so got her home last nigth and promptly started opening up panels and such to see what I was looking at for space where I can put my home made LiFePO4 battery. at the same time I also ended up with some more questions 🤔
under the step, no extra room in there, and unlike some older models there is a solid floor between this part and the battery compartment int he basment. A little bit of a teaser I did get new 4ga wires pulled into this area as you can see by the picture. thoes will replace the current battery wires going to the power center.
question 1, what are these two valves for.
under the shower, found the water pump, but why is their a directional valve on the suction side of it
under the bench seat behind the drawers
so once everything was opened up I found there was room to run the wire from the bench seat area, under the bathroom into the step. I went to the garage and looked through my supplies and just happened to have wire long enough for the job, you saw the other end of the wires in the first pic
another bonus, I was all worried that it had a wfco AD converter it in, but upon looking I found and PI intellipower 4045 power center in it, and it has the Li button, so I was very pleased about that.
it got to warm so thats all I did yesterday, going to head out after my morning coffee and get back to work.
so new battery is in and working, but let me tell you what a day that was. there was joy, tears, confusion and the list goes on haha all this because they are using a battery shutoff switch.
now I have a battery shutoff switch on the battery so I was planing on bypassing their system so I wired it like this
well that didn't work, it still drew off the crappy batteries int he front compartment instead of mine. this is when I discovered that the black wire with the red tape was from the isolation switch and the old battery was still feeding that system, but when I went and looked at the isolation switch at the back of the rv, I didn't see a wire that big. So my saumption is they are using a relay or somthing that is hidden in the abiss of the basment. (another thing I am going to try follow with the endoscope) so looking at my other camper (same powercenter) it has a copepr jumper between the battery positive post and the wire in question so the batter directly feeds the dc. so I put that in, still no workie. so by this time I decided if I am going to do this properly I am going to need to find out exactly how they have wired this so I sent adventurer a email and we will see what I get back.
in the mean time I put it all back to how it was. then I jacked up the camper and pulled the truck ahead 3 feet, did I mention the battery compartment was in the front of the camper and not accessable from the inside. this is the reason I wanted to mount my battery inside. so I took both of the LA batteries out and pulled the wires up into the step area and just fastend them to the ones coming off my battery. everything works just like it came out of the factory. if I find out more then I might start elimination redundant wiring and chaning the ga of some of the others to be more robust, but this way works perfectly well. I was surprised that the disconect switch in this camper killes every thing, even the propan and co detector.
so here is my home made battery in its new home. still have room for an inverter in there and that will be a easy install, just pull some 12/2 romex from there to the empty breaker spot in the power panel. I didn't put a shunt in it for now for two reasons. the first is I only have one battery and it has bluetooth to the BMS which tells me everything a shunt does and more, second I haven't decided which way I want to go yet. if we do the inverter then I will add a second battery and a shunt. If I go renogy on this build then I will go with the renogy one, smart shunt and the inverter that is compatable. the renogy one does the same thing as the Victron cerbo with the tracking an access to the system, but also has a 6 axis leveling sensor which you can pull up on your phone or on the one its self and see when you are level. it works on a bluetooth mesh so the renogy solar controler and inverter will mesh with it as long as they are bluetooth versions. on the victron side if I go that way I would just get a solar controler and a smart shunt and inverter. renogy setup would cost 856.99 victron, I am at 1125.94 and I still need a inverter as victron doesnt seem to make a 2000 watt inverter, only the inverter/charger. thats also using the ekrano GXto give me the same functionality as the renogy one with the touch screen and data loging.
today I am going to measure the space on the roof and get the panels ordered. I am hoping to get at least 600 watts but would like to go even higher if I can.
so I figured out the water pump valve yesterday it is a winterizing hose, but I was to busy looking for a way to run electrical I didn't have time to actualy grab hoses trying to follow them till last night. the other two valves remain a mistery.... unless they are just isolation valves , but then the only thing I could see them isolating is the outdoor shower. I think I am going to break out the endo scope and see if I can follow the lines.
I actualy found that out last night. That was my first thought when I opened up that panel, but it looked like it ran somewhere. so I started wiggling it to follow it and see where it went and it popped up with a cap on it. so I guess I don't have to add that now haha
That was my guess too, but I can't tell if that is just a short section of hose to put into an antifreeze bottle or it went somewhere in the plumbing system?
