Wiring without enough coffee to get us wired

The water heater is mechanically installed, so we've gone back to electrical work.

This is a short entry, since pulling wire isn't particularly exciting. I may revisit the topic if something challenging shows up.
Me being unexcited:

I created a spreadsheet of what needs to be wired to what. I use that as a reference when pulling the lines.

 I've run most of the upper DC power and control lines from where the fuse/distribution box will be:

To where they'll end up at various switches, gauges, sensors and self-destruct timers. There will be a control panel on the john's outer wall, near the fridge. I've also run the lines back to the items that get switched or sensed (like the battery & solar monitors and controllers, water heater, H2O pump, water & LPG levels {the white/red pair going into the floor behind the LPG valves}, etc.).

Finally ran the line to the LPG level sensor and hooked it up. Clearly, I need to stress relief this end to the wire feed-though.

Next step is to mount the house heater and and cut its combustion vent holes.

I think we're getting into hot water

The AC and DC fuse/distribution box will be inboard from the water heater. I decided to get the heater mounted before all the cabling gets in the way. Once again, we have a case of needing to do "A" before "B", "B" before "C", and "C" before "A".

The heater is an Atwood propane fired on-demand unit. It needs to be raised above the floor to avoid cutting the plastic outer body panels, and to more or less vertically balance the curvy part of the outer wall.

So, it will sit on a riser box just aft of the propane valves. Here I've marked where we need to slice Annie open. The riser is being used to set the height.

Reasons for choosing this location are that there is a minimum amount of inner wall to cut, and that the inner and outer wall are connected on both sides of the cut pretty close to the hole. That will help keep things rigid.

 The inner hole is cut.

Measured and marked for the outer hole, and drilled corner pilot holes.

I cut the hole from the outside. Covered the hole with a bit of plastic sheet because we were expecting rain.

Dry fitting the heater, while saving the hole cover for a rainy day. Not sure what the next step would have been if I'd screwed up the cut...

Installing the riser that the heater sits on. The riser is screwed to the floor and VHB'd to the outer wall.

Because of Ford's stupid form before function curves of the sidewall,  the vertical center of the heater hits the wall well before the heater top and bottom. In other words, you can't mate the two flush. So, I'm adding aluminum spacers and LOTS of caulking tape to convert the warped sidewall to a more-or-less flat mating surface.
Adding spacers:

Made sure the heater is seated properly. I'll be tying it down with some plumber strap as the last step.

Then the caulk tape, non-sag lap sealant, and mounting screws.

Removed a bunch of the excess lap sealant and painted it silver. That sealant stuff is a real pain to work with and finish smoothly. I pretty much failed at the task (as the aesthetics committee made very clear), and will revisit it in some of my copious free time. But for now, it sure won't leak!

Power Pointing, part two

Wherein we wire the house and car batteries together. The main question was how to get cable access to the car batteries.

Ford, in their wisdom, decided to store a ~6.7 million Joule energy source (AKA the pair of stock AGM batteries) under the driver's seat .

I had first thought to punch one hole low down in the seat base. But, the base is slanted (insert political joke here.), and the steel is very hard. I could not get a starter hole drilled.
I found that if I slightly widened one for the covered slots higher up, it would fit a cable and grommet.
So that's where the cables are routing.

I suspect those slot are there in case you have flooded batteries, and need some venting. They are covered inside the base with a plastic sheet.

I added lugs to the seat end of the cables, and roughly determined their placement in the seat base.
Then I fed the other end of the cabled in between the inner and outer side walls. I punched a hole in the inner wall and used a grommet.

Continued running the lines toward the back. When I neaten things up, I will be filling the holes in the rib shown below with expanding foam to keep the cables away from the metal edges.

I found a convenient hole to get back to the inside world.

Wired in the BlueSea ML-ACR relay. (That's the VSR in the last post's block diagram).

Attached the cables to Annie's batteries and neatened up a bit.

Put the seat base back together, and called it a day.

There are two reasons for this interface. One is to allow Annie's alternator to charge the house batteries as we drive. The other is in case Annie's batteries die. I can switch the ML-ACR on and use the house to jumpstart Annie.

I had planned on adding a fuse at Annie's batteries, in case something went awry between the two battery sets. However, the BlueSea instructions explicitly say not to do that if you want to run as a jumper. So, I am not going to do that yet. Also, since it's a real pain to access the under seat battery junctions, if I do add a fuse, it will probably be near the ML-ACR.

