Electricity & Batteries

There's been a big gap here in documenting what's happening in the van because I was away for awhile with the Red Cross working at the Oso landslide.  Now I'm back, I'll try to catch things up.

One of the big jobs Howard worked on while I was gone  was the electricity. Not only was it a big job, it was really expensive.  Our main requirements for electricity are to run the Norcold portable refrigerator we have, and to run the interior lights, charge devices like an iPad, cell phone or laptop. 

On the advice of a marine electrician, we went with two 6-volt, golf-cart-style batteries rather than one 12-volt battery.  The electrician told us these would yield more amp hours than a single 12-volt battery--he said we could be off the grid, and not running the engine for three days, and the batteries would be up to the task.  Hope so.  The batteries were shockingly expensive.

The electrician advised Howard on how to run the wires, and get everything prepared, then he did the final installation and hook up to connect the engine batteries, house batteries, battery charger, isolation switch, and so forth.   In spite of our keep-it-simple theme, this got pretty complicated.

The house-battery-bank is charged by the van's alternator, but only after the engine's battery is fully charged.  They can also be charged by shore power when that available.  There is an isolator between the house batteries and the engine battery, so we won't drain the engine's battery when we are parked, but with a flip of a switch, we can and start the engine with the house batteries if that is ever needed.  We've talked about getting solar panels...but at this point, we weren't ready to do that.  We would have to use a portable solar panel, because we can't install anything on the roof of the van, as that would make it too tall for the standard fee on the ferry.  Staying in the cheap seats has been a primary goal all along.

So we now have shore power going to two 110 volt outlets, 12-volt power going to three 12 volt outlets and six 12-volt LED lights.  That seems more than adequate for our needs.

The tall cupboard in the photo above houses most of the electrical gear, with space left over for a few shelves.  Next to the tall cabinet is the galley with a sealed compartment on the bottom to house the

port-a-potty.  In the right-hand wall of the tall cabinet, facing the galley is the 12-volt/110 volt distribution panel.  We bought an all-in-one Progressive Dynamic "Mighty Mini"  which our electrician said was a good piece of tack at a good price.  We haven't used it much, so we can't really give it a bunch of stars, but it seems to be just what we need. 

The panel has a face plate that snaps over all this all this technical looking stuff, and looks quite nice.