Adding Solar Panels To An Existing System | Q&A from the comments section

[Music]

thank you [Music]

thank you foreign [Music]

foreign foreign hey guys welcome back to live stream

tonight so we are talking about solar power we're gonna be adding an additional 200

watts of solar to Thomas's van we're going to go over the reasons why we're doing that and then we're also going to

talk about uh the layout and the products that I bought to make it happen uh how we're going to integrate it into

the system we currently have and uh we won't physically be installing it today

but we're going to go through all the parts behind me that you're going to need if you want to add additional solar

to your system we're going to briefly talk about the reasons why you would want to separate different wattage

panels instead of integrating say 175 watt solar panel with these 50 watt

solar panels so we'll talk briefly about that I'll give you a couple of links to uh

two YouTube videos that are really help helpful well two channels actually that have really helped me uh understand

everything but right now we're gonna take a second I'm going to double check this

microphone um I didn't turn it on before we got started so

in the comments below um we'll get out we'll get on those tonight

and uh as usual ask me anything in the chat van related and we'll put it

um as soon as those questions come through we'll get right to them but yeah we're gonna pause just for a

second I'm gonna double check this mic and then we'll hop on to the table over there hop over to the table and kind of get

started with the stream tonight

all right Jamie give me a thumbs up if you can hear that audio come through

we're on the lapel microphone

there we go

all right just gonna wait just a couple more minutes unless some more people get in the chat and then we will Kick It Off

lane from Nicholas's iPhone

this is iPhone there we go

true

okay I think our audio is all set for this evening

foreign

guys cool we got a couple people in the live stream now so we'll go ahead and get started

so what I've done is I've laid out the products for installing 200 additional

watts to Marine one which is the van that we've been working on for Thomas

and the reason that we decided to add more solar was

we could have gone two ways we could have added more DC to DC charging uh

straight from the engine battery bumped it up from like 30 amps to 60 amps safely

the thing is the van is not driven every single day it's not a full-time live-in van

for traveling and Adventure so sometimes it might sit in the driveway for a couple days maybe a week or two

so what we want to do is we still want to have it ready to go so for example say you went on a trip for a

week and you wanted to kind of load up some bottles of water and stuff like that in the fridge and you're leaving

the next day or something like that um we want a system to where we can maximize solar to top off those

batteries so that when you're ready to go everything's at 100 and you can head out but also your fridge for example

could be pre-chilled um so you don't have to wait for it to

get cold while you're on the road you can go ahead and just start your trip so since that was our case we moved from

adding a additional DC to DC charger and we went to

more solar so this is kind of where we landed and I'm going to switch over to the other

camera here in just a second and I'm going to talk to you about what products are on the table and then we're going to

come back to the computer we'll go over here and

we'll have some fun on

I need to add the uh I need to add the audio over here in one second

there we go okay

so you guys should be able to hear me so we'll go over to Amazon and we're going to go through a couple products there's

three products that I'm going to be adding to this um that I needed to change once I had this

layout over here so we'll go to this and then we'll complete the stream by going over the

questions that are in the comments on the YouTube channel we had a bunch last week so I wanted to just go through those answer those while I'm on the live

stream in case you guys are actually watching you can interact with those answers to the questions but yeah let's hop over

here and start talking about what we have

all right okay so we're over here on the table now the photo let me get the photo shut

up that way you guys can actually see what this is supposed to look like

it's gonna be two seconds I will pull up an overhead view you might have saw it on the thumbnail before coming over here

but I'm just going to go pull it up again

all right so check this out this is the top of Thomas's van right now we have two 175 watt renergy

panels up here and what we're going to do is on the left and right hand side our driver's

passenger side of the max fans we're going to add 50 watts each so 50 on the

driver's side passengers driver passengers so we'll have four up there and uh yeah there will be no more room

for any more solar up there but we're going to Max it out that way we can really keep

everything nice and topped off so coming back over to the table

we've gone with four 50 watt panels you guys saw the layout on the roof

now the reason that you want to select a separate system for an additional system

has to do with the efficiency of the solar panels for example if you have 172 175 watt

solar panels those have a different voltage than the voltage of these lower

wattage panels and it's just a rule of thumb to not mix different voltages together

if you do that it decreases the efficiency significantly regardless if

you wire these in series or parallel and there's links to those other videos

they those two channels go into great depths good detail

with schematics and everything and it's just a great place for me to send you

guys we'll talk about these products on Amazon so that if you wanted to purchase

them we'll show you the links so we got our panels the next thing we need to do is we need

to get some connectors to connect them all together because remember we're not connecting

this to the current solar system the act like this is just a different van so it's a completely independent

system so the first thing we want to do is I went to uh renergy and I when I do when

