Electrical basics

[Scalf77]

This is a good read for RV electrical srtuff.
http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volt.htm

-greg

[joey2cool]

to clarify what I meant by "charge manager," I was referring to Blue Sea's Wizard onboard my van, but that's a brand name for specific manufacturer's device. There are many options out there. This device will monitor your battery bank voltage and based on timed settings it can set the charger to trickle vs. full charging. It can also set the charger to desulfate the batteries which is a higher voltage for a set time that theoretically won't overcharge your batteries. Lots of folks on this forum like a device that factor in battery temperature for charging decisions and that's available too, but not from the Wizard. Inverters and solar panels introduce more complexities into your design considerations. You may be better off getting an experienced electrician to help you with all of this.

[rockbender]

Originally Posted by joey2cool

You may be better off getting an experienced electrician to help you with all of this.

...or just start sketching things out on a bar napkin and get to work!

[2horsegarage]

@Rockbender: Where do I get the flux capacitor you have in your drawing?

[BroncoHauler]

Originally Posted by 2horsegarage

@Rockbender: Where do I get the flux capacitor you have in your drawing?

They're readily available, but only in 1984 of course. Then they were banned as being bad for mileage.


Herb

[jage]

I think he meant the Blue Sea 400a separator... Y drawing.

Also where it says "Buck?" I would move those two lines, #10 to espar and #12 to solar controller to a fuse panel fed by the #14... no reason not to have those lines fused as well. Ditto the radio switch. You can either just run the 14 across a 4-fuse block, or get a larger one and just combine the 12v distribution panel and those two lines. At the least they should have in-line fuses where they join the #14...

Napa makes a good distribution block that comes in 4, 6, and 10 fuses IIRC. They don't always have all sizes in stock so plan ahead. They also have some nice inline options too, however you need to double check the wire size- no point in putting a 20a fuse on a #10 wire in an inline holder with #14 leads...

[rockbender]

What, you don't like my buck-block?

That is exactly what I did... got a 6-place fuse holder that is doing exactly what you describe. I pretty much stole the idea from this write up: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=400282

I must admit their execution is a wee bit cleaner than mine!