i admit this is a bit lame, but just go with it, ok? kris is already joking about how i constantly ‘improve’ the car and the caravan. and i admit that just enjoying both is not even half as exciting as thinking up ways to make them work better. or be more reliable. or whatever.
you remember we went from this (above) …
… to this. 360ah lipofe instead of 200ah agm to effectively triple our battery capacity. but what’s all that capacity if you can’t get it charged up? we ‘only’ have 220w of solar on the roof, and then there is of course the solar blanket with another 100w. but still.
i have long thought about relocating the solar controller (that i installed before we left) to the front box. the theory – if you are interested – is that you want the high current side, i.e. from the controller to the batteries, to be as short as possible to reduce the voltage drop across the wires. and maybe use thicker wires as well, that reduces the resistance and therefore the voltage drop so you get the correct voltage at the battery terminals. batteries are a bit picky when it comes to charging voltage.
i am a big fan of keeping things simple: i was not going to replace the cables to the front box. way too hard and actually the cables running to the front were not a bad dimension anyway.
is used colour coded anderson plugs to connect the panels through to the front. simple, elegant and pretty handy if i ever have to pull them apart. i’m a bit proud of that idea.
my ‘workshop’. does that allow me to call myself a bush mechanic? perth isn’t really the bush of course, but then that’s not a workshop either ….
i need to do a little bit of cleaning up but there it is: the controller in the multibox, as close to the batteries as it will go. i used heavy gauge cables, too.
but wait, there is more!
the enerdrive mains charger sitting there in the back is a really capable piece of kit. it can charge up to three different (and different type!) battery banks in parallel. since we now run the fridge in the car constantly the car batteries need some help at times to avoid damage. we don’t carry a battery charger, but why couldn’t the one we use to charge the van batteries also charge the car?
well it can and now it does. all it took was a little anderson plug connected to the ‘bank 2’ terminals on the mains charger and another one on the bull bar. now i can charge the car through the van when we are on mains power. handy.
here is another tweak we made today. mattresses apparently don’t like it when they are not properly ventilated. there are a few holes in the sheet the mattress sits on but definitely not enough. luckily there is this material called aeromesh that creates a 10mm gap and lets air get to the underside of the mattress. not cheap but better than a moldy mattress.
there is only one question left: what can i improve next? i’m running out of ideas …