I build Vans I love this kit that they have they have these uh

ready to go solar panel install kits um they come with the connectors here

they come with the panel the actual angle

that bolts to the panel and then you can bolt this to whatever roof rack system you're using

and then it also gives you battery terminal cables so that once you

come from the panels into your solar charge

controller which today we have the Rover Elite and this is the 20 amp version

it's an mppt controller so it's not a pwm mppt

and what we do with the reason I got this is uh it's just a really good value this thing is about 109 dollars

and if you bought a victron equivalent

um you're around 200 plus dollars so this one's going to do the job

the rating of the panels and this unit vary really well together

so it's just a nice uh cost-effective system when you're trying to to upgrade

so the cables come with that kit they also come with the branch adapters

so what we'll need to do is we'll be taking this panel and this panel Branch

adapting them together the same for these other two and then we'll just take we'll take the

four lines and move them into just two and then those two lines will go directly into our charge controller

and then it'll go into our uh well before it gets to the charge

controller we're going to put it through our breaker this is a dual pole breaker

and this way we can uh safely disconnect our solar before it

actually gets into our system Solar is always on so if you guys don't

know if you've never done solar before these panels right now are actually producing electricity

one tip that I like to uh tell everyone is keep your boxes until you're done with your project

is you can take your box for example like when I'm working on this and you can cover the panel because it's obviously the same size you can cover

the panel and cut down electricity I mean pretty much

to zero it might be sneaking in on the side but um yep I just keep these and then when

I'm done I toss them I typically work with 100 Watts or 175

Watts panels so you know 50 this is the first time I

bought 50 because of our footprint that we're working with but anyway

this box you can buy from renigy we'll go over this in the Amazon link here in just a second show you what comes with

it but I got two of these each one comes with two Branch adapters

so we'll be able to do all four panels we do have an inline fuse for our Solar

now I haven't got these in these are not the exact one I'm going to be using for this project uh they're just here kind of as

a placeholder so once we have our panels cables to our

inline fuse go into our breaker we'll input it into our solar charge controller

and then from that we'll put it into our Lynx distributor and then that way we

can put Power into our system and so this

week later this week we'll go into the van and we'll do that

now this big thing right here this is not necessary you don't have to buy this the reason I bought this one is is

literally to disconnect the negative side of the solar

after the breaker the reason we're doing this is the way that we had to lay this

van out and if you guys have been watching the live streams everything is so so tight there's there's really no

room to hardly do anything with what we put in the van so the electrical there's

not really any way to move anything because this was an afterthought as far

as adding more solar we didn't anticipate doing that so what I'm doing is

these both of these Breakers are going to be located inside the battery system now that is behind the frosted acrylic

piece of acrylic that you guys saw in the van it's pretty fancy

and uh let me back up here

uh yeah more power that's right getting more power

um okay you guys can see on that

wasn't sure which one was better let's see that's actually not that bad

I'll do this for right now

so

all right

so again the reason that we're going with this one right here is because it matches what we have in the van already

so that way when we have our main disconnect for the power system which goes to the lithium batteries the next

thing we'll have will be the solar disconnect uh due to the fact we have so much solar

on this van a lot of systems can just continuously continuously be ran or powered by the

solar panels so when we need to uh if any Thomas to troubleshoot or cycle

through the van if he turns off the main disconnect and can't get to the breaker we need a

way to fully disconnect the solar um so this is the way that we're going

to do that which by just disconnecting the uh the negative wire through

this circuit uh so that's our layout the next

question would be how are we going to mount this up on the Flatline vanco roof

rack so the way we're going to do it is we're going to be using a one inch aluminum

tubing and so we're going to take this aluminum tubing and we're going to

undermount it underneath the cross crossbars from the

Flatline vanco system so I got a piece of uh an extra piece of the 80 20 that

is used so let's go uh let's pull it out under here

foreign so if you guys are familiar with Flatline vanco this is the

uh piece of 80 20 that they use I believe it's a 10 series because it's one inch

but it's one inch by two inches so this is what it is right here

and what we're going to do is we're going to take so imagine these cross members are going

like this in the van so we're going to take this and then we're going to

take our we're going to cut this so that it spans from

this cross member to the next black cross member

and then we'll take it and we'll actually Mount this underneath the cross member

because we want the one with the visual aspect of this to be clean so we want

the panel to actually float flush with the cross member

and then that way it'll be you know hidden it won't be showing high above the roof rack

