Project Choose Your Own Adventure

[ScottyB]

yet another yard sale piled up on mah pretty birch.  



its a wall sandwich, basically - the birch is glued to the bottom plywood wall you can't see with Titebond III, and then the other "free" wall on top is placed in as close of a mirror position as possible to put the weight exactly on the right spots and avoid any weight in the gaps where the 1/8" birch would break.  should be cured by tonight and then we'll get on to gluing the second wall.

also about to bite the bullet on some major electrical system components.  as noted earlier i'm doing a combo of shore power (i.e. plug into a wall socket at the campsite) and solar.  solar mounted on the roof will allow us to boondock in remote sites that have no shore power for extended periods with careful battery usage.  we plan to use very little power (again, the premise here is this tiny camper is basically "a more portable, comfy tent" not an RV), and prices have dropped so significantly this year that its a no-brainer for us to maximize our destination variety.  its been quite an education trying to figure all this out but i'm very excited to try this power system out in the camper and possibly migrate that installation knowledge over to a shop, shed, cabin or even permanent home someday far off in the future.  everything will be contained in a tongue-mounted weatherproof locked box to keep it organized and from eating up precious cabinet space.  the box is also a safety feature, in the crazy event the battery off-gases or explodes, or something catches fire...at least it gives us a change to get out of the camper, or contain a fire without half the camper immediately getting totaled.  

it'll look exactly like this once installed. i'm not crazy about adding even more weight to the tongue, but hopefully it will be easy to offset when the full cooler and water container are in the back:


the solar outfit will be based on:
• single 160W solid monocrystalline solar panel, mounted to the roof on hinges for transport and adjustment
• 125ah AGM VmaxTanks battery, sealed and well suited to solar deep cycles
• Victron BlueSolar MPPT charge controller and assorted wiring.  has the option to add a bluetooth dongle in the future to track charging parameters in realtime via phone, which is badass

since we're not running a fridge, microwave, or heater, the 125 amp-hour battery should provide a decent 2-3 day run time using the LED lights, charging phones, laptops, anker powerbanks and goalzero lights.  we'll eventually install a small inverter as well to charge some of our A/C-charged battery packs but that can simply plug into one of the cig lighters.

there are 2 kinds of solar charge controllers, and they are easily just as important as the panel itself.  that is, PWM (pulse width modulation) and MPPT (max power point tracking).  the PWM's are cheaper, more simplistic in their charge control, and typically make far more sense on a tiny 1 panel "backyard" system.  however, with prices dropping and the reality that my roof-mounted panel will be obstructed by woodsy shade often and can't be repositioned to get the best sun exposure all the time, i'm going for a controller that can intelligently change charging profiles on the fly to eek out that extra 15% charge efficiency and keep the battery topped longer....and only MPPT can do that.  plus i want that bluetooth capability later.

anyway, UPS will be busy with my house in the next couple days.