Battery relocation project - BF10.4
At the risk of being accused of trolling (:)) I thought those of you with a BF 10.x might be interested. I bought my camper without batteries. The original compartment is nice and large with conven...
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The compartment is not vented. Most AGMs (and certainly Lifeline AGMs) will vent only under very extraordinary circumstances, like severe overcharging. If they vent, you have probably ruined them. In normal use they do not vent, fume, corrode, or spew acid. Lifeline suggests putting them in vented space but it is very common in the boating world to install them inside the living space unvented, and I am quite comfortable doing so myself.
I did finish the wiring and actually went camping last weekend. Most interesting part was the accordion stairs would walk up just a little bit while moving around inside, blocking the door shut! Twice I had to go out the Heki vent (which is a bit of a struggle), across the frosty roof, and down the ladder to get out. Another thing on the list....
Anyway the wiring: I ran a #8 around to the existing DC disconnect under the galley. I pulled the Magnatech converter wiring out of the panel, ran a #8 ground from the batteries to the Bat - terminal. If you remove the panel circuit board there is an addition Bat +/- terminal behind for the converter, I swapped the existing ground to that one. It runs from the original battery compartment. So the original wiring is preserved, I could add more batteries or emergency batteries or whatever to the original compartment at any time. I taped off those leads though, and secured them unused. While I was at it I ran a #2 red and black from the battery to the converter location under the bed step. This week I am going to pull the (now disconnected) converter and replace it with a Magnum MM612AE charger inverter in the space created. The #2 wire run is about 4 feet or a bit less. The remote for it will go in the panel under the closet door. This inverter was chosen because A) it is not made by Xantrex, and B) it has sufficient power for what we want to do (mainly powering laptops and phones, etc.) while having a fairly low idle power draw. It can be set up for proper 3 stage AGM charging.
There were a couple of complications: the Happijac ground wire was run straight to the battery terminal, it's a mystery why. I reran it to the chassis grounding lug under the bed step, since the batteries would no longer be there. BF had tapped into that line midway along for the ground connection for the DC disconnect relay - so I had to run an independent small ground from the relay harness to the grounding lug. This is how it should have been done at BF, but then there is a lot of wiring there that is ...well.... "not according to Hoyle". Another complication is that the AC/DC panel cover is screwed to the converter chassis, when I remove it I will have to bend a couple of bits of sheet metal to recreate the mounting holes.
A complication with the inverter: Magnum says it has a "20 amp AC transfer relay". While this might be true, it has an 8A input circuit breaker and a 7A output circuit breaker, so you can never use the 20A capacity. Seems disingenuous, but I confirmed with them over the phone. So I will have to split the AC panel and run just the wall plugs from the inverter output, leaving the AirCon and microwave circuits connected to the shore power input. Now I really don't want the refer AC (which is on the same breaker as the wall plugs) running from the inverter either so I may rewire the outlet for the refer to an unused breaker sourced from shore power. I usually only run the refer from AC when I am cooling it down while loading up for a trip anyway so it may not be worth the bother to change - but I don't want it switching to inverter power automatically. I don't have air con or a microwave, so if for some reason I needed to run a very power hungry device from shore power, I could plug it into the microwave outlet. Other outlets would only source 7 amps, (less if the charger is working hard).
The largest DC draw in my camper (besides the inverter) is the Happijacs I think. The controller has 20A fuses for each motor, I run only two at once so that would max at 40 amps. However BF installed inline 30 amp breakers, and it works fine that way. Given that you are unlikely to operate the jacks with a lot of other things, I think you could consider those or the charger to be the highest current your wiring will see. If you have a 60 amp charger, then I would consider running #6 wire directly from the charger to the batteries with 80 amp fuses at the battery (the charger is considered to be a current limited device). Then power the house from the existing #8 wire with a 30 or 40 amp fuse (or breaker). If the charger feeds into the panel or somewhere other than the batteries, then all that wiring really should be upsized, otherwise a short somewhere could see 60 amps on your #8 wire. I think that is a little over the edge of legal.
I did finish the wiring and actually went camping last weekend. Most interesting part was the accordion stairs would walk up just a little bit while moving around inside, blocking the door shut! Twice I had to go out the Heki vent (which is a bit of a struggle), across the frosty roof, and down the ladder to get out. Another thing on the list....
Anyway the wiring: I ran a #8 around to the existing DC disconnect under the galley. I pulled the Magnatech converter wiring out of the panel, ran a #8 ground from the batteries to the Bat - terminal. If you remove the panel circuit board there is an addition Bat +/- terminal behind for the converter, I swapped the existing ground to that one. It runs from the original battery compartment. So the original wiring is preserved, I could add more batteries or emergency batteries or whatever to the original compartment at any time. I taped off those leads though, and secured them unused. While I was at it I ran a #2 red and black from the battery to the converter location under the bed step. This week I am going to pull the (now disconnected) converter and replace it with a Magnum MM612AE charger inverter in the space created. The #2 wire run is about 4 feet or a bit less. The remote for it will go in the panel under the closet door. This inverter was chosen because A) it is not made by Xantrex, and B) it has sufficient power for what we want to do (mainly powering laptops and phones, etc.) while having a fairly low idle power draw. It can be set up for proper 3 stage AGM charging.
There were a couple of complications: the Happijac ground wire was run straight to the battery terminal, it's a mystery why. I reran it to the chassis grounding lug under the bed step, since the batteries would no longer be there. BF had tapped into that line midway along for the ground connection for the DC disconnect relay - so I had to run an independent small ground from the relay harness to the grounding lug. This is how it should have been done at BF, but then there is a lot of wiring there that is ...well.... "not according to Hoyle". Another complication is that the AC/DC panel cover is screwed to the converter chassis, when I remove it I will have to bend a couple of bits of sheet metal to recreate the mounting holes.
A complication with the inverter: Magnum says it has a "20 amp AC transfer relay". While this might be true, it has an 8A input circuit breaker and a 7A output circuit breaker, so you can never use the 20A capacity. Seems disingenuous, but I confirmed with them over the phone. So I will have to split the AC panel and run just the wall plugs from the inverter output, leaving the AirCon and microwave circuits connected to the shore power input. Now I really don't want the refer AC (which is on the same breaker as the wall plugs) running from the inverter either so I may rewire the outlet for the refer to an unused breaker sourced from shore power. I usually only run the refer from AC when I am cooling it down while loading up for a trip anyway so it may not be worth the bother to change - but I don't want it switching to inverter power automatically. I don't have air con or a microwave, so if for some reason I needed to run a very power hungry device from shore power, I could plug it into the microwave outlet. Other outlets would only source 7 amps, (less if the charger is working hard).
The largest DC draw in my camper (besides the inverter) is the Happijacs I think. The controller has 20A fuses for each motor, I run only two at once so that would max at 40 amps. However BF installed inline 30 amp breakers, and it works fine that way. Given that you are unlikely to operate the jacks with a lot of other things, I think you could consider those or the charger to be the highest current your wiring will see. If you have a 60 amp charger, then I would consider running #6 wire directly from the charger to the batteries with 80 amp fuses at the battery (the charger is considered to be a current limited device). Then power the house from the existing #8 wire with a 30 or 40 amp fuse (or breaker). If the charger feeds into the panel or somewhere other than the batteries, then all that wiring really should be upsized, otherwise a short somewhere could see 60 amps on your #8 wire. I think that is a little over the edge of legal.
