Batteries and Charging

[deppstein]

Blue—this is incredible! Great thanks. Writing now just to say that it will surely take me a day or two to digest this all. So if you don’t hear from me for day or so, know I have not thrown in proverbial towel!
David

[Blue~Go]

I'll stop for now after this one. Let you get caught up

I'm thinking about this idea of a separate wire run for charging. I think this could be a good idea. Why?

Well I think that although it's crazy long and skinny, if it's ONLY handling your DC loads, the original brown box wire may not be that bad. I'll run a voltage drop calc and see. If that's the case, you could keep that wire going from the brown box to the batteries. You would only need to join the two wires where the LVD was. Butt crimp, power post, etc. (not a big deal)

Also, this is just normal. Not to oversell "normal," LOL, but I mean you would typically never wire something up on purpose with one wire pair for both loads and charging. A little weird. And why they needed that elaborate buzzer system.

So okay, now how about the charger?

You would still take the three AC wires that now run from the charger breaker to the 4645 (a green, a white, a black) and instead run them to a dedicated receptacle for the IP22. THESE could be the wires you run along under the couch behind the water tank (say a 14AWG triplex stranded but otherwise looking like white sheathed household wire type wire). The receptacle could be say where the LVD is now. And so could the IP22 if that is convenient. Then you would only need a shorter DC wire to the house bank from the IP22.

OR, you could put the receptacle/IP22 under the kitchen or couch. Then run a thicker/longer DC wire. In principle the former is the better way, but as long as your wire size is correct either way could work. Whichever suits your space better.

Now the long, skinny, Chinook tour-o'-the-world wire is only handling loads, which are not monstrous. Charging is handled by your new wire. With this setup, if you ever wanted to be able to shut your loads off but still charge, you could. Nothing to worry about but an option. (No elaborate buzzer system needed!).

(Or you could STILL run a thicker shorter wire for the loads too, along with the charger wire; but not required.)

This is just a better way to set things up altogether, IMO.

We can talk details of fuses, switches etc. once the general plan is ironed out. Otherwise it gets too muddled up.

[Blue~Go]

Blue—this is incredible! Great thanks. Writing now just to say that it will surely take me a day or two to digest this all. So if you don’t hear from me for day or so, know I have not thrown in proverbial towel!
David

Gotcha. Thanks for letting me know so I didn't think you were running away screaming "Noooooooooo!"

[deppstein]

OK!...I can't believe I"m saying this...but I actually understand all the information and advice presented herein. The real epiphany was understanding the "Brown Box" vs PD4645 stuff. My understanding now that the PD4645 is just a charger/converter that only has to do with the charging of the batteries has caused everything to fall into place. I am now able to see how I can take the AC cord from the IP22 and put it into the AC side of the Brown Box (cut plug and use the 3 wires) in place of the AC wires from the PD4645...and that the positive and negative wires going from the DC side of the PD4645 to the circuit board are not to power the circuit board, but to be the output end of the PD4645 using the "long skinny" to carry DC power to the battery. You said it clearly so many times, but it has taken me this long to really comprehend how it all works. And, armed with that knowledge, I think I am ready to move forward with a Plan that will make sense, rather than my "posted notes on the toilet, Rube Goldberg work around. So, here is the summary (discussion/comments welcome):

--A new pair of Fullriver dc115-12 deep cycle AGM batteries (230Ah)

--The Orion XS properly fused and connecting Start to House with a Smart Shunt (500 amp) and temp sensor

--An IP22 12/30 placed in the larger storage area adjacent to the battery compartment whose DC side connects with fused cable set via Smart Shunt, and whose AC side (3 wires) goes up to be wired in the Charger Breaker in the "Brown Box." It will get there by going through the battery compartment, up through the hole already there for the 1/0 Xantra Inverter cables, and behind couch to the Charger Breaker in "Brown Box."

--The old PD4645 will become a paper weight

--I'll leave the "long skinny" alone since it will now only be used for DC loads

--I'll leave the LVD alone...I know clearly that it is not really needed for anything, but since its also not doing any harm at this point, I'm going the easy route here

--Grounding...still a bit muddled here. If I do the decent ground (we've talked 4 awg, but Eddie thinks 6 awg would be OK) from Load side of Shunt to chassis ground via the hole Blue mentioned in battery compartment (see that), can I just leave those two lesser grounds mentioned from circuit board and Start Battery???