Finally, the ML-ACR has a remote control switch. I'm still deciding where I want to install that. It may go in the control/monitor panel that I'll be putting in above the fridge.

Power Pointing part one

Before we start the wall insulation and finish up the ceiling insulation and bead board, I want to get the electrics installed. Mainly because it is easier to snake and run lines without all the insulation getting in the way. I decided to start with the charging system, then add all the distributed power points.

The charging system consists of an AC inverter/charger, a solar controller, and a house/car battery interface. (Not to mention the batteries and solar panels that are already installed.)
In this chapter, we'll get the inverter/charger and solar controller hooked up.

The AC system will charge the batteries from an external shore source, or use the batteries to provide AC for things like a microwave or electric toothbrush. The idea is to avoid needing a generator.

If we want to plug in shore AC, we need a plug. And that means a hole.

Now that we find we have a have a hole, we need to plug the hole with our plug. Otherwise, air, and nighttime darkness might leak in.

 I'm using a 30Amp bulkhead plug. It has no darkness leakage specification, but it is theoretically waterproof.
It comes with a rubber grommet, but since Annie's wall is slightly curved,  I also added some caulk strip.

The plug is a nice shiny white. The aesthetics committee convened an emergency session, and concluded that the plug must match Annie's skin color. So we painted it.


The AC wiring will be made up of 12 gauge exterior grade extension cord. This gives us a stranded, flexible cable with a strong abrasion resistant outside sheath. The hole edges are also painted, and the plug is caulked from the inside as well.

I also made a 30A->20A adapter plug using the male end of the extension cord.

Next I mounted and wired up the solar controller. I probably don't need my scrawled reminder any more.

Then the catastrophe fuse, the current monitor shunt, and the battery temperature sensor. These are all on the batteries or the battery tray.

The next step is mounting the MS2012 inverter/charger. It goes on a wood panel that's mounted to the floor in a similar manner to the battery slide. The MS2012 gets bolted to that wood panel with 1/4-20 bolts and t-nuts.

Then wire it all together. I built the DC cables myself to keep the cabling as short as practical, using 2AWG stranded. The cables to the battery tray are long enough to allow full extension of the tray.

The MS2012 can theoretically draw up to 267A, which exceeds the rated current carrying capacity of any 2AWG cable. 2AWG is rated as OK up to 200A, IF it uses 105degC rated insulation. Since 200A is somewhat more than the maximum current I ever expect to draw from the batteries,  the catastrophe fuse is being replaced with a 200A breaker.
I'm not using the 2/0 wire that the MS2012 nominally needs at full load since 2AWG is MUCH less expensive and is much easier to fit and route. The 200A breaker makes this an acceptable choice.

 A test of the system with a ~1000W AC load (a pair of halogen work lamps) results in a total .1V drop between the batteries and the MS2012, at a measured battery discharge current of about 78A.

That's about it to this point. Next power system steps are to install the car/house battery VSR interface, and hook up the house AC/DC distribution panel. Then tuck in all the wiring neatly.

Here is a rough block of the wiring setup. Note that the battery monitor (ME-BMK) is not shown connected to the shunt.
Also note the slightly unorthodox fuse hookup. This was done for convenience, since the MPPT 60A fuse assembly came with extremely short leads.

Ceiling insulation, part two

Now we're adding the second level of rigid foam to the ceiling.
First, I needed to snake the solar panel cable out of the way and down where the controller will live.

 

The cable is routed through the channel above the rear window, and down the rearmost sidewall post.

Prepped the controller's mounting place with VHB

Zip tied the cable to a sidewall support.

Now we're ready to add the second layer of polyiso rigid foam.This is pretty much a repeat of the first layer's procedure. We are almost exclusively using VHB tape as our adhesive. Then adding expanding foam around each board's perimeter.

As you can see, the rigid foam is only being run in between the ceiling ribs. We'll be adding Reflectix across the whole ceiling (including ribs), but with about a 1/2" space between the Reflectix and the rib/foam boards. I'll talk about this more in Ceiling insulation, part three...coming soon to a device near you.

