Phase II of building my van was to add the electrical system with the goal of powering a fridge, lights & two 12V sockets for things like an immersion element, fan & phone charger. After extensive research & much deliberation, mostly on the part of my Dad, we settled on a game plan and started ordering things. Once I arrived in Mission, we knew we had a 2 week window to get everything ordered, delivered & installed, so we were eager to start the process. This is what our game plan looked like; if it looks like anything more than modern art to you, you're doing well..
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| Modern Art a la Dad |
Once everything was ordered, we had about a week before the parts started trickling in. We used that time to measure, re-measure, disassemble, adjust and otherwise prepare for the parts to come. Thankfully there were plenty of retirees around who were more than happy to lend their tools, parts and wisdom to the project. I had ingeniously (aka pure stroke of luck) planned my kitchen drawer at the right height for my batteries to be housed under. Dad set about drilling a series of holes in the back and sides of my fridge cabinet to provide ventilation for the compressor, then added a top to the cabinet to increase my shelf storage area.
The wires were among the first items to arrive, which made for an afternoon project drilling through the firewall and pulling the wires through to connect them from the van battery to my charger and other components in the back. It also required finding a wire in the fuse box that only had power when my key was in the ignition; this wire controls the flow of power to the charger so that it won't be charging/draining my battery while I am parked. The wires were able to fit under the plastic sidedoor frame, which makes it nice and neat in the back.
The charger requires the most ventilation as it could heat up, so we moved one of the center-side supports towards the centre of the van and mounted the charger on the outside, near the back of the side door. In between the van's battery and the charger we also have a fuse to prevent the charger from drawing too much power from my van's battery and as insurance to prevent a fire in case of a short in a wire.
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| Construction; wires, fuses and various parts. |
From the charger, the power flows through the contactor, the shunt and into the batteries. I have a battery bank of four Lithium 3.2V batteries. Between the batteries there are balancers to ensure that each of the four cells charge equally. The shunt measures how much power is flowing in to & out of the batteries, so that I can measure how much power I have available. The shunt also connects to a meter, which measures voltage and amp hours & displays how much power I have used versus how much I have recharged so that I always know how much power I have available. The meter will also shut the system down if the batteries get drained too much.
My fridge is wired directly to my batteries so that it will always run. On the side of my fridge I have two 12V sockets and two switches. The two 12V sockets are always powered so I can simply plug something in and it will run. The two switches are for my lights. One switch turns on my main LED light strips on both side doors, which makes my van as bright as daylight. The other switch turns on a smaller LED light strip underneath my kitchen shelf which is enough light for most things and far more subtle when I'm parked in public places. My fridge, lights and sockets all have fuses that will trip if anything goes awry and prevent any further damage from happening.
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| Plugs & switches |
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| LED light strips |
T minus 3 days; we got the batteries installed and things wired up in such a way that it should all be functioning, but... it wasn't. After a few stressful hours trying to understand why, we eventually figured out we were only getting 6V, which meant that one of the batteries was in backwards! After a quick flip around, the charger had power and things started looking much more promising.
T minus 2 days; it became a full-fledged community effort on the second-last day to help it all come together. Another task on the to-do list was to make a hatch in my bed base so that I could access the cubby in the centre that i'd blocked access to by adding my kitchen shelf. I measured out a square, cut it out with a little handle hole and added supports so that it would sit in there like a lid, but be easily removable to allow access to my "garage". It's actually a miracle that I got the hole cut in the right place, as I was very distracted by the painful dental work i'd had done and wasn't the most focused..
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| Community effort to make it all come together! |
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| The hatch to my "garage" |
T minus 1 day; As the last few things all came together, I quickly enlisted mom's help to get the sawdust vacuumed out before it was eternally trapped in the bottom of my van..
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| Vacuuming out the spare parts |
At the 11th hour.. we did it!!! Well, mostly. For some reason the meter wasn't working. We got the remainder of the system working, but it wasn't measuring the flow of power, so we weren't entirely sure. Either way, we needed to leave the RV park lot, so we packed up and headed down the road. Mom and Dad & I spent the night on the beach in Corpus Christi, them in their 5th wheel trailer and myself in my van. The mental wheels were spinning, but as of yet we hadn't come up with any solutions as to why the meter wasn't working. The next day, when we stopped at the fork in the road where I would be continuing west to Houston and they would be heading north towards home, the lightbulb went on. Dad set about getting the tools he needed and started taking pieces apart in the Walmart parking lot, and 10 minutes later we'd done it; a fully functional electrical system!! The brains of this operation and full credit goes entirely my Dad!
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| The battery bank underneath my kitchen drawer |
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| All the components in the finished product! |
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| Working fridge & lights! |
I teased the retirees in Mission that I'd just bring them an empty van next winter and give them a couple months to convert it.. I think they'd secretly love it, but I'll give them the summer to recover from this one first :)
Since I'm a little slow in getting this posted, I'm able to report the system work's wonderfully! The highlight is probably having popsicles in my freezer on a hot day, but there are many perks to having power making vanlife much more comfortable! With my battery bank, I'm able to park for approximately 5 days with normal power use before needing to charge.
J.
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