--And, with this set-up that has IP22 running through the Rig Shore Power, can I still use my Honda 1000 Inverter generator to occasionally charge by hooking it up to the shore power cord in Rig (adapter)--only needed if boondocking for days without traveling, not sun, etc. And on those occasions, I would not have anything else of consequence drawing power--only charge battery.

I'll pause here for comments/more suggestions--and once all singing from the same hymnal, we can have a more detailed discussion of wires and fusing if need be.
Onward!
David

[Blue~Go]

OK!...I can't believe I"m saying this...but I actually understand all the information and advice presented herein.

Didn't even take 24 hours.

The real epiphany was understanding the "Brown Box" vs PD4645 stuff. My understanding now that the PD4645 is just a charger/converter that only has to do with the charging of the batteries has caused everything to fall into place.

I was completely flummoxed by that thing when I first got my Chinook. But kind of coming from the opposite direction, because I was used to boat electrical systems. They are generally laid out pretty clearly, tend to have proper switches and OCP (overcurrent protection, i.e. fuses or breakers) etc. Now here is this all-in-one box that has this additional claim of being a "converter"? What?!?

I just knew I didn't want it (as there was no way to treat my nice new (at that time) Lifeline AGM bank the way it wanted to be treated. It was really mostly as I was removing it that the mystery unfolded. I then realized that it's basically just the cheap/easy "boom box" of electrical systems, vs. an intelligently built component stereo system.

I was still a bit puzzled by the chassis ground concept (this doesn't really exist on boats). I finally realized oh, ok, it's basically another shortcut, in which they are using the steel frame of the vehicle instead of running negative wires. So here is where your new lead plays in. If you DO run a pair of Orion wires, then I guess you could leave things well enough alone. But that said, I would still run a direct lead from the shunt/bus bar to the frame (more deets below). If you don't run a pos/neg pair for the Orion, then you definitely want to add a large lead from the shunt/bus bar to the frame. AND upgrade the Ford battery neg to sheet metal (which is a true pain, which argues for just running a 4AWG pair for the Orion, but I would still add a neg lead to the frame to help the whole system out. That's also much easier than dealing with Ford's little pigtail and it has more benefit).

But okay, for discussion, let's say you only run a positive wire, so you want to use the chassis ground (frame) for the negative "wire." The frame is up to the task of playing 4AWG, but you have to have short wires on each end to get TO the frame. Right now as you can see on the drawing you have a single 8AWG wire from the brown box to the frame on the house side. But that's serving as the wire for a whole bunch of things. So forget counting that in your Orion circuit.

To step back, in a circuit you want to think about why you are running a given wire size. There are generally two reasons: Ampacity (amount of power the wire can handle in an absolute sense), and voltage drop (this has to do with the amount of current/amps you are running through the wire, the voltage of your system and the LENGTH of the wire. The more amps, the lower voltage, the longer wire are all factors that make for more voltage drop.

So you basically circle around all the factors until you find the wire size that satisfies them all, no "weak links." So let's do this for the Orion:

1) Ampacity
With the Orion you will be running around 50 amps through it. So obviously the wire needs to be able to handle 50 amps. This wire will not be bundled (will be in "free air" as they say - that's a heat factor), but it will be running through an engine compartment (so there is a reduction factor... again, heat). Let's assume you are going to use proper marine grade boat cable, which will be finely stranded (required for the Orion!) and have a 105ºC heat rating. Now we can look at the ABYC chart:

I have put a red square around the intersection of 4AWG and 105ºC. You can see that 4AWG can handle up to 136 amps in an engine space. So we are good to go there. Obviously, if ampacity were all we were going to consider, you could go down in wire size. But we are not done circling.

(Note that this particular chart is only for bundles of up to three conductors, not in conduit - again a heat thing.)

2) Voltage
This is simple. It's a nominal 12 volt system, so we will use 12 volts in our calculations for voltage drop. In a 12-volt system, it usually all comes down to voltage drop, not ampacity (lower the voltage, more the voltage drop, which is why cross country electrical transmission lines are at a zillion volts - otherwise those wires would be tree trunks).