The front section of ceiling was the most challenging, because it has a complex curve and some fancy shmancy stamping. The initial foam layer was 1/2", which brought the foam below the fancy shmancy stuff. I had originally planned to also make the second layer from 1/2" foam panel, because I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to form that curve with a thicker panel.. Unfortunately, I was running very low on 1/2". Wasn't enough to cover with one piece.
So I decided to try the 1" stuff. With a bit of crunching with my roller pin, I was able to make it conform pretty well.

So I used just a teeny a bit extra VHB. Hopefully it's enough to hold up the 5lb worth of foam board. :)

Cut the board to size and to clear the Transit's Styrofoam airbag covers.

Mounted the board, added spray foam, and this step is done. (Well, as soon as I remove the painter's tape and plastic sheet.)

Boy, AGM batteries are heavy!!!!!

I fnally picked up (with difficulty) a couple of 4D size AGM batteries. (about 200AH each). They weigh about 125lb each. The battery tray is quite a bit bigger than them, and is rated to support 400 pounds.
I made up some spacers to keep the batteries from sliding around, and strapped them in.

It works pretty well, but I may end up with some sort of turnbuckle hold-down to replace the straps.

The only problem occurs when going up a hill. The stock latch is completely inadequate to keep the tray from sliding open. I cannot understand how the manufacturer thinks that dinky latch can hold back 250lbs. You may remember that latch from when I installed the slide:

So, I added a couple of additional latches.

Made 'em out of 1" wide, 1/4" aluminum stock. Two pieces are VHB'd together to make a 1/2" thick unit. Perfect clearance. The pieces are long enough to just touch the top of the tray (under the lip) and the bottom of the base. They are held in place by 1/4" bolts and nylocks.

Ceiling insulation, part one

The ceiling insulation will be 1.5" of foil backed rigid foam, with a layer of reflectix between the foam boards and the bead-board that will be the finished ceiling. The foam is mounted with VHB.
Because of the window hassles, I've only done the first layer so far.

The layer is sealed with expanding foam.

The first layer is 1" thick board, the second will be half inch thick. I will also foam the edges of the second board.

There will be a layer of Reflectix  after that, and then the actual birch bead-board ceiling. Power for ceiling can lights will run between the Reflectix and the 1/2" foam board, with adequate service loop wherever we end up mounting the lights. Determining that is something that will be done experimentally.

Catching up: WIndow repair. It took a a while, but I can see clearly now

Sorry for the lag in updating here.
Things got put on hold a bit while waiting for a replacement slider window.

Back in early August we noticed that a hinge failed on the slider window's pop-out section. The hinges are glued to the glass, and the lower one failed thus:

Made an appointment with the dealer's body shop. They re-glued it, and said "come on down!"
But, by the time I arrived, their glue job had failed. The shop decided that the best course was to replace the entire window, so they ordered one. Body shop and I agree it's best to not drive much with the window hanging by one hinge.

We were told the window would be delivered in a few days. Since I didn't want to have projects hanging half done, we held off work. About a week later, the dealer said that it wasn't coming, because it needed to be supplied by the window manufactuter, not Ford. They then ordered from the "correct" place, and said it would be about a week.. We started the vinyl floor work.

The week passes, and no window. Come to find out that the manufacturer shipped it by mule train, using 3 legged mules. Told it would be another week or so. We finish up the floor. Didn't want to start the next project since I didn't want to have projects hanging half done. (This becomes a familiar theme.)

About 1.5 weeks later, we get a call...the window got to Seattle, but it was broken in transit. I guess 3 legged mules have a harsh ride, or the mule team driver missed with his whip...

Window is reordered. Same stories about shifting delivery times, same feeling that I didn't want to start the next project since I didn't want to have projects hanging half done. I attempt to glue the hinge myself with industrial strength epoxy. Success!! Except that I was a bit overgenerous with the epoxy, and left a nice bit of drool hanging from the hinge and stuck on the pop-out glass. At least, now I can drive Annie.

Window finally arrives at the dealer...broken.

Dealer gets Ford involved. This time the manufacturer packages the window intelligently, and sends it via an express mule with a full complement of legs. Takes about a week to get here. I start the ceiling insulation work, and stop at a safe to drive point. 

Window arrives safely, dealer makes an appointment with the glass installer to do the work. Finally got the new window in this past Monday.

Next entry brings the Annie project up to date.