2000 Bigfoot 10.6 Electrical Upgrade/Solar Advice

[VehicleTrader94]

I currently own a 1988 Bigfoot C-11.5 that I upgraded the electrical system in about 7 years ago with much help from this forum. RedDog was VERY helpful as were others and I greatly appreciate it.

I will be picking up a new to me 2000 Bigfoot 10.6B in a week or two. I've been in this camper a few times but I'm not very familiar with what electrical components are located where. The original battery boiler converter is still there and works when it wants to. It currently has an Onan 2500 that I plan to keep for now.

A new converter is mandatory. A Parallax converter from Best Converter is the rough draft. In reading other posts I've seen suggestions for a high amp converter to allow fast charging the batteries from the generator. That's appealing. I'm interested in input as I know technology has probably improved in 7 years. Clean voltage for electronics is a must but I think all the quality converters meet that.

I am hoping to stick with Lifeline AGM Group 31XT 125a/h batteries. A single one has served me well in the 88 Bigfoot. I'm hoping someone has the dimensions on the 10.6B battery compartment. I believe the E model came out in 2002 and I'm not sure if the compartment/opening is the same. 2000 was the first year of the radius corner doors. It seems that 2000 and 2001 models would be identical and 2002-up is unknown. My understanding is that 2 Group 27 batteries were standard. The Group 31XT is slightly taller so I'm not 100% sure they will fit. It is 12.9" x 6.75" x 9.27" per Lifeline. I picked a random Group 27 Interstate Deep Cycle and they show 12.75" x 6.75" x 9.5". Unless the height is super critical it seems this will work.

I looked at lithium batteries but at $1300 each I've ruled that out.

Solar is very much on the wish list. I have basic solar knowledge. My preference is two thin stick on panels about 100w each. My reasoning is they can conform to the curvature of the roof, some appear to be shade tolerant, they do not stick up to A)trip me, B) add more air drag/turbulence, C) less holes in the roof is always better. My understanding is they may not last as long as other types. My current thought is that is acceptable. Has anyone used the panels from Sunflare Solar? At least one RV company, Vistabule, is using that as a factory option. I have not tried to source them yet but they seem interesting.

I'm not clear on what electronics I need to process the solar. I believe an inverter is required as is a controller from someone like Zamp. Does the controller also duplicate the functions of a TriMetric? I have one on the current camper and it was nice to have until some uninvited electric gremlin fried it.

I guess I should mention how I use my camper if that changes opinions on the design. It is used 30-40 days/year for vacation/activities. When traveling in cool months we will often overnight or camp with no hookups. With the family along the limiting factor (2-3 days) has been holding tanks not electricity. With the new camper we should double time between dump stations. In warmer weather we use hookups. The most limiting thing for us right now is not being to stay out 4-5 days without hookups. We'd like to be able to stay in the Hayden Valley area campgrounds at Yellowstone in the future rather than being tethered to Fishing Bridge. Some years the camper may also be used on job sites or at trade shows but that almost always involves full hookups.

I'm sure there are some questions I either don't know to ask or have forgotten. My friend who will help with the install is an electrical engineer but he does no know much about solar either.

Thanks for any advice!

[VehicleTrader94]

time2roll: The thought process on the adjustable is that it if fine tuning is needed I have the capability to do so. Better to have it if needed rather than the other way around.

Other than time to charge is there any benefit to the 75amp? It's only $10 more. Are there any drawbacks to the 75amp? My understanding is it can charge up to that amount but that does not mean it will.

[time2roll]

No sure you need the adjustable Boondocker. Supposedly the standard issue goes to 14.6 and holds 15 minutes and drops to 13.6 volts. Would seem about perfect and very automatic for Lithium. I would tend to go with the smaller 60 amp unless your battery is especially large.

[VehicleTrader94]

I wanted to thank all that have replied so far. I'm 99% sure you have converted me to LiFePo4. I'm not sure which brand of LiFePo4 to go with. BattleBorn appears to be a good value with a good warranty. Based on the number of products they seem to be a relatively large company. I'm also guessing that being in Sparks, NV they may have an edge being near Tesla and also lithium mines in the state. I also like that they sell battery warmers that fit their product and that they are on a thermostat. That solves my wife's complaint of not being able to charge in very cold weather. She is very hung up on that even though we have never run out of battery power in those temps. Expion360 is recommended by Best Converter. Being an OEM option on Airstream suggests it is a good product provided their engineers knew enough about LiFePo4 and tech has not changed since then. I like the extra 20ah from them. The replaceable BMS is either a nice feature or a feature that tells me their BMS fails too often. How often do BMS systems fail? I like reliability but I'm not on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. I will also have solar and a generator. It would be an inconvenience, not an emergency I can set the high idle on the truck and charge off it. In general once I get something working correctly I prefer not to tinker with it. Any more opinions on batteries? With any relatively new technology you have to wonder which companies will still be in business in 5 years.