3) Voltage drop
Here we need to know the length of the wire being used (and the size). Then there are voltage drop calculators. Both legs of the circuit count (round trip) but some calculators already divide things in two so you only need to count the one distance - you have to see for each calculator (the one I use already divides). I will estimate here that the one-way length of this wire will be 18' I think that's close enough for now.

So here is the voltage drop for a 4AWG run:

4.2% is already WAY more than you would ever want. But hey, let's figure for 6AWG:

6.8% Just no. There is no reason to skimp down to 6AWG for this job. In addition to just WHY, a couple of other reasons:

a) The terminals in the Orion fit 4AWG perfectly. They will take 6AWG (I have used this on a job where the wire run was 2' long), but you have to put adhesive heat shrink around the wire jacket so that the built in wire strain relief will work correctly. Meh.

b) Because the Orion can "buck" or "boost" it WILL adjust the voltage back up (so in that way you only really "need" to worry about voltage drop between the Orion and your house bank) BUT it will do so by working harder, which creates heat. If it gets too hot it will derate itself and you will no longer get your 50 amps. Plus... just why work your nice new Orion harder than it needs to every minute of its life for no real reason? I mean except maybe saving a few bucks on wire one time.

Now, you might say, but the frame! I think I did a calculation for the cross-section of the frame many years ago and came up with 1AWG or something. BUT, I would put no stock in that. I mean, for starters, the chassis ground lead from the Ford start battery anchors to the fender. Yup, sheet metal, which sometime later connects to the frame. So who knows. Personally, having had to upgrade that little Ford lead (I forget all the details but it was a huge pain and I had to custom bend a 10mm spanner....), if I were you I would just run a 4AWG pair (positive and negative) and forget the chassis ground upgrade at the Ford Start battery (I would also run a positive and negative pair for the IP22, but I would still put one upgraded negative wire from the shunt negative to the chassis, but that's easy and accessible).

No offense but trying to scrimp by using small wire sizes in a 12-volt system .... I just don't think its worth it. Fill up your gas tank once and you could have spent the extra to make all the wires the best size.

4) But okay, back to our Orion wire. We looked at ampacity; we looked at voltage; we calculated voltage drop. Now we figure out our OCP (fuse or breaker) size and see if it needs to consider AIC rating (Ampere Interrupt Capacity).
So we saw on the chart that 4AWG boat cable can handle up to 136 amps in an engine space. And another thing to know is that the smaller the fuse size, the more voltage drop IT induces (every connection, fuse, etc. adds more voltage drop to some extent). So normally I would fuse up, since fuses in general are there to protect the wire. I might go for a 100a fuse. However, Victron in the Orion manual recommends 60a fuses. I think that's actually only because they don't KNOW what size wire you will run. I mean maybe you have a 12" run and are using 10AWG. 60a is basically the minimum that won't blow when it puts out 50 amps. So you have three choices: Fuse at 60a, fuse higher for the wire, or contact Victron and try to get a better answer.

Okay, so we have our wire size of 4AWG, and a fuse of 60a on each end as close to the battery as possible (more on this later!). Now we ask ourselves if we have to be concerned with AIC rating. This is basically about the strength of the BODY type of the fuse. Not the actual "size" in amps. This comes into play when you are coming off a battery. Why? Well if there is a short circuit coming off a battery, that battery can dump thousands of amps all at once. If your AIC rating is too low, that current just laughs at the fuse, jumps across, melts the body, or whatever and you have no protection. But this only comes into play for the first fuse coming off a battery. Any fuse after that first one, is already protected by the first one, so you then only have to worry about your particular wire or circuit, not the AIC rating of the thing.

So on the start battery end, I would put on a MRBF fuse holder and a 60a MRBF fuse. I have one on mine so I know it will fit just fine, and this has an AIC rating of 10,000 amps. Your start battery probably can put out in the neighborhood of 5,000a into a short circuit (might be less, might be more, just an estimate), so the AIC rating of the MRBF fuse/holder is fine.

Now we get to the house end of things. This is a little more complicated only because I'm guessing that currently you have the old "spider" of stuff all stuck onto the battery posts and nothing is really fused correctly. That's how mine was. It's a common problem. So I would heavily encourage you to do a bit of upgrading in this area. Bare minimum, get an MRBF on the positive post; but better to go to some kind of bus bar/OCP scheme that allows you to fuse smaller wires too. But if the Orion IS going to go straight to the house positive post, then put an MRBF holder there with another 60a fuse.