[Music] and then the way we'll do that is the back of these the reason I like

these renergy panels most solar panels are like this um

I guess I am kind of a fanboy for renegie I just think it's a good value

um I've used it for years and nothing's you know all good things have happened

all right so here is the back of the solar panel and I'm gonna go to their camera and

zoom in so you guys can see what I'm talking about

and this next part is pretty much for someone who is DIY and has not done this before

cardboard aided design I love the YouTube name

yeah so um yeah so that's something that we'll have to uh

uh it just kind of comes with the territory you know when the max fans are up

um it's going to put a little bit of Shadow on it but when when you think of solar

you got to think uh long spans of time you got to think

four five six hours of the day worth of power

range your immediate power is not what you're really looking for in solar

um but yeah depending on the solar panels yep a slight angle definitely I mean you

guys will probably notice this over winter time you know the sun's at a lower angle in the sky and you know it's

less uh the panels are less effective

no perfect thing to point out all right let me switch over here so I

can zoom in there we go we'll go here

all right foreign

[Laughter] there you go just uh you know put the

van on its side that's hilarious all right so here's our panel so this

next section is for anybody new to solar panels and has no idea

how to mount them they just they know I like renegie all right I picked one it doesn't matter Rich solar

um doesn't matter which one you get so you get a panel it's uh I would stay away from flexible

solar panels because the benefit you get with a aluminum

frame designed solar panel is uh

convection so when this panel is up on the roof

rack even if it's really low you have this chamber in here where air can move and

it can cool the back of the panel um if you can imagine you guys have you

know you've washed your car you've you've on a hot day you put your hand on top of your car truck or whatever I mean

the sheet metal is so hot I mean you literally can burn yourself on it

so the efficiency of a solar panel has almost uh

a significant portion of this efficiency is with heat so heat reduces the efficiency of the

solar panel um solar panels when it's cooler outside so

like the winter they do really well as far as efficiency goes because they can stay nice and cool

um and the Sun is you know uh you see the skies are pretty clear let's just say you know like when it's

uh when you're up in the mountains it's very nice and cool um but that but by getting this the

non-flexible ones you get a little bit you get a much stronger frame all right well the flexible ones do not

have a frame um but then when you mount this you should get that you get that area to for

air to cool the back of this that's very important

so the back here when you get a panel typically they're going to be pre-drilled with a couple of

holes and if you buy this Renegade kit it's going to give you a little baggie

just like this and this bag is going to have some screws as well as some

uh like sheet metal screws style screws and

nuts washers bolts so these nuts washers and bolts

are to connect these brackets now I buy a bunch of these and then I

kind of chop them up to my liking I might remove the tabs or I might

relocate these holes and when I'm using like a flatline vanco rack I'll actually come over here and I

will um depending on where I want the panel to be I will re-drill the holes so that

this is like how I want it so for example if I put it on the rail in this orientation I

can't use these two holes and uh I need to re-drill some other

holes you know pause for a second because we got some stuff in the chat here

let's see

oh no we're about the same all right keep on going let me get a

little bit more light in here

all right so we have these angled these brackets here now these brackets they have a

adjustable slot and typically what you would do is you

would take these fingers right here and these fingers would go on the outside of the panel

and I'm just going to put a couple on so you guys can see different orientations

and again if you have any questions let's put those in the put those in the comments

[Applause]

all right so you're going to take it the little fingers go on the outside so you

can adjust if it's necessary but you can do like this this raises the

panel off of the van if you flip it over

that doesn't work but if you flip it over

see here there's a couple different ways you can do it

you can change the orientation so for this one imagine you have this is

your van roof uh let's see make sure this is in the video so say this is your

van surface if you put this down it's going to raise it up about about a half

inch so we'll put that in that orientation just for the example here

[Applause]

so once you get the bracket in you can see that it lifts it up so this will be

the van surface and this would raise it up foreign

so what I did is

I'll show you an example of what I did with the other panels because I know a lot of you guys have not seen that so

basically I take imagine this is one of the 100 water 175 watt panels like the bigger ones that I use

so I'll put these in these holes right here

and then I'll have my piece like that and what's cool is so check this out

this can go underneath this so you can under sling this

and actually let's flip this let's put this over

so here's our roof rack so you can do two things if you need

some say underneath here you've got a bunch of solar wires like say say you have some

type of vent maybe it's like a bathroom vent or you have a cable gland right

here for some reason the way you did it it's above the rack mount

well if you change your feet this way you can mount it on top

that fixes that issue but so the way we did on Thomas's is we

actually under

actually hold on I'll give you an example of what we did so see now you can get it lower

and then what we did was we actually went even lower so I'll see if I can do that

yeah be careful these sharp edges because I already I got myself and I'm not even working

so we'll take this and we'll flip the bracket over so check this out so all we did was flip

it over

all right so we just flipped it over and so now when we put it on our

cross member this is exactly what we did with the van behind us is now

you've got it sitting down in the channel so you're really close

to being flush with your bars so it's going to help with uh

as you as you guys know if you've got a big roof rack bunch of solar panels you're not going to be

stealthy but I know people mention it this is I guess let's get about as

stealthy as you can get uh I like this because the closer you can have it hug the van

roof remember we still want that ventilation underneath here but the closer you get it down

uh that helps with the wind that comes across it you can imagine if this is up high you

would have uh you know some buffeting possibly anyway the renergy kit

right here this comes with all your Hardware to

you know out of the box to be ready to mount this so I like it because I can just get the