My rough draft spec list is:
Boondocker adjustable converter. Not sure on 60 vs 75amp
Bogart Tri-Metric 2030RV
Bogart SC-2030 Solar controller
At least 2 100w Renogy flexible panels (Thanks adamis!)
Appropriate shunt
Bus bar
Various wires, connectors, 3 languages of curse words (for running wire under the refrigerator), etc.

In speaking with BattleBorn they recommended charging at 14.2-14.6 charging voltage and after pushing on converter information the person volunteered the Boondocker 3 Stage (Boondocker claims 4 Stage but one of those stages appear to be the Off mode) would be a good match.

The biggest selling features for me on the LiFePo4 are weight and being able to be stored long periods uncharged. Where Bigfoot has the batteries they are behind the end of the bed. Losing weight here certainly helps CG.

Thanks again for the advice. I'm guessing around $2-2500 total cost.

[adamis]

I have almost the exact same camper as you and have been down this road already. Here are some of my experiences and thoughts for what they are worth...

1. Solar: One of the big advantages of the Bigfoot is the Fiberglass roof. Putting holes to screw solar panels down wasn't appealing. I know there are tapes you can use with brackets for rigid panels (as previously mentioned) but I wasn't keen on that either. I went with 2 100w Renogy flexible film panels from Amazon. They fit nicely on the front portion of the roof on the sides of the front roof vent. There is actually enough room to put an additional two panels on the sides of the AC vent for 400w total if you really wanted to but I think it would be way overkill unless in constantly foggy weather and running a laptop a lot. To keep the panels down, I purchased some double sided Gorilla tape for the center of the panel and then used Eterna-Bound for the perimeter. So far no problems with cupping or coming loose. The power cables I ran to the fridge roof vent. I installed a circuit breaker accessible from the outside fridge vent compartment then ran the cables the rest of the way inside of the camper to my charge controller.

2. For my batteries, I started with 2 6v AGM Lifelines that were saddle bag style in the bed of the truck with cables that connected in to the battery compartment of the camper. I eventually changed to a Battle Born 100ah LiFePo4. Yes, it was pricey (if you are a military member or vet, call and they will give you a small discount) but the benefits far outweigh the cost. The battery comes with a 10 year warranty and can handle anywhere between 3000 to 5000 charging cycles. The on-board battery monitoring system keeps my stupid self from damaging the battery by accidentally discharging it too low. AGMs don't have this feature and will be happy to discharge to zero on you. It also saved me close to 150lbs, I could store 100ah in the battery compartment with space for cables and other items.

3. For a solar charger, I went with the Go-Power GP-PWM-30-UL. I actually started with just their PWM-30 which was supposed to work with LiFePo4 batteries using the AGM setting but for whatever reason it did not like my LiFePo4 battery so I got the newer version with a LiFePo4 charging profile. Something nice about this charger is it house a house battery bank and a starting battery bank. I've not hooked it up (project for next summer) but you can wire the charger up to start charging the truck battery through the umbilical once the camper batteries are topped off. I get about 10 amps of charge which is plenty for my needs on a daily basis.

4. For a monitoring system, I went with a cheapo Drok monitor that includes a shunt. It's a chineseam unit that took a while to figure out how it was working (instructions left some to be desired) but it does work well enough. There are a lot of better systems out there but they all tend to be pricey.

5. For installation, I placed everything on the cabinet panel that is between the bed and the dinette on the left side (facing forward). There is plenty of space to add a control panel and run wiring in this area and the wiring can run down the seat of the dinette and then around the front of the camper where the current AC/DC charging system is. I went the extra mile and ran dedicated charging wires all the way back to the battery compartment, snaking underneath the fridge (quite a pain in the tail...) and then through the kitchen cabinets before popping into the battery compartment.

This summer was my first summer with all of these systems put together and working. We did a week up at our favoriette lake side camping spot with no hookups. We had no power issues at all and that included running my laptop a couple hours each day. All told I'm probably into my system for about $1400 including the charge controller, 200w of panels and LiFePo4 battery. Money I feel is well invested. Yes, going with AGMs your going to spend maybe half the cost and they will serve you well but the weight and the size (6v Lifelines will not fit in Bigfoot Battery compartment) plus having to constantly make sure you don't draw the batteries down 60% is worth investing for the LiFePo4 batteries.

One last side note... I do keep my truck and camper stored indoors when not in use so I expect the life of my thin film panels to last for a very long time.

