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Camper Van Electrical System Ford Transit
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May 3, 2025
Today Nick at Van Builder HQ is giving a walkthrough of his Camper Van Electrical Setup in his Ford Transit Camper Van. Watch and let us know what you think. Visit https://www.vanbuilderhq.com to learn more. Interested in buying a van? Check out https://www.odysseycustomvans.com Support Van Builder HQ on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/vanbuilderhq
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[Music] hey guys nick eilerman here today we're
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going to go through the electrical system of my ford camper van we're going to go ahead and start with the front
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and try to keep this video nice and concise and then hopefully at the end we can show you guys a little
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drawing of these schematics so let's go ahead and start here in the
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front of the ford transit so on ford transits underneath the driver's
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seat we have uh one or two batteries so my version of this van this is 2019
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low roof ford transit 150 there's only one battery in here so it's an agm
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battery and what i've done is i've got two wires coming off of here we
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got our positive and then we have our negative wire and so what we're going to do
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is we're going to go ahead and we're going to take the positive wire
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and we're going to run it to our breakers here so in any
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van power system you're going to want to make sure you have appropriately sized breakers for the
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amount of power that you're moving through the system and actually more specifically it has to
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do with the gauge of wire that is transferring that power to whatever destination or device that
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you're you're sending it to so for example let's move into here
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so we got two uh two breakers right here um this breaker right here is going to
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be an 80 [Music] 80 amp
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and this one right here is going to be a 60 amp so this one right here you can see that
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this is disconnected so this is actually not going anywhere so if i turn this on
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this terminal is not going anywhere so if we undo it this used to go to a dedicated
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uh dc to dc charger that was right here on this wall
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um a dc dc to dc charger is exactly what it says it's taking the direct current from the
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battery and then it is managing that current down to a certain
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amperage to charge your house battery so
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our coach battery i'm sorry so the battery right here that would be running
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your van accessories so depending on the
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type of battery you have whether it's lead acid agm
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or lithium iron phosphate whatever that chemistry is you're going to want to make sure that your dc to dc charger
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can handle that what's nice is when your car is running and the alternator is running
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this circuit right here this circuit i have that is what
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fed power to my dc to dc charger so i remove that
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and so i'm not using that anymore but over here
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i do have this breaker that is going directly to my battery now so this
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positive line is going directly underneath the floor all the way around here under here
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and comes out right here at the battery disconnect
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so that line is coming out right down here to the battery
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disconnect and then the battery disconnect is feeding power
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to the battery um and then it is going to the inverter
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so if i come back over here
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this is what we're using now as our charging device so we don't have a dc to dc but we do have charging our batteries
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so the power that's going here you go feed just watch just watch the
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track it goes all the way back it is coming from our pwm
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solar panel charge controller so a pwm is a
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stands for pulse width modulation it's a cheaper type of charge controller for solar panels
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in this van i have 100 amp hour battery 200 watts of solar on the roof
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it's very simple easy to use system very basic but great for a weekender
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trip and so i just installed this because it's very cheap i mean you can get these on
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amazon 50 50 80 bucks something like that
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and it does have it does support the lithium chemistry so what you do is you
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click this button you cycle through whatever chemistry your battery is and then it's blue so that means it's
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for lithium right now the green light indicates that we do have a
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we are connected to our battery and then pv is photovoltaic
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that is sensing that we do have power coming from our solar panels
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i believe since it's flashing that means that we're at a hundred percent charge
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which is true so if we go right here we're at a hundred percent
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on our i don't know if you can see that that's strange
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anyway we're at 100 on our um
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charge and so that was blinking right there
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so now what this is doing is this is there's two inputs right here
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so these two inputs are coming from the roof one's positive one's negative now this
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is fused up at the solar panel so there's an inline fuse in between the solar connectors up on the roof of the
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van you won't be able to see that i can't show to you it's actually zip tied underneath the solar
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panel and that is just in case something happens there's a dead short up at the solar
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panels and it will break there but if it doesn't power comes into here
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this is our negative bus bar which is connected to
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our engine battery and this to complete that circuit
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and then we have the positive output that is charging our battery this is not necessary the reason this is
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here is because i took a four gauge wire and i'm just using this to crimp it down
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and come out as a smaller gauge wire to go into this box
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this was too thick to you know crimp down and go over there so this is basically just to
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adapt my two gauges of wire so this is not necessary you don't have to
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have this in your system all you need to do is properly size this cable to go into here
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the reason that my setup looks like this is because i used to have this
