to the blade fuse holder positive and negative pulled in pulled in the first one of the seeds off the blade fuse holder this is going to be to the water pump in the kitchen this is just a two core rubber cable it's really important when you pull all your cables in to make sure that you note what they are put a little label on them that says what it is pump and then when you come to do all your final connections especially around by this blade fuse holder because we'll end up with half a dozen cables around here and if they're all black like that you will never clue what was what so make sure you label them and then when you come to terminate them you'll know where they go we need a power supply to connect to the max fan up in the ceiling here so we've managed to pull again another two core rubber cable I've concealed it in this box in here there is Conduit right the way up to this point that runs all the way back here you can see the conduit there and then it actually comes up in here and then runs all the way back to where our blade fuse holder is going to be so that's quite a short little run we've obviously got the one for the pump and then I've pulled in another one over The Far Side here show you that which runs up here again two core rubber Cable in conduit there's one just hanging over there and these are for a couple of Lights in the bedroom a couple of reading lights so I'm gonna have a light there I'm also going to have a light here over the end of the bed and in that conduit again runs down this Rio light pillar and comes out with all our other cables in the bottom corner here so that's all the first fix cables pulled in all the concealed ones some of the ones like the lights under the wall cupboards I can do those cables once the cupboards are in place so I won't do those yet the next job now is just to insulate all the van before we apply a line as you can see I've already got some insulation waiting to go in that'll be the next video that we do I hope you're enjoying this series if you found this video to be helpful to you please do give it a thumbs up don't forget to leave me a comment in the comment section below I love reading all the comments you guys make and of course if you've got any questions about the van build so far or questions about your own van build also leave them in the comments section I'll try and get back to as many as I can and it just remains for me to say thanks very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video cheers

Channel: Greg Virgoe

Views: 87,125

Keywords: Greg Virgoe, #vanlife, tiny home, full time van life, self build camper van, off grid living, camper van, campervan conversion, van build, 12v electrics, van life electrical, van conversion, diy van electrical system, off grid, campervan electrics, 12volt electrics, how to wire a campervan, first fix electrics campervan, how to wire your van, off grid van conversion, camper van conversion, van life build, van build on a budget, van life

Id: iYtaulMvvMg

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2023