My new van buildout thread
I figure I will have a lot of questions so I should put them all in one thread :). I got a new van! Well, an old one, but new to me. It's in another state, and I won't see it in person for a few m...
Forum Discussion
You dont want voltage drop in any circuit. Voltage drop is bad. If my house converter or battery charger was putting out 14.4 v and I go back to the battery tray and the battery terminal voltage is only 13.4 v that's bad. On the other hand in some situations it's not completely bad and I see it often in peoples rigs. If I'm running on generator or solar I want to force that sun or gasoline into my battery asap because the sun is only available so many hours of the day and I dont want to buy gasoline needlessly or wear on the generator or NOISE. Now, if I was to go camping for the weekend and then put my rig in storage and plug it in and come back in 2 weeks the batteries will be charged using 13.6 and the converter would walk on down to 13.2 float.
We are talking about resistance in circuits. There are 3 things about resistance. 1. The length of the conductor. 2. The size (diameter)of the conductor. 3. Temperature of the conductor.
Undersized wire, wing nuts, corroded/dirty terminals, alligator clips, wrong fuse holders, crimp plier or hammer crimp terminals are all things that can add resistance to a circuit. So for people like us we want to eliminate as much voltage drop as practical. I use the example above to say that it's more or less important to different people but it's also dangerous if extreme.
Just say you are using a 30 amp charger and it's 15 feet from your battery and you use far too small of a wire. As you push current through that circuit the wire will have a severe voltage drop and start to heat up. If it gets hot enough it could melt. You have a force at one end of the wire that is pushing energy to the other end of the wire. Another place that this happens is with poor connections. If a terminal isn't crimped good and there is a big voltage drop over it, it will get hot. As it gets hot the resistance increases and the heat increases.
Every connection potentially add resistance. A large hydraulic crimp battery connection would take laboratory test conditions to measure resistance over it. A corroded 7 way plug or loose battery terminal or undersized fuse holder could all be measured by us using a meter. Sometimes you can even feel the heat. That heat is like adding another hungry mouth to the circuit who is taking a bite out of what you want to go into the battery.
An example of this is a guy I met in Tennessee last year with a FW running his generator a lot. He said it was fine when he was at home and had used it in his yard. His converter terminal voltage was 13.6 and probably had 6 or 8 g wire to the battery with a 16 g fuse holder and wing nut at the post. There was so much voltage drop that the fuse holder and wire were hot. Not so hot that I couldn't hold on to it but hot. Of course it had yellow plier crimp connectors too. So it also had 7 connections in the circuit when counting all the crimps etc. He didn't have a problem at home because his shore power eventually filled the battery over days. As it did fill the battery you could have touched the fuse holder and not noticed any heat. When he hit the road he was doomed because there are not enough hours in the day to put back what he was using along with thinking that a person can run the gen for an hour or so and be ok. His only hope was to just keep running on gen until he could sit in a park on the cord. His battery voltage was in the low 11's and he asked me if that was bad.......
Sorry to ramble on but just trying to help you as much as possible.
Edit: I remember now. His first issue that he asked me about was that his refrigerator kept stopping. Iirc correctly my frig manual says that it needs at least 10.5 v to run so where was he operating all the time and what shape was that battery in?
We are talking about resistance in circuits. There are 3 things about resistance. 1. The length of the conductor. 2. The size (diameter)of the conductor. 3. Temperature of the conductor.
Undersized wire, wing nuts, corroded/dirty terminals, alligator clips, wrong fuse holders, crimp plier or hammer crimp terminals are all things that can add resistance to a circuit. So for people like us we want to eliminate as much voltage drop as practical. I use the example above to say that it's more or less important to different people but it's also dangerous if extreme.
Just say you are using a 30 amp charger and it's 15 feet from your battery and you use far too small of a wire. As you push current through that circuit the wire will have a severe voltage drop and start to heat up. If it gets hot enough it could melt. You have a force at one end of the wire that is pushing energy to the other end of the wire. Another place that this happens is with poor connections. If a terminal isn't crimped good and there is a big voltage drop over it, it will get hot. As it gets hot the resistance increases and the heat increases.
Every connection potentially add resistance. A large hydraulic crimp battery connection would take laboratory test conditions to measure resistance over it. A corroded 7 way plug or loose battery terminal or undersized fuse holder could all be measured by us using a meter. Sometimes you can even feel the heat. That heat is like adding another hungry mouth to the circuit who is taking a bite out of what you want to go into the battery.
An example of this is a guy I met in Tennessee last year with a FW running his generator a lot. He said it was fine when he was at home and had used it in his yard. His converter terminal voltage was 13.6 and probably had 6 or 8 g wire to the battery with a 16 g fuse holder and wing nut at the post. There was so much voltage drop that the fuse holder and wire were hot. Not so hot that I couldn't hold on to it but hot. Of course it had yellow plier crimp connectors too. So it also had 7 connections in the circuit when counting all the crimps etc. He didn't have a problem at home because his shore power eventually filled the battery over days. As it did fill the battery you could have touched the fuse holder and not noticed any heat. When he hit the road he was doomed because there are not enough hours in the day to put back what he was using along with thinking that a person can run the gen for an hour or so and be ok. His only hope was to just keep running on gen until he could sit in a park on the cord. His battery voltage was in the low 11's and he asked me if that was bad.......
Sorry to ramble on but just trying to help you as much as possible.
Edit: I remember now. His first issue that he asked me about was that his refrigerator kept stopping. Iirc correctly my frig manual says that it needs at least 10.5 v to run so where was he operating all the time and what shape was that battery in?
