RV panel installation WAS: $5500.00 Puzzle [RE-wrenches]

[Bill Loesch, Saint Louis Solar]

Graham,

Glad you were able to "troubleshoot" the Shell instructions. On the Siemens
10 watt RV and Marine Kit _they_ even attached the color coded ring
terminals to the wire, eliminating yet another potential high resistance
owner installed field error. I guess reinventing the wheel must occur with
each new corporate name change.

Most middle of the road RV's are never intended to do serious dry camping
(boondocking) from an electrical supply viewpoint. Your handy woodworker
has made the best solution by increasing his battery bank capacity. If the
customer wants to use even a medium size microwave, you should be looking
at approx 400 aH of 12 volt battery capacity. The micro is most often the
driving load for dry camping capacity.

Have you ever tried using the photo manuplitation program that probably
came with your digital camera? I can take the photos with my "old
timer"digital camera and add brightness (on the computer) to the image and
get useable results almost every time. It could be that there is a spot
metering hold function on the camera but there are way too many buttons for
my tastes and moreover you can concentrate on image composition in the
field and fix the exposure back home.

Bill Loesch, Solar 1 - St. Louis Solar

Graham Owen said:
>       

Bill and Holt,

Thanks for the great RV roof mounting advice.  I wanted this RV Kit to
be installed "by the book", meaning the instruction manual that came
with the Shell RV Kit.  I called Shell and mentioned that they should
include 2 ring terminals for making the battery connections with their
RV kit's.  This could save the purchaser considerable time trying to
find a good means of connecting to the battery's. Luckily my work van is
fully stocked with lot's of parts.

The customers is a wood worker and he made the wooded extension box so
that the controller did not have to be flush mounted.  An inexpensive
box would also be a nice addition to the kit's.

The battery compartment accessible from the exterior of the camper was
only large enough for two batteries.  My crafty customer converted a
small cupboard inside the camper into a battery compartment, complete
with restraints.  This was luckily located directly behind the existing
batteries.  I took some digital pictures of the batteries but they came
out too dark to put on the web site.

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