admbvi wrote:
We are looking to recycle it into a Vintage Camper for long weekend outings that we dont want to put a lot of money into. (or we would simply buy a much newer system). We will have stereo, microwave, interior and exterior outlets, water pump, ceiling fan/vents. etc.
Will the older charger/converters really be harmful to batteries or just much less efficient than modern? We are looking to reuse/reclycle.
I have done straightforward wiring but nothing that involves AC Charger/Converter+ DC Batteries + inverter and integrating all of them together.
The newer multi-stage chareger/converter units are overall gentler on the batteries and will charge them more quickly. It's certainly possible to keep batteries in good shape with relatively crude chargers, it's just a much more manual task.
Some of the old converter/chargers don't age all that well, and most were quite poorly regulated. The battery does provide a certain amount of regulation (or at least smoothing) to the power; but without a battery, many are unusable or nearly so.
The actual wiring isn't all that complicated if you take it piece by piece. The 120V system is basically just like a subpanel in a house. The 12V system is largely like a car's system. The charger/converter is nothing more than a device that happens to live on both the 120V side and the 12V side of things, and the two halves can be considered pretty much independently when wiring things up.
The 120V system may have a few different power sources switched at the input side: the shore power cord, the generator (if you have one), and possibly an inverter. A practical and inexpensive way to do this switching is to have an outlet of the right kind connected to the generator (or inverter) and plug the shore power cord into the appropriate place for the power you wish to use. An automatic or manual transfer switch does the same basic thing, but without physically moving the cord around.
An inverter does add some complexity to the system, particularly if you intend to send its output through the main 120V distribution system. Primarily, there are some 120V loads that should not be used with an inverter: the converter, since you'd just be transforming 120V into 12V and vice-versa and consuming power needlessly each way; probably the fridge, since the propane supply is much more commodious than the 12V electron supply; and of course anything that exceeds the power capabilities of the inverter and battery system. For small loads such as (modern) TVs and laptops, it may be easiest to just use them with the inverter all the time and not try to switch circuits around.
In short, it does seem rather complex if you try to understand it all as an integrated system; but luckily, the different sections aren't really much integrated, so you're really left with some smaller, more understandable systems.