kit and I can start at work and I don't have to worry about what I'm doing

now what we're going to do on this one is I needed the kit

for these cables for these Branch adapters

and the battery terminal cables so the only thing I'm not using in this kit

are these now you probably wonder why am I not going to use it well because

the theme of Marine One is there's no more room left to

put put anything so we have approximately a quarter of an

inch on each side of this

so the max fan is in between these two on the roof um here I'm gonna go to the photo

so right here if you guys check out the photo this is where we're putting the solar

panels and if I zoom in uh this right here

um

this is actually pushed up underneath the Flatland vanco rack and the rack is actually tapered

so when I raise this when I put this on the cross member this will only be a

quarter of an inch away from the max fan so we got really lucky with

renergy making a footprint of this panel the way they did because

um and don't worry guys I know you see

these rusted screws up here these were black painted screws and uh

yeah we're gonna replace them so if you're watching Thomas don't worry we're going to clean all this up

you know how we roll so

some usually sometimes black oxide finishes are pretty good um

but you got to be careful when you order screws and stuff like that because the it's hard to tell

what quality a black screw is um

anyway so we're going to replace those are just more cosmetic but

anyway so the same thing over here what we'll do is we're going to run

let's how I wonder if I can can I put I'm gonna see if I can put this in my drawing

program so you guys can actually

see how we're gonna lay this out that'd be cool if I could do that

all right as I'm setting this up um let me know if you guys have any questions while I'm working on this

yeah so you're looking at the roof we're gonna I'm gonna draw here on this pad and

hopefully I can draw over this photo I'll just I'll just

draw it it'll be easier

let's get to our drawing software

foreign you guys should be able to hear me okay so let's get to a clean piece of paper

all right we're going to draw the Frip uh the top of the van

all right and we have the uh the 175 watt panel up here at the front

then we have one right here behind it

we have a Max fan here and then we got a Max fan

back here I'll make my head just a little bit smaller

okay so this is our layout so this is vent fan

this is vent fan okay and then this one is 175 what

175 what so the new location is going to be here

if you guys were here earlier in the Stream you we already talked about the layout with that photo

so this is where the new solar panels are going to go

now the mistake I made with

the parts that I was ordering is I didn't order enough of my extensions because I got two of those renergy boxes

okay now two is fine for two big panels because

you can uh let me change my color here because you can

take the two cables and then you can take the uh

the branch adapt Branch connector and have one come out you can take the two cables

Branch connector and have one cable come out well I I have four

and so I need to add a couple more things so

we're going to talk about that when we get to the the Amazon page where we we check out

all right so we have our four uh up here

so right here

uh the solar panel is pretty much touching the Flatline vanco roof rack which is okay we'll put a spacer in

there like a sixteenth of an inch or something like that so when we bolt it down it doesn't rub over time

now put this inside right here we've got about a quarter of an inch got plenty of room with the vent fan to open

and really guys that's all the room that we have uh

so that is the layout on the top of the roof um so kind of jumping forward from the

parts is how we're going to mount this

so if I can get the that's a good let's try purple

all right so what we're going to do and now let me use black because you can't see that

um okay so hopefully you guys can see this so what we're going to do is this is going

to be our aluminum tubing it's an aluminum tubing is going to

connect panels are going to lay on it or be bolted to that aluminum tubing

and then this right here is our cross member from Flatline vanco cross member Flatline vanco

cross member and the back is a cross member

and that way this section here will just be spanning that difference and that's that one inch square aluminum tubing and

we just picked it up from Lowe's and then what we'll do is back here behind me we've got some Hardware

and since our cross members on the roof are one inch

and our tubing is one inch we went with three inch uh bolts these are so these

are hex bolts um you don't need socket head cap screw

bolts or stuff like that just a simple hex bulb and you need to make sure it's stainless everything on the roof needs

to be stainless um or if it's extremely well painted you

can you can get away with you know painting stuff like using Rust-Oleum black to paint it black like for example

those uh screws um and then the next thing you want to do is when you're setting up how you're

going to do this you want to make sure that we're going to be drilling through this

and so the bolt is actually going to go through the channel here

at the bottom and the aluminum is going to come up underneath that way the panel sits above

it and it's just you know it's as flush with the other panels as we can get

but what you want to do is you want to measure this Gap right here and you can take you know

you can take a tape measure whatever but since I'm fancy we gotta

caliber here so we'll take a measurement here and we've already we've already

measured this um so this is

0.25 essentially this is a quarter inch slot pretty standard on this 80 20. and

we have quarter 20 bolts so when we drill our hole straight through

it's going to be nice and clean you know we're not going to get into the sides here and make the make it harder on

ourselves we're going to bolt it and then we're going to come over to the

square tubing over here and we're going to

again we're going to take this to this aluminum tubing and I'll make it Orange

and it's just gonna span that we're going to cut it so it

fits perfectly and then we're going to put our

so this red circle is just our quarter 20 bolt so we're going to bolt it in four places