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going into a dc to dc charger that had a
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solar panel input option so all that
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we're going to move back to the back so that is how that works we have solar that comes in
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goes into the charge controller charging controller puts the power into this positive line
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it goes through this breaker which is appropriately sized for
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the amount of power and the gauge of this wire and then so we got a six gauge wire going all the way
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through our floor and when you design systems you want to
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make sure you're always able to access it so if you look under here we're able to
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access this wire it goes all the way up into our battery just in case anything happens we need to
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get to it and this is so this is our little storage area
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but yeah before we close in this floor right here with maybe some angle iron or something like that
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you just want to make sure that if you have any problems that you can go ahead and fix those problems
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the cables you can see here just wanted to show you them you got a couple things that come with
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solar charge controller kits or dc to dc chargers you may have
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a display that shows you your voltage you can also have
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this system is by renegy this is their bt2 bluetooth adapter so this will allow you
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to have a readout of how your
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solar charge controller is working this one went to my old dc to dc system
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so this one is actually not connected this one's not connected to this because
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this is more of an old school so if you wanted to use the wanderer from renegy you would need to buy the
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bt-1 not the bt-2 so this went to a different unit and i still need to take that out
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but keeping on with the video we got our solar charge controller we're moving down
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and now our power is going into uh
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the disconnect here so the way i had this disconnect working
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is we have uh a two ought wire that is going to our
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battery over here and then from our battery
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we have we're using our
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mega fuse initial terminal right here it's just like a a bus bar terminal
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essentially so that might be confusing for let me turn this light back on
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that you got some more light in here
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there we go so essentially what we have is
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we have the power comes in
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here so this this is our power in lead from our solar charge controller
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and then this is our connection to the battery
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uh disconnect right here and then our battery disconnect
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is going to the battery so if we needed to shut the battery off for any reason we would shut it off here
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now what that means is this line but also need to be shut off
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behind the driver's seat where the solar power is coming in because this is uh the breaker is closest to where the
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power is coming in so this is the end of the line so there is no breaker here so if you wanted to completely
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disconnect the solar panels from the system you would have to do
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that at the front you can disconnect everything from the battery here but up where the breaker is that's where
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you need to disconnect the solar power power
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so when the system is turned on so we got our battery disconnect on
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there's one very very very important thing to note is a
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your solar charge controller always always needs to be connected to a
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battery when voltage is being passed across the system what that means
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is these solar panels up top let's just pop up here
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so you guys kind of keep with the story so these solar panels
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they're always on what that means is if you're outside it doesn't matter what you're doing
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these solar panels are converting power from the sun
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and the only way to disconnect these solar panels
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is to disconnect them at the breaker level
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why this is important is if you don't disconnect them at the breaker level over here
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power will still be running in this type of setup to the inverter
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so this will still have voltage coming through it regardless if you disconnect your battery disconnector because your
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battery disconnect is to protect your battery
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and your battery alone so this is only for the battery
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you do need a secondary system to disconnect your
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solar panels that's really important what's also really important is
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most charge controllers dc to dc chargers that have a integrated
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solar panel power input it's really important to make sure that
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you are disconnecting the solar power going into it prior to disconnecting the battery you
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want the battery to be the last point of disconnect when
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you're servicing a system because you can damage charge controllers
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if you disconnect the battery before disconnecting
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the charge controller coming in because there's nowhere for the power to go once you disconnect the
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battery so disconnect the solar panels first
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then disconnect your battery when servicing your system that way you will not damage the circuitry because
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again solar panels solar panels are always on so
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you need to control that voltage to not damage any devices if that makes sense
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okay moving on in we have our we need to
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we have our power we have it controlled to make sure that the solar
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charge controller is providing the correct power to adequately charge the battery system
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and so what that charge controller is doing is providing a specific voltage that a certain battery chemistry likes
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to be able to charge so
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lithium batteries like a little bit of a higher voltage and agm batteries lead acid are a little bit
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lower it's not a massive amount of difference but
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long story short there are different voltages and it creates a better
