Moving on into the electrical..

This is where you need to be really into watching long drawn out videos or maybe buying a book on electrical systems. No matter how many schematics I was shown by the old man I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. Maybe that’s cause the learning disability - the way not much translates from paper to brain, maybe cause it’s real boring to me, I’m not sure. What I do know is it would have been much more difficult for me to take on this task of the project had Michael not been here to help. I should probly say, had he not been here to do it all. I mean I did snake the wires, although that took little skill. Once he put the components up on the wall and I was able to see the wires go from one device to the other I was able to understand all the drawings and the needs of the parts.

We had ordered a bunch of parts, he was like a kid ina candy store. He made a list on our next governments site – Amazon and I bought everything that was on there. We ended up scraping a few things we bought though, the diagram he was using was from some kinda electrical engineer that wired his van and that feller went WAY over board. 6 batteries, 8 solar panels, relays and bus bars and god only knows what else, dude coulda powered a small city. After laying out all the goodies my credit card could afford and really looking at what was needed and not just all the shiny parts we downgraded some. My understanding in life and electrical systems is less is more. The more wires and gadgets I have the more possible issues could arise, the more stuff I have in life the more attachment and attention I pay to these things and not my happiness.

So, we tossed the bus bars, still not 100% sure what the need for those were, tossed the shut off switch and it’s possible we got rid of something else? Like I said, this does not hold my interest very well, it’s a means to an end. If you go to my Instagram: unconventional perfection, you can see the layout.

We have a 12 volt, 200 amp hour AGM battery, ordered it from Home Desperate - $400. No need to check water levels in an AGM and there is no need to ventilate it. We were going to jump 2 6 volt 100 amp hour golf cart batteries but found this one to cost less and have less wiring. We ran that to a 1500 wat pure sone inverter/charger. Pure sone gives a cleaner current of power to the devices you are going to use – I read that doing research on the differences, it was very boring. Anyways, spent a little extra on the inverter cause it’s able to charge the house batteries when I am driving down the road via current from the van battery. Also when I hook it to shore power it will simultaneously run the outlets and charge the house battery. It also has a breaker box built into the inverter! I say this with excitement cause that was the other stuff we scrapped in this build, the breaker box, I didn’t think I would remember. I mean it’s a real swell inverter to the tune of $750 but well worth it for its capabilities. Now being 1500 wat it does have some limitations. I don’t think I can run a blow dryer and blender at the same time, thank god I don’t own either one. I can run stuff separately but really all I will be doing with the 110 is charging my lap top and maybe charging a cordless drill at best. From the inverter we went to a 30 amp fuse and from there we powered the individual fuse block and from that fuse block we went to running wire for all the outlets and lights and fan and fridg and so on. Now coming off the van battery we ran a 4 gage wire to a battery isolator, that way if the solar stops charging the house battery the house battery wont drain the van battery.

I have a main switch station we are putting next to the sliding door, it has about 6 or 8 switches, a USB port, a cigarette lighter port and a volt meter. We ran power to the switch station to power that and the volt meter, the USB and I the over head lights. Switches for the water pump, the porch light, the over head fan and maybe some miscellaneous stuff will be there, yet that one power wire to that switch station couldn’t run all those at the same time. So we ran power off the fuse box for each one of those individually. And there you have it, it’s wired. Took us a Saturday to do it, although we haven’t hooked up the fan or the solar panels or ran power from the van battery. It’s now the beginning of May and camping season is here and I would really like to get moving on this. Michael is not available most of this month so I might be seeking outside help with this, to finish it up.

See I have a fear of cutting holes in the van for the fan and finishing up the electrical alone, also I do not have time to do it all solo. Between running a business, taking yoga teacher training, going to 12 step meetings, sponsoring men in the 12 step fellowship, being on a board of a nonprofit and trying to mountain bike a few times a week I am spent. So there is a van conversion company that opened in our town not to long back so I will check into them for pricing to finish this up for me. The videos on YouTube and the pictures on Instagram are so doctored it seems. Reality is missing form all this that I see about this.