and then we'll actually drill in here

and we'll we'll screw the frame of

we'll screw the frame of the solar panel to

the one inch tubing so we'll take our solar panel like this

and then we'll take this and so this right here will be

right there and the the aluminum right here is one

inch and this is one inch so it's gonna be extremely strong uh

it's really kind of Overkill but um this is very light

dimensions and everything are perfect so we're going to do this and this panel is going to lay on top of

here and that way when the van is taken off-road and all kinds of crazy stuff

it's going to be safe it's gonna be safe driving to 80 miles an hour all that good stuff

um all right let's see what else I have to draw here so if you guys have any questions right

now about if a roof layout solar panel layout we did this in a previous live

stream where we talked about uh is your van too heavy you know weight distribution

these panels are not that heavy if I go over to uh

uh let me just go over to the computer here

all right so if we come over here to the computer you can see that these 50 watt panels

they are 7.72 pounds each

so it's not terribly heavy not not a lot of uh

weight they're adding um but this is them again no affiliation

with their energy just giving you guys quick access to uh some good information

so this is the panel uh again you know great price range as

far as you know what it does now I'll show you the the difference

um we are adding 200 Watts and then we're expecting

uh we got about 2.69 amps from it however

the efficiency of solar panels are if you have 50 Watts you're really

closely getting into about 25 watts a panel so

but it has to say it's the same thing with these with the bigger panel that we put on so this uh

175 watt panel now let's quickly we're not going to

talk detail about this we'll probably save this for a different another live stream

but the difference is let's look at the specifications for 175 watt panel

so what we have here is we've got a

short circuit current of 10.62 amps so the amps aren't that big of a deal because

we are we had this in parallel so we're going to be more concerned with

the keeping the voltage the same so our voltage on this panel is 21.6 volts and we have that times two

uh each I mean each of the 175 watt panel is 21.6 volts

um for the voltage if we go to the 50 uh

let me click on the wrong thing if you go to the 50 watt panel hold on a second

oh that's a menu okay we go from 21.6 and then if we go to the 50 watt panel

we go to 22.3

now that's not a significant difference however when it's in parallel it chooses the

the lower common denominator so whatever is the lowest is what the charge control

is going to go with but again it's you're going to get your the full the

you're going to get the most efficiency if these are both separate if the charge controller has is separated

so it's only dedicated to a set voltage and current from each of the systems

and really you know it's just an additional 100 bucks so I understand if you're on a budget but you know 100

bucks just to make it easier uh when you're dealing with different panels and getting better efficiency I

think it's worth it uh the unit that we used so the charge controller

go over here we're going to go to mppt charge controllers um and they've got a bunch of them uh

you know the the Rover is like one of their popular ones but again we're dealing with space uh there's a bunch of

features on the Rover that we don't need um so I think it's like two years ago they

came out with the Rover Series or the Rover uh I'm sorry the rubber Elite

and they got two options they've got a 20 amp option and they got a 40 and a 40 amp option so we're gonna go with we

went with the 20 amp and then uh you know you can set it up

with Bluetooth if you want to um if we move on down let's see here

I want to find out the max yep here we go so when you do get a

charge controller you're going to want to look at the max power input and you want that to be at 12 volts

uh don't confuse it with 24 volts so for 12 volt system we got 260 Watts

you know we're only adding 200 so we're in a safer range for that

uh okay so that's the system that we got set up

um yeah so if you guys have any questions uh we're just kind of moving through

through this put those in the chat we'll keep on trucking

so the next part I'm going to go over I'm going to have two channels that I recommend checking out to understand

the wiring of this so for example if we come over here to

where we drew this we have two systems so we have the 175

watt system that's coming together

so we have you know positive negative off this system

and then these are going into our Branch adapters

and then we're coming out with um one positive and one negative

and so these are these are where weird these are wired and parallel

and then the next one we have it next one we'll have is uh each of these and their own

Branch connector over here and these will be a separate system

obviously

and so those will be put into a branch adapter kit and then we'll have

um it'll actually be double double branched that way we can break it down one more

time now you can find ones that are for the branch adapters have four ends uh

but then you have to consider how you're getting from here to here to connect these panels

so you uh maybe we'll maybe we'll talk about okay I'll talk about

put in the chat if you guys want to talk about how I organize solar panel cables

if you guys are interested in that put that in the chat um I'll I'll do a new drawing and I'll show

you how I organized it if you guys have questions

so essentially we get two independent systems

so this would be system number one and this will be system number two

and I'm not sure why I didn't mention this the whole benefit of not wiring everything into one system is redundancy

so say for example for some reason as bulletproof as a red Arc system

not sponsored I just randomly wore this shirt tonight for the live stream but let's just say the the rhetoric system

uh passed out like it just stopped working

um you would lose your DC to DC system and or you would lose the solar charging mppt controller that's built into the

manager 30. so with this now you have 200 Watts that

is completely decoupled from the system and can continue to charge your van charger batteries and then so you're not