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environment for them to charge you can check out your battery's requirements
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online so you just look at the manufacturer and they will tell you uh
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if there's a specific charge profile that is required now when we were talking about
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this charge control over here if you remember each one of these
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chemistries has a different profile that's what i'm talking about so now that we have the correct profile chosen
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we know that the power coming out of our
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uh whether it's a dc to dc charger or a solar charge controller is correct so
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now that we know that's right we have it uh we have a breaker we have a disconnect our power coming
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into our system is safe so now what's going to happen is that power
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we need to distribute that power to our systems so we have two systems that we're doing
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two ways that we're using consuming power in this van the first
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is we have a our direct current which is up here and then down here this is what will
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create our alternating current and we're doing that by powering this inverter
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so this is a 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter we'll get to the inverter details here
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in just a second but just want to begin with there's two different methods of
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uh distributing power in in a system this could be a marine or
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um that your van so what we've done here is
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usually you would have um depending on the complexity of your system this would actually be its own
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distribution plant bar or bus bar where these three wires
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right here will be connected on a bar much like this
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but for my purposes i don't really have a complicated system
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because we have our solar input we have our
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uh battery input and then we have our distribution to
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the 12 volt so it's nice and simple and we can do this all in one terminal so all these three
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are meeting this one terminal you could use a stud terminal but i'm kind of double dipping and i'm using this stud
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as not only a
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12 volt bus bar but i'm using it to also be the mega fuse for the inverter
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so why do you need a mega fuse so what's happening here now is
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the power is coming in on your solar panel and then
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your power is also being run to your device your 12-volt devices that you're operating
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and then power is also going to the battery
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and the best way that i can explain this is your inverter
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is really is it needs a lot of juice to convert 12 volts to
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2000 watts so it's going to need that current and you need to make sure that
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that current can flow as easily as possible possible
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so kind of think of the gauge or the thickness of your cables like a water pipe
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and the bigger the water pipe the more flow you can have the more amperage you can
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have and the wire is not going to heat up and your system is going to run more efficiently
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for example if we had these little wires here these are like 18
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18 gauge or 20 gauge you know these wires
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would get extremely hot if not possibly melt if we were trying to pull
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that much current that was needed to power this inverter so that's why you're seeing two
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different size wires the mega fuse is because we need to
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protect the amount of flow that's coming into this uh
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inverter so this inverter was to run away and you know
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short or something like that we have a way to break the flow of electricity
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into the inverter so we don't damage the rest of our system or in fact the battery
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so if this fails the only thing that will happen is it will just
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break the circuit for the inverter but the rest of our system will be okay
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now that is why we have the mega fuse and we have the
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really thick cables going into our inverter because our inverter is powering our
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household plugs one of which is the refrigerator that's directly plugged
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into here and then one that is hardwired into the inverter that is our
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outlet up here so it's our 110 outlet and we actually have an outlet and two usb ports
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so that is the inverter setup it's kind of how that works
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the next place that our power is come going to is we're going to branch off of
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that terminal and remember all of this this terminal this cable right here is coming from our
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battery so we have our power cable coming from the battery
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through to disconnect and into this stud that we're distributing off of so next we have our
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power going to our 12-volt accessories and if you notice
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we don't need the same size wire for our 12-volt accessories
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technically this is actually too big of a wire but
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you really can't oversize wires for uh
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you know small voltage or amperage use appliances
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because it's just gonna you know it's very efficient
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low resistance now now there's a there's a point these cables that are very thick especially this two watt cable they're
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very expensive so you're not gonna wanna you're not gonna want to use you know
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big wires for everything because it does get costly but what you're looking at right now is
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this let me open it up this is our this is how we're distributing our
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12-volt let's see if we get some more light in here
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this is how we are powering the rest of the accessories in our van so what we have here is we have
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positive terminals going out and then we have our negative terminals at the bottom
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so those are all all the black wires are moved are coming
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from this ground or negative over here that's how we're doing the van
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because in a van you really have a floating ground you can't you know you're not attaching a ground wire to the
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earth obviously because you're moving same thing as a boat system so you want everything to come back to the negative
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side of your battery to close that loop so everything that's