*************************

I am now able to see how I can take the AC cord from the IP22 and put it into the AC side of the Brown Box (cut plug and use the 3 wires) in place of the AC wires from the PD4645...

You could. but I would encourage you to wire in a receptacle instead. (So your new wire goes from the charger breaker in the brown box to your IP22 dedicated receptacle.) Why? Well your way would work. And I'm not normally a slave to warranties. But I imagine cutting the plug off might void it. But mostly just for convenience. Charger dies? Plug in a new one. Also, if you run the charger wire all through the Chinook to the brown box and then the charger dies, you have to pull all that wire back out out and run a whole different one. UGH. If you run a length of stranded (use boat cable NOT solid romex) 14AWG triplex through the Chinook to a receptacle then you never have to futz with it again, even if the charger dies and you buy or are given a new one. Wiring a receptacle is easy peasy.

...and that the positive and negative wires going from the DC side of the PD4645 to the circuit board are not to power the circuit board, but to be the output end of the PD4645 using the "long skinny" to carry DC power to the battery.

Exactly. I think they introduce confusion by also calling it a "converter." Like it's somehow magically powering your loads in some other way than by charging the batteries. But there is only one wire, so it's all in parallel.

Edited to add: Actually I have to think about whether the Power Supply function with batteries out that I mention below could work. Okay, yes, as long as you have a bus bar or etc. for your wires, so they connect to your loads even with the batteries out, as is good anyway.

BTW, the IP22 can also be a power supply (in the settings you will normally choose "charger" but you could also choose "power supply"). What this means is that if you ever have your house batteries completely out of the Chinook (or just disconnected for some reason), then the IP22 can power your DC circuits (with the coach plugged in) even sans batteries. That can be convenient in winter or etc. (This presumes you run the IP22 with its own set of DC wires, as is normal, and as you plan to do now.)

armed with that knowledge, I think I am ready to move forward with a Plan that will make sense, rather than my "posted notes on the toilet, Rube Goldberg work around.

That's the standard we are striving for here. "No notes on the toilet." Or to put it more positively: Laser on a beam reach.

--A new pair of Fullriver dc115-12 deep cycle AGM batteries (230Ah)

--The Orion XS properly fused and connecting Start to House with a Smart Shunt (500 amp) and temp sensor

If you are sticking with the Smart Shunt then add in a buzzer and wires to it (buzzer in Chinook where you can hear it). If you go with the BMV 712, it already includes a buzzer (and a display head you can smash the button on at 3 a.m. when it goes off someday).

--An IP22 12/30 placed in the larger storage area adjacent to the battery compartment whose DC side connects with fused cable set via Smart Shunt, and whose AC side (3 wires) goes up to be wired in the Charger Breaker in the "Brown Box." It will get there by going through the battery compartment, up through the hole already there for the 1/0 Xantra Inverter cables, and behind couch to the Charger Breaker in "Brown Box."

You don't mention it here, but as above, rather than snaking the IP22's own wire through the coach and hard wiring it to the Charger Breaker, I would instead run a 14AWG triplex stranded wire (will look white like household Romex but not be solid cable) from the Charger Breaker to a dedicated receptacle near the IP22, then plug the IP22 (and any future replacement) easily into that box. Or you could even put the receptacle closer to the brown box, or anywhere in between. I just helped a friend with an electrical system re-do, and even though I usually hardwire things, we wired a receptacle near the IP22 whose wire came from his AC breaker panel charger breaker. But either way will work.

BTW, you only need the IP22 with one output. In theory that is less expensive than the one with three outputs (though all three use the same charging profiles). I say in theory as sometimes your pet chandlery won't carry the one output one, and ordering it might make it not less expensive.

But either way will work just fine.

--The old PD4645 will become a paper weight

And dust collector.

--I'll leave the "long skinny" alone since it will now only be used for DC loads

Mostly.... see below.