um uh you know you're not gonna stranded

uh for lack of a better word okay so yeah put that in the chat if you guys

want to uh see that all right let's hop back over here and

let's talk about um the additional components

and then we'll pretty much uh in the Stream here so let me get this set up

our cables

all right so in addition to the renergy box that we bought

they had all the hell had all the goodies in it this one there's a couple more cables that we're

going to need uh so we're going to need four of the five foot

these will bring our power from the two innermost

so it'll bring the power from here and here to the next panel

and then after our double Branch adapters our after our

Branch adapters come in we'll need um this 10 foot

to bring it in into the van because we're going to connect this directly and go through the van

so what I do is I use I don't use a

I don't cut a huge hole inside the van I cut I use a glint these glands

and then the way that I use them is if this is the solar wire coming into the van

these uh gland fittings they're kind of like a compression uh

compression gland what you do is you take this and then this goes if you've never used

this before it goes in between the sheet metal of the van and the and the to get the top of the van you got a

sheet metal and then you got the inside of the van and there is a rubber o-ring

that seals all the water out now not only do I just

I use this o-ring what I'll do is I'll use uh

I'll put a lap sealant around here and then we got a really secure double seal

but then I put this in the van and then what I'll do is I'll feed in this wire through the gland like that

and then I'll have one of these for my positive and I'll have one of these for my negative the way the reason I do that

is you're cutting smaller holes in the van and there might be more but what you're

able to do is let's just say some weird thing like a branch caught

this and it ripped the wire out well if this was in a big gland on the

roof with all the wires coming into the van that might rip the whole thing off and so instead of having a problem with

one wire foreign you're going to have a you're going to have a problem with

you know five six wires so with this you can troubleshoot it

much easier by just doing this and if you ever needed to replace this

wire you just unscrew you loosen this up pull the wire out get your new wire

you put it in and then you just tighten this down and that's it you're all set

so I this is my method that I use for roof penetrations on vans

the cool thing is for like 30 bucks you can get a whole entire kit that has

you know every size you can imagine uh so these smaller ones I use for all

the solar wires um the bigger more chunky ones I'll use this for the uh the awning so like the

Dometic Awning or the Fiamma awning the cable that is necessary for the current

of the motor coming up through is a little bit bigger gauge so needs a little bit bigger one of these

and then um and Thomas's case we put a ton of Baja design lights up top

they also needed a chunkier hole because of

that had a little bit more current coming through those wires but you can buy a whole kit and then you don't have

to worry about if you got the right size or not

uh and then last but not least let's talk about the remainder of that order what we

ordered back here

yeah Daniel that's a good point um So Daniel said uh when I use two 500

watt solar panels secure them to the top of the roof rack it really had to do with the footprint

so the footprint was uh first we thought we could only do 175

because uh so let's let me bring out that photo

where is that photo

all right so if we come over here to the top of the van

so the Baja design light up here we didn't know where that was going to

have to be mounted so we thought it was going to take up the space of the front

panel and not only okay Daniel you opened up a can of worms but

a very good can of worms because I think this will help a lot of people as far as understanding what happens when you make

one decision and it kind of has a domino effect so kind of stay with me on this real

quick so over here in the corner you guys can't

see it but down here in the corner is the XM radio forward kind of satellite

antenna that had to be relocated from up underneath the panel

so not only do they have to be relocated but the panel selection had to make enough

had to be where we could width-wise fit in the roof rack but then still have enough

room to run our awning cables

and not only that we had to adjust the location of this

Max fan so traditionally this Max fan is actually forward about four to five

inches uh so what I had to do was

I had to I took this Max fan and I pushed it

all the way to the uh there's a Ford cross member right

here that supports the roof of the van so this Max fan is as far

to that cross member as possible there's a kit and uh from the company

um here let's do this

so if you guys have seen a I think it's DIY van they make

they make the uh the kit to support the fan where you

would traditionally put it in the middle of the van not middle of the van but the forward most section

so this is the kit that they have so you have these two pieces

and what this does is if you guys have never seen this before these are cutouts here

they are cnc'd so that they fit perfectly up

to support the fan and then what you do is you have these middle pieces

that come here and then that way once you put this in the fan is

supported in the middle so what I had to do is the fan had to be pushed so far back

here that this was not an option

and what we came up with is that was the

home for the fan thankfully the home for the fan

the home for the solar panel and this one from renergy how it fit with this satellite antenna

the awning and the Baja design light because there's a support beam underneath the

Baja design light the light bar I mean it just happened to be

I mean there's like by the satellite thing there's about an eighth of an inch by the

