Solutions to problems

Yesterday was one of those days when nothing seemed to work. It wasn’t restricted to me though - the lady in the grocery store in front of me managed to empty the contents of her purse onto the floor while others had crazy things happen too.

Today the temperature inside the bus with the ventilation turned off was 97F and 56% humidity. It was pretty hot. Outside it was reportedly 96F with a breeze so it felt far cooler. Still I plugged on. The  aim of the solar input is to take the output of my two 30W panels and feed my system with them. That will allow me to have the extraction fan operating full blast during daylight hours. I’m going to add another solar input toward the back of the bus in order to be able to plug in a heftier solar panel or wind generator or whatever. I’m limited to 7.5A on the stuff I have at the front of the bus. With heavier wiring at the back, I can go directly to the charge controller with more power. Extra is not planned but I’d like the opportunity without much prevarication to be able to install more.

As far as the battery goes, 35AH is plenty. If I were to add extra battery capacity then I would not add another lead-acid battery. I’d likely add a similarly sized but greater capacity lithium battery.

After having problems with the MC4 connectors yesterday, I had no such problems today. I took a totally different tack and examined the connectors carefully.

Crimping the wings on the backs of the connectors are supposed in some miraculous way to secure the wire to the pin. I tried that yesterday and couldn’t get the pins into the plugs properly. Today I cut the perishing wings off and simply soldered my wires to the plug for a far better connection. This involved tinning the wires with my electric soldering iron then using my gas torch to solder the wire into the pin.

As can be seen, it worked quite well. Now I don’t have to butcher the connectors on the solar panels. Popping the wires into the MC4 plastic was then quite easy and took no time at all. I was then at a stop because I’d done all I really could or so I thought with the panel wiring.

Yesterday I ordered a set of heavier Hopkins connectors and a Hopkins to cigarette lighter plug adaptor. I needn’t have bothered because I found today that my existing spare Hopkins connectors are 16 gauge. That will handle 10-12 amps fairly readily. Each panel is putting out 30 watts or 2.5A. I probably way overdid it with the wiring but I like to be sure with wiring. I will have a go tomorrow at wiring the existing Hopkins connectors to my cigarette lighter plug and my wires from my solar cable.

My solar cable wires are long at 15 feet but I figured that would be good to pass under the bus and prop up on the other side. There’s also an opportunity to add some kind of clamp and fasten the panels to the mirror arms while I’m parked or even to put the panels inside the windshield.

The next thing I did was to fill the empty spaces inside the switch box with expanding foam. I didn’t have any cable strain relief in place so expanding foam should do the job reasonably well. This will be my switch box. The white is the common and the two reds are the inputs. I will deploy this at the front of the bus to switch the solar input off or on for internal or external plugins. I’ll put a pair of cigarette lighter sockets inside the bus to take the output from the solar panels if they’re in the windshield. The switch has three positions - on for outside and off for inside, off for inside and on for outside and off for both. It’ll stop meddlers from trying to mess with the system as will the fuse I’m installing.

I would have installed the switch box and wired the underbus plugin to it but had to wait for the expanding form to cure. Thus I got on with the next project - securing the microwave. That was pretty straightforward to be honest. I put the four brackets on, drilled the four holes in the countertop and spaced the brackets off the countertop with stainless steel washers. I actually ran out of washers. I should have bought 6 packets instead of just 4. Thus the microwave is bolted securely with three brackets instead of all four.

As can be seen, the theory is simple - a stack of washers and a bolt. Bolting was fun though as the top of the bolt was very close to the edge of the microwave.

I had to get quite creative using several extenders on the cordless drill in order to reach while I had my hand under the counter, holding the nut in a deep socket held via an adaptor in my interchangeable bit screwdriver. I’ll get the washers on my next trip to Lowes (hiss spit).

If at any time I write “Lowes” without adding “hiss, spit” please remind me to add “hiss, spit”. This refers to a time about two years ago when Lowes served me poorly and rudely. Since then they have just been “hiss, spit” as far as I’m concerned. I would have taken my money elsewhere but for the fact Home Depot is several miles further away and going there would hit my bottom dollar.

Arriving in the post yesterday were the next parts of the strap system I’d designed to hold the microwave in place. That was all ordered before I went with my newer system of steel brackets bolted to the microwave. Also arriving in the post was my latest battery monitor. I put voltmeters on my USB charging units but then decided I needed a battery meter as well so I bought one back in May. It arrived today and I’ll probably install it tomorrow. It should give me a better idea of the state of the underbus battery. At the moment that’s reading 13.1V but if I put the light on and the USB charger then it drops to 12.7V. I need something just a shade more accurate though I have a feeling battery level management is more of a witches cauldron than anything accurate.

I’m anticipating being able to use my 12v input within the next few days. As for the internal input then I still need to buy a cigarette lighter socket. I’m not sure why I didn’t just put a double socket on the side of the bus rather than using a socket doubler. Still, if I put the rear socket on then that’s probably not important.

How complete is the bus? The rear solar input is an optional extra that I’m adding. The microwave needs one to two packs of stainless steel washers. The solar input switch needs to be installed and wired and I need to buy a cigarette lighter socket. Other than that I need to tidy the wiring in a few places and it’s done. It needs a test run to see how well it all works and to see what if any modifications are needed.