My new van buildout thread

Naio wrote:
rjxj, I KNOW I have seen your awesome post about the home brew buss bar, but I've tried about a dozen search strings, including the archive, and no luck. Do you remember what the tile was, or any nonobvious key words? :: sigh ::

:) I wouldn't call it awesome but anyway. I couldn't find the poor mans trimetric post. I took the advice of people on here and went with a used rig first time out and glad I did as it gets drilled and hacked as needed. The main issue is that no matter how we each do it, we want it to be safe. There are a lot of people on here who know far more than I do so use all the their inputs and sort through the info and put your plan together. It's been 2 1/2 yr since I rigged mine so I'm also starting to forget stuff.

It's basically like a tree. The battery is the root and stump. The trunk is the heavy cables that have to potentially carry the total system amperage. The large branches are the heavy yet somewhat smaller cables that run to individual components like converters, inverters, chargers, alternator etc. From there the small branches are the low amperage circuits for lights, exhaust fans, water pump, etc.

Blue seas battery selector switch 1,2, both, off.




I believe the cables in this pic are number 2. The most amps I usually put in are about 50. The most my 600 watt inverter has ever pulled is about 40. If I want to upgrade to a 1500 or 2000 watt inverter I would have to go to larger cables. I would have to backtrack the "trunk" wiring all the way back to the batteries. The "trunk"would now be carrying more amps and all the amps in the whole system go through the "trunk".

We could argue that we wont run everything at one time but what if you did? The trunk has to be able to carry it. The trunk also has to be fused with a catastrophic fuse. It protects the "trunk" wiring, batteries and terminals. Lets back up to where you mentioned the fire or smoke whatever from when the battery alligator clips touched together. At that point there is nothing protecting you from having a fire or turning the clips cherry red and burning you or catching the rig on fire or exploding a battery in your face. So how do you handle that? You dont. You never want to connect anything at the batteries. Depending on how much power I want to take out or put in, I can do it at my buss bar or elsewhere in the rig, ALWAYS fused.


I'm not harping on you but until people see a battery explode they really dont know what potential danger it has. As the warning label says, it can kill you. Picture plastic shrapnel going through your eye and into your brain. I know you have agm's but it's still the same. If it lost a bar connection internally and was under great load it could explode. It has happened.

So the heavy trunk cables are going over to the heavy copper bar. Everything is mounted on a piece of plastic lumber. The small fuses are an old style bakelite holder. From the buss it feeds the house/converter, inverter, and power in from solar.



The heavy cable that runs to the house then powers the house 12 volt fuse panel. There are about 8 small branch circuits that go to all the smaller items with the largest fuse being 15 amps.

Edit: Those grease covered cables are going into their 3rd season. I rinse the batteries a couple times a year.