[toddb]

VehicleTrader94 wrote:
toddb: I'm about $850 for 250a/h of AGM Lifeline 31XT batteries. Where are you pricing the $950 lithium and what are the a/h and size?
I will study the Victron Energy website.

The biggest problem I see for lithium batteries is that are killed if they freeze. Do they freeze at 32 degrees like a conventional battery? We often use the camper throughout the winter as we are TX based. Driving through 15-20 degree weather seems like it would potentially freeze & kill them. In storage at the house we can see several days in a row with lows in the low 20s. It is likely I will forget to take them out or be traveling when a front comes through and won't be able to remove them. That's a huge plus for solar on the roof is that I will not kill batteries when not in use as they always get charged.

So 250A/h that you can draw down to 60% correct? 250x.4=100ah of usable battery. Taking them lower can damage them or reduce the number of cycles. 1 battle born 100a/h battery has 99A/h of capacity. They also generate more power when warmer, and they don't die below freezing. All batteries suffer from extreme cold, I grew up in ND and we had block and battery heaters. So they wont charge below ~25 but you can discharge them below 0. Some have heaters built in if its of great concern. Keeping them warm in a tc seems pretty easy to me. You also store them at 40-60%, no floating them, just disconnect. If you wish to remove them they are 30lbs so that makes it easier.

They have come a long way as far as safety, most have a bms to protect against shorting and temp control. So crow baring a lithium is safer than a flooded.

You'll need some sort of battery monitor, it's an additional expense since you can go by voltage to determine battery state.

[VehicleTrader94]

toddb: I'm about $850 for 250a/h of AGM Lifeline 31XT batteries. Where are you pricing the $950 lithium and what are the a/h and size? I'm also curious on yours and others thoughts on the fire risk. I realize there are different chemistries. I believe it was the Airbus A380 that has fires early on due to lithium battery issues and Texas Motor Speedway recently banned all electric vehicles from drag racing due to fire risk and not having proper fire gear to deal with it. https://www.thedrive.com/news/29192/tesla-cars-and-other-evs-banned-from-texas-drag-strip-due-to-battery-fires

I will study the Victron Energy website.

The biggest problem I see for lithium batteries is that are killed if they freeze. Do they freeze at 32 degrees like a conventional battery? We often use the camper throughout the winter as we are TX based. Driving through 15-20 degree weather seems like it would potentially freeze & kill them. In storage at the house we can see several days in a row with lows in the low 20s. It is likely I will forget to take them out or be traveling when a front comes through and won't be able to remove them. That's a huge plus for solar on the roof is that I will not kill batteries when not in use as they always get charged.

[toddb]

Visit the lithium setup again. If you're sizing 2 agm batteries @$380ea, that's about 1 $950 lithium. The solar charge rate is better since you can basically bulk charge to 99%. Look at usable amp hours of the battery and realistically what you'll harvest with solar. Victron energy has some nice tools to use for that.

[VehicleTrader94]

Thanks Paradox123, that's very helpful information!

I picked up the camper last weekend and it looks like the 31XT batteries will fit. It looks like there is adequate room and pretty good access to upsize the battery wires and run everything around to the converter. Also good access around the dinette. Still considering components before ordering. After some thought I think I'll skip the inverter for now. I can run computers off 12v and that is more efficient anyway. If I want to run the A/C it really needs to be off shore power or generator anyway as it's such a hard load. If my wife really wants to use the microwave we can always turn the generator on for a few minutes. We haven't had a microwave for the last 12 years of RVing so I think we can survive.

One other question to the board involves adding a Marinco shore power adapter. On my 88 this was no problem as the factory power cord came through a small opening and the Marinco adapter just needed slightly more trimming for a tight fit. The 2000 has a 4-6" door that swings open so the opening is way too big unless I fiberglass in around it. The reasons I like this set is it seals tight, it insulates better, it is easy to replace a damaged cord and in bad weather it is faster to remove/store. My fiberglass skills are functional but not pretty and I don't know how well a gel coat repair would look. Unlike the 88 camper the 2000 has nice shine to it now.

[Paradox123]

Because you have a Bigfoot with a fiberglass roof, you can mount solar panels without drilling holes in your roof. I installed my panels with 3M VHB (Very High Bonding) tape in 2010. They are still firmly attached.

[pianotuna]

Here is a solar "primer" to help:

https://freecampsites.net/adding-solar/

I don't think thin film are a good choice. There is still a problem with them "cupping" from heat and then holding rain. When the water evaporates, it leaves a film on the cells--which cuts into the production of current.

Then there is the issue of heating. Thin film glued down may underperform more traditional panels.