--I'll leave the LVD alone...I know clearly that it is not really needed for anything, but since its also not doing any harm at this point, I'm going the easy route here

I would not do this. I imagine there is voltage drop or something undesirable going on in there with all its relays and etc. That's the last thing you need with that crazy long thin wire! Just get rid of it. At least electrically. I would (did) remove it, and then you can join those two wires on a power post (simple) or if you just like having it there (whyyyy?) you could put both wires on the same end, thereby making the worlds most inelegant power post. Then disconnect the other small wires. But please just take it away! We beg.

--Grounding...still a bit muddled here. If I do the decent ground (we've talked 4 awg, but Eddie thinks 6 awg would be OK) from Load side of Shunt to chassis ground via the hole Blue mentioned in battery compartment (see that), can I just leave those two lesser grounds mentioned from circuit board and Start Battery???

Yes no maybe. Ha. So I would 100% run a new leg of negative cable from the load side of the shunt to the frame. You are going to have a bunch of 4AWG on hand, so I would use that. Note: It's generally best not to do the minimum you can get away with, when wiring low voltage (12-volt) systems. There is always extra drop or resistance in connections etc., plus they are under the rig dealing with a rusty frame and the elements, so just why. They are inefficient enough as it is without adding more trouble.

Running this wire from the shunt (negative bus) to the frame is very accessible and easy. I used an existing hole in the frame, and just cleaned up to bare metal and bolted my lug through the hole (machine screw, washer, lug, frame, washer, lock washer, nut). Lug and frame need to be completely in contact - no washer between them.

But you can totally leave the 8AWG from the brown box to the frame as-is. It will just keep doing what it has been doing. I removed mine only because I took the whole brown box away (but I added a 1/0 leg from the shunt load side to the frame as mentioned above).

And, with this set-up that has IP22 running through the Rig Shore Power, can I still use my Honda 1000 Inverter generator to occasionally charge by hooking it up to the shore power cord in Rig (adapter)--only needed if boondocking for days without traveling, not sun, etc. And on those occasions, I would not have anything else of consequence drawing power--only charge battery.

I presume you have already been doing that with your current setup (with the PD4645 charging)? If so, I don't see any difference. (I think you need some sort of grounding plug stand-in for the Honda, but if so you would already have been doing this, no?)

The IP22 would only be taking something like 425 watts from the Honda when putting out full charging power (I calculated watts at 30 amps/12 volts, then added 15% for inefficiency). So even go crazy and say 500 watts. That leaves around 500 watts (~40 amps at 12 volts or 4 amps at 120 volts) that you can use for other things. So use away! I imagine if you are only running the charger you will be able to use ECO mode and the gen will throttle down. Note that if you want to use more power for other things, you can also set the IP22 to 15 amps with a quick adjustment in the app settings.

I'll pause here for comments/more suggestions--and once all singing from the same hymnal, we can have a more detailed discussion of wires and fusing if need be.

Yes please. I can guarantee, it "need be." I was kind of keeping that quite so as not to scare you off But yes, the original Chinook OCP definitely is not up to the task. Please don't make these improvements without upgrading that. (But I figured let's not heap on at this point, while you are still just un-taping the notes from the toilet tank.)

Onward!

For sure. I would guess these improvements will be very nice on your upcoming long trip. And hey, in case you "feel 50" after you get back..... all the stuff from this upgrade will also support LFP batteries, if you ever decide to change. (OTOH, these batteries should last a LOT longer with good treatment so not saying you will need to. I got 10 years of use out of my Chinook AGM bank.... and while they were tired when I removed them, they were not dead yet.... a friend was getting rid of some LFP batts to I decided to take them.)

PS: On the IP22 outgoing wires, you will want to do a similar length/amps/wire size calc. Only they should be quite a bit shorter. I'd be happy to do the calc for you. If you use 6AWG, then those will go into the IP22 terminals as bare wire. If you use smaller wire, I would encourage you to use ferrules. Without them, especially with the smaller wire size, the wires tend to slowly splay over time and then the connection loosens and gets hot (BAD).

[deppstein]

I'm scaring myself just a little bit on account of the fact that I am actually following along and understanding all that you are saying here. The circle is indeed getting smaller and smaller. Only a couple of questions/comments from your most recent post:

--OK, convinced me of doing the outlet instead of wiring directly to the breaker. Think I'll put the outlet just above where the LVD currently sits. That should be close enough to where the IP22 will be mounted to make the run without having to add any sort of extension.

