I feel good about the progress today on the electrical cabinet, but it doesn’t translate too much into photos.
The day started with the decision that we are not going to be removing either the wardrobe or the electrical cabinet so it was time to lock things down. I put in the final cabinet bolts to attach them to the wall and then screwed all the cabinets together. Nothing is moving now!
After that I again focused on the electrical system. To start we unhooked all the batteries from the inverter to make space. I wanted to install the solar controller, but I realized that it has a massive heat sink on the back and it is probably not advisable to mount it directly to plywood. I checked the manual and it clearly said to not mount it on a combustible surface so I headed to the store for a piece of 1/4″ cement board. I cut a decent size square and glued/screwed that to the side of the cabinet. Hopefully that layer is sufficient insurance to protect the van from going up in flames. During this process I also decided to move the DC fuse box to give the solar controller a better mounting location. It might not have been necessary but I like the end result.
After moving the DC fuse box I wired it all up and cleaned up the wires nicely. The AC panel, DC fuse box, and solar controller are all set and mounted. Now it is just a matter of putting in all the smaller pieces like switches, busbars, acouple catastrophic fuses, and circuit breakers. The real challenge will be getting the proper wires for all of it. I cannot realistically crimp anything smaller than a 10 gauge wire and the various connections in here will either be 8, 6, or 1/0 wires. I talked with the local NAPA store today and I think they can build everything I need so hopefully that solution will work.
Sara helped with the electrical, did some more wood finishing, and worked on her boot dryer. Plus she had to some “real” work on her consulting job. Someone has to make some money to pay for me to ship perfectly good inverters around the country!