Dometic awning you have a you know half an inch so our tolerances were pretty much met

there wasn't moving anything so I know there's a long-winded answer to that but uh that's that's a excellent

question because it uh it's really important to make sure

before you buy everything how is it going to fit on your roof so you know

get a piece get a napkin you know get a piece of graph paper out and just start drawing the layout

um uh to be honest the

SE 50 watt panels from energy uh I I know they existed but I just I

couldn't believe that they we were I'm actually going to be able to fit these on the van and four of them at that

so we got really lucky with with that I mean zamp makes some other zamp solar

make some I know Zam sellers made in the USA I'm

not hating on it I just think I think the price is a little high

for what you get um I'd rather have a Reggie panel that

lasts you know three or four five years I think they have a five year warranty on

them that's 60 bucks versus a zamp that's like 250 dollars

but has the same output

yeah so yeah that was a great question because it shows you you know what to think of

and then also before I move back onto the the Amazon thing you know you got to

consider where your branch connectors are going to go how you're going to connect them

um you know zip ties okay don't that's completely fine just make sure that you

are not cutting into the cable so for example where these uh connections are there

where the hard plastic is nothing is where the uh um cable is if it is where the cable is

the zip tie is not fully tightened um but the nice thing about these cables

from renergy if you guys if you ever buy these look how thick the plastic is it is

significantly thick I mean this stuff can take a ton of abuse so I don't I'm not really worried about

that um but find out how you're going to feed these so these wires are fed along this

rail they come down they come back up and then they come into here where we

have our inline fuses at the back of the van that was just a great location Plus for

Access for future maintenance you know it's the back of the van where you can climb up with the ladder check it out

and then you guys can see how I put them with those glands into the van

so guess what these two wires here that is the positive negative of the

solar coming in um a pro tip is there's these these rain

gutters on the roof you want to have your glands on the upper part of the roof and not in this

in this Valley Channel because that's where the water runs uh you kind of want them up on this

little Plateau for lack of a better word to kind of keep them up high let the

water drain effectively all right so you can see how we have this so what we'll be doing is we'll be

adding another two right behind this so that's our secondary system

um but the reason and then these other ones this is all the this is all the Baja design power

um so those are all and so all this is one off so when I do the Baja design

everything's stripped and it's it's made into its own new line

um okay so that is the top of that let's hop

over into Amazon guys are asking great questions so if you have any more just keep on asking

we're going to hop back over here to this just really quick and then we're

going to hop into the questions that you guys have for

um from YouTube there's a bunch of questions there that I haven't answered someone answering them on this live

stream um [Laughter]

giveaway Daniel Thomas if you're watching I don't know if we do have a Wi-Fi solution that we're wiring in the

van while I have it so in a future live stream maybe not this week maybe next

week we're installing uh a Wi-Fi router and then we're

installing This Blink security camera

a lot of cool stuff happening but you're right you know maybe

but guess what Thomas if you're watching uh where's my photo

there's no it's easy just to remove this panel and then put a star

leak up there it's super easy we just unplug it no big deal very easy to do

all right let's talk about a couple of uh products that you'll need

this dicor self-leveling lap sealant for some reason I always thought they

just had the white one but this is uh it has it's all it's a white bottle with a

white tip but it has the color black I know that sounds crazy but so I buy this one because uh the

self-laving lap sealant I was really big on Flex Seal

and then I found this one and and I like it so

that's what I use for my final ceiling around the cable glands

um the next thing actually we got a cable glands the next thing is this company uh

now after I do my calculations uh we're gonna I'm gonna change this this amp

rating hop popped in there this was for the two 175 watt panels the 32 amp

because they don't have a 30 amp um so you got like a 32

so this is the isolator our breaker for solar so if you notice

um there's a negative and a positive terminal so for example if you just

if there was a dead short and you just fuse the positive

uh you know electricity is going to find the path of least resistance and it's

just going to go the other way through the negative so this dual pole

um you know once it trips it breaks the circuit completely and they're pretty cheap but a lot a lot

of Van uh di wires I don't want to say specifically but I know I've seen a lot

of YouTube videos where this is not incorporated into the system you know they have a main power disconnect but

they don't they don't have another means of it uh

yeah of safe safety in disconnecting the circuit

um keep going here we have um

we got some ARB stuff that we're going to be installing uh so here's the Renegy kit uh so guys

diy-ers this is fantastic to purchase you can purchase it in a couple

different options you got 100 watt kit 200 watt and then a 400 watt system

but each kit comes with your brackets to mount to the solar panels your leads to

go directly to the battery and then your branch adapters over here

and again uh these cables I mean it says they got a 25 year life span I believe it I mean

this these uh for they're good value let's just leave

it at that and then we have this blue Seas

disconnect switch again this is a little Overkill but we are operating off of Aesthetics as well

so we want everything to look very good and professional and we want it to match our other disconnect switch now these

switches these big ones they have this relief cut in them and that relief allows us to uh

to mount it in the wood and then that way you don't see it looks uh as

the wood cutout is just a circle and it goes through it um but the reason we have to use these

big chunky ones yeah that's right Daniel they use a

single pole not a double pole so if you know it'll it might break the

circuit but then it's just going to come back down to the negative side so yeah

yeah you want the you want both the negative and the positive disconnected at the same time