--Got it all about running pair of 4awg (pos and neg) for Orion run with the 60 amp MRFBs on each positive end...and yes, will still do the 4 awg ground from Load side of Shunt to hole in the chassis (brushed with my dremel and cleaned

--Regarding the IP22 wire run to House--you first suggested a paired run of 4 awg for that as well...but then toward the end, made mention of 6awg due to shorter run. FYI, Victron recommends 6awg for the IP22 and sells their cable kit that way with a 50 amp fuse. It even says that the IP22 does not take 4awg. Thoughts?

--Honda for charging...currently, if I use the Honda to charge, I do it by plugging in the old NOCO Genius 15000 and using the alligator clips to attach directly to the pos/neg of House Bats. In my new, improved, skimming the waves up on a plane in my Laser mode, I would have to plug the shore power umbilical cord into the Honda (using adapter). Is that Kosher?

--And finally we come to your beloved LVD. I hear you begging...but I need more encouragement here to take the plunge. I get the notion of taking the two ends of the "long skinny" and putting them together...but how exactly and what do I do/what happens to the rest of the stuff? Once disconnected from the LVD, where does it go? And does it just render my kill switch on cab ceiling simply inoperable? Am I right in assuming that battery is always connected to load--unless I put in a hard switch...If such is the case, I could use some guidance on that as well.

And thatts all Folks!...for now at least.
David

[Blue~Go]

I'm scaring myself just a little bit on account of the fact that I am actually following along and understanding all that you are saying here.

Ha ha. You can always learn a new trick.

Only a couple of questions/comments from your most recent post:

BTW, I made a couple of small edits to that post while you were typing this (though I didn't know that). Nothing major though. Couple of typos and I had to think through the power supply function.

--OK, convinced me of doing the outlet instead of wiring directly to the breaker. Think I'll put the outlet just above where the LVD currently sits. That should be close enough to where the IP22 will be mounted to make the run without having to add any sort of extension.

I want to say the cord is around 6' long. Maybe 8' (or some metric number in between).

--Got it all about running pair of 4awg (pos and neg) for Orion run with the 60 amp MRFBs on each positive end...and yes, will still do the 4 awg ground from Load side of Shunt to hole in the chassis (brushed with my dremel and cleaned

Excellent. That will cover all bases. Chassis grounds can be a bit weak sauce so having a bit more wire there cannot do anything but help (the rest of the system).

--Regarding the IP22 wire run to House--you first suggested a paired run of 4 awg for that as well...but then toward the end, made mention of 6awg due to shorter run. FYI, Victron recommends 6awg for the IP22 and sells their cable kit that way with a 50 amp fuse. It even says that the IP22 does not take 4awg. Thoughts?

Okay yes, the maximum wire size the IP22 will natively take is 6AWG. Now if you have it miles away, and need larger wire, then you can go to power posts increase size, etc. But you don't need that. Yours will be close by. I'm going to guess 8AWG would be fine, but let's run a quick calc: Let's say you will have 4' of wire, one way (I know that sounds like a lot but it always seems to be longer than you'd think).

Okay, 8AWG at 4' is 1.3% voltage drop. Of course in reality a bit more because you have connections (drop) fuses (more drop), bus bar wire, etc. But that is 100% respectable even so. 10AWG at 4' is 2.3% (plus the added factors) so you could use that. I guess it partly depends on whether 4' turns into 2.5' or 5'..... in real life. If you use 10AWG, I would use ferrules for sure. 8AWG.... not sure. Smaller wire tends to keep on crushing and loosen. 8AWG is kind of in the middle.

--Honda for charging...currently, if I use the Honda to charge, I do it by plugging in the old NOCO Genius 15000 and using the alligator clips to attach directly to the pos/neg of House Bats. In my new, improved, skimming the waves up on a plane in my Laser mode, I would have to plug the shore power umbilical cord into the Honda (using adapter). Is that Kosher?

I think that is what many people with portable generators do (I say portable because of course our old built in Onans went in via a transfer switch). You always only want ONE source of AC input. But in this case if you have the shore cord put into the Honda, you can't also put it into a campground pedestal, so you are ok there.