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down here on this negative bar is going to be
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ending up right here so that's where that's coming from next what we have is we have each one of
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our individual accessories that we're using you know one of these is our
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puck lighting for the ceiling which is up there we have
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our diesel heater um we have our rear cargo lights
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and then additional x accessories that we want to use now what i've done is i've gone ahead and i've
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pre-wired every single terminal that i'm going to use and then i as we come down here
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we have all that power routed to the top of our fuse block so if we open our fuse block
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um you can see right now although we have all these options we're only using
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what uh the fuses are in here
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now what's nice about this setup is if you just pre if you pre-do this
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not only does it look really nice but when you want to add something in the future you don't have to read you
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don't have to add a whole nother system you just put a fuse in and then down here
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all these red wires behind this panel
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you can just take one and put a fuse in and then add it to your
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accessory and it's really easy to to do that
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now if you're looking here each one of these fuses is a different
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amp fuse so we get a 10 uh 15
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and those are going to be depending on how much
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you know how much protection you need for the amount of power your device is using so
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the diesel heater has a standard thing from the manufacturer that's recommended the puck lights depending on
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how many you have how long the run is the gauge of wire all that's going to
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tell you what you need to use for fuses and you can find this online it's really easy just type in the gauge wire and what's a
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recommended fuse mostly the manufacturer of whatever device you buy whether it's the light or the diesel heater is going
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to tell you what they recommend circuit to be fused at
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so we'll go ahead and we'll cover this up and if you notice i use blue c systems
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for everything that i use because it's a great brand but also
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i'm a very visual person as you guys can see and i like things to look the same
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match be very neat and that's just kind of how i do things
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but uh so final overview
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battery inverter and as you notice this case we have
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everything kind of put in here for safety as well
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we have our battery that is strapped down right here so it's not going anywhere in the event
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of an accident our inverter is bolted to the floor
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but we do have enough air gap and we have a little if you look down here
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if you can see that there's a louvered vent so the fans pull air in blow across the
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inverter and then the louvered vent here where it can exhaust
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and all of that is inside this nice compartment right here
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so you can easily get access to it really quick if you need to
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and then finally you need to be able to monitor everything so
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if something happens everything's nice and neat you're able to
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visually see if a fuse is blown access it quickly that's kind of the
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hardwired stuff so your switches and controls
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that's going to be this final part the video before we're done and that is where i come over here
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so over here we have two devices i actually have three one back there i'm
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gonna show you about them so we actually have uh three devices we
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have our inverter on and off so if we have this switch and we turn it on
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we get a little beep this one is directly connected to our fridge so you can actually hear
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i'm not sure if you can hear it the fridge is just turned on
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and this is our controller for our our voltage so it's going to tell us the
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voltage of our battery currently it's going to tell us
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how many amps are being drawn it'll tell us estimated time
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that the battery will be fully drained assuming that you're
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maintaining that same current draw and then we got a visual display and i'm sure how good that's coming through on
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this gopro we have a how many amp hours you have left
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the way you want to set your amp hours is essentially what you want to do is run your battery down to zero or fully
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charge your battery and once your battery's fully charged you can do a manual reset on this and that will capture
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wherever it will reset this to so that it'll be at 100 or 200 amp hours whatever battery you have
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then last but not least we have our diesel heater
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now we went with the fun chinese diesel heater um
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which uh to be honest i mean it works great it's a little chintzy as far as the
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controller and stuff goes but it works it blows out hot heat and
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it's extremely cheap so in the event that it did break you just buy another one they're really
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cheap um but what i'm doing is i'm now going to
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be not in this video but these you want to have all your controls in one location so you can
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just visually glance at them and check your system when you need to turn this off before i forget
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so what i've decided to do is if you open this up you can see all these stickers and that's because i have
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this is where i plan to mount everything so i've got a fan speed control
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i've got a diesel heater control the battery monitor which we just saw and the inverter remote and so those
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will all be mounted in a custom panel here and what's nice is you can pull this
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down access it um but then at night time when you want anything to be nice and dark you can
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just shut that nice soft close and all those led lights because this
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stays on when it's charging
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all right so that was a pretty in-depth video on the power system of this van but i
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hope walking through that show you where all the wires go and how a system is set up will help you on your van build
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hope see you guys in next video [Music]
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