um you don't want to have the negative grounded to the van and the positive the

only thing that's breaking the circuit uh because uh with solar panels they can have dead shorts within the panel

themselves so if you think about it you have a dead short possibility with the panel then

you have a dead short with the the wiring so depending on your current that you're

pushing through the system uh and the the gauge of The Wire and maybe necessary to do an inline fuse

excellent question because guess what this uh explores.life was a video that I

was going to show you guys um so check out his video it's a how to

wire different size sizes of camper solar panels together effects of missed matched solar panels

so he goes into depths he's got his own printed out charts and stuff like that

and Visually he really teaches you um a great way to

understand it and then he also has a video

over here how to fuse a solar panel array and in this video you can't see it

there we go how to fuse a solar panel array so that video as well would be the

follow-up to that so that way you're mitigating the dead short at the

panel to the line the solar power lines going

into your van so those lines are actually fused with this

so you'll have one of these and this all depends on your current

um and he'll explain in that video but you'll have this is a fuse an inline fuse and essentially what you can do is

in your branch adapter this will snap in and so if this was

positive and positive this would be your your fused positive going out uh

this will be going into your van and then when you go into your van

you're going to have the Dual Pole going into your van and then the output of this

I don't have it on the table but that would go into your uh

uh your uh lose my train of thought here you're like positive negative bus bar

which in our case we're using the um the lynx distributor

so we're using the lynx distributor um and I love the lynx distributor not

affiliated or sponsored or anything like that but I love them because it's just such a

compact way to manage the your incoming power and then fusing that

properly so we would have it come into here fuse

and then just then distributed all right almost to the answering your

guys questions let me just do this one more thing to kind of complete this video

get back up here

um actually that's it the last thing I mean we'll use we'll talk about this in a feature stream is this uh

This Blink Mini hooking up this system to the Wi-Fi

so it'll be an in-van security system so if you guys have any questions on that really all I'm doing is I'm kind of the

mad scientist uh teaching you guys how to take uh

different like book boost or voltage um changing voltages so like

12 volts to 15 volts or like 12 volts to 15 volts but then like specifically three amps for a certain uh

power supply so what you can do is you can kind of

engineer your own

for example if something runs off a USBC you can get the raw USBC cable ends you

can wire it into this to get your proper voltage and the reason we're doing this is we're trying to eliminate everything in the

van that is being ran off of the inverter

um so for example things that Thomas wants to run that has he has been running

um that we want to that are not necessary to be charged by an inverter so anything like uh like a

Macbook or cell cell phone you know heated blanket uh Wi-Fi router

the blink camera all this stuff is so low voltage that it's not it's not

necessary to do turn on a 3000 watt inverter and then

power you know uh like a 15 volt device

all right we're back Daniel thank you for the new sound

I uh my wireless lapel died for some reason

pull this off all right guys this this microphone's about the better one anyway we're so

we're not walking around anymore how about that okay let's get back into it we're on

Amazon and okay

we're back yeah give me a thumbs up guys if you

can't hear the audio it was coming through good

all right last but not least what was was the last thing I wanted to show you guys oh yeah yeah let's talk about the

questions

yeah give me a thumbs up guys if you can hear this sound if we're back sound wise

perfect perfect okay so I'm on the van Builder Channel

van Builder HQ and I'm going through the comments here

um let me see if I can

uh get this I'm gonna make sure that I'm not showing you guys anything that you

should not see yeah it looks pretty good okay we go live it's okay

foreign like this these are UL listed plugs

so they have a plug here and then at the end they have

this tip now just use this for reference you can get all kinds of different cables but for example if you ignore the

end these cables they're you know made for outdoors they're extremely tough

and this is a uh let's see what gauge this is

a 14 gauge wire which is really good and if you're doing any type of AC if you're

doing any type of uh you know High amperage through the roof wire instead of buying you know hundreds of

feet of wire you can just go buy this uh it's probably that's probably

you know 10 feet 15 feet of cable and used quickly um like I use that for

the Dometic Dometic Awning or I will splice it and wire it into a Baja design light and just have that channel that

way I'm not um going through hundreds of feets a hundred feet of cable to go through the

roof of the van and then

talking about solar power adding an additional system you'll be seeing

footage of this being put into Thomas's van over the next few weeks and then we

will kind of show you how we'll do a follow-up with uh the power system how everything is integrated uh but I know a

lot of people are planning their systems out and they're just kind of wondering you know what stuff on Amazon uh some

people have asked me for Amazon links so this video is kind of just this stuff came in today so or yesterday

and I just wanted to make sure that when it comes in it's kind of in the same time that you guys are seeing it

but yeah if you guys any if you have any questions uh as far as you know topics you'd like to see

discussed in future live streams put that in the comments below I always check the comments and respond to them

so put those in the comments uh once again hope you guys enjoyed the video we're going to go ahead and sign off and

we will see you in the next live stream [Music]