I'm wracking my brain here, but I think there is something where you have to put in a little plug adapter to ..... do something about the ground neutral bond. IIRC, it's because the shore pedestal provides one so it's expecting to see that but the generator doesn't. Or it's the reverse. I'm going to go look that up. Definitely doable though. I think basically every 5th wheel etc. does that (they don't tend to come with built in generators). But... let's figure it out more confidently.

--And finally we come to your beloved LVD. I hear you begging...but I need more encouragement here to take the plunge.

Endless supply here.

I get the notion of taking the two ends of the "long skinny" and putting them together...but how exactly and what do I do/what happens to the rest of the stuff? Once disconnected from the LVD, where does it go? And does it just render my kill switch on cab ceiling simply inoperable? Am I right in assuming that battery is always connected to load--unless I put in a hard switch...If such is the case, I could use some guidance on that as well.

Good questions. I can tell you have your mind around it.

So here is a photo to establish what we are working with. Pretty sure this is someone else's Chinook (my couch was different by the time I took out the LVD) but it looks very similar.

If you look in that area between the couch and the pillar, you'll see a little panel that has a triangle hump thingie. (I think that might be on the front of the couch bottom). If you remove that (not hard) you will see more wires.

Come on, look at that ratty thing! And those horrible crimps. Waiting to fall out.

LVD:

Another view:

One more:

So all those little wires? No, you have no use for them anymore. Take them all off the LVD and it's okay to tuck them in and leave them if you want. Once you remove the Surepower 1315, the two long skinny ends from the LVD (and probably the long skinny wire from the start battery to the Surepower) then they won't have any reason to exist and won't be live.

But yes, you DO want a way to cut off the batteries. In fact in boating it's basically a requirement (ABYC standard). you must have a switch right after the batteries so that you can cut the batteries off from everything. So you should add one. So battery bank, main fuse (MRBF), Switch, then everything else. Switch off, means no power to battery at all. Fire etc., turn off switch, isolate.

So if you want to power down the whole Chinook, you'll turn off this main switch. I would likely use a Blue Sea 6004

(stick with the name brand; there are cheap copies but... no). Best if it's in the battery compartment just due to how the wires need to be arranged.

They do make remote activated real switches, but I wouldn't go there. Why? Much more expensive, and when are these situations when you need to flip a switch on the roof of the cab and cut off all Chinook power? What about hitting it by accident.... I would just keep it simple. After all, you were going to be going out there, plugging in a Yellow Box, running a cord over to a power pedestal, etc. In comparison this is tidy and simple.

So to reiterate, while one COULD pull out all those little wires that went to the LVD, as long as none of them are live, I don't see any big shame in pushing them back under the pillar. But do remove the LVD.... it's just gross clutter, and would be inducing MORE voltage drop into your wire. Just no.

But while you are looking at it: See the little cheesy automotive self-resetting breaker next to the LVD (outboard of it). You'll be replacing this with a real fuse or breaker in the battery compartment. Those are just so bad. So that can go too.

Ideally, you would also run a new wire in place of the "long skinny" but it's not required. There are a few ways you could attach those two ends together.

1) Power post. Like a Blue Sea 2011


2) Butt connector. Like an FTZ 8AWG butt part number 91800 (at least IIRC this wire is 8AWG, double check this):


3) Somehow it's long enough to just bring the inbound end to the batteries (doubtful).

4) Run a new 8AWG wire behind the water tank and down to the batteries (you only need a positive wire since you have the chassis grounds covered for this). I know we said you didn't need to but... I'd sure be tempted. You could make it long enough in one fell swoop. We can see where it connects at the brown box. It's just one wire.....

Okay did I forget anything? Once you recover from this round we can talk about bus bars, fuses, switches, lugs..... Heh.

And I will refresh my mind on the generator to shore power plug connection deets.

[Blue~Go]

Okay, so on the neutral-ground bond.

As I understand it, the RV is always expecting a neutral-ground bond at one place in the system. Shore power pedestals have one. The Onan had one.

Portable generators do not. So the RV system gets confused.

You can read all about it here:
https://www.rvtravel.com/rv-electricity ... -rvt-1076/

Make your own as outlined in the above article.

Or buy one here (testimonials in reviews):
https://www.amazon.com/Southwire-Compan ... B07F4R7BDL

Note that as mentioned in the article this should NOT be plugged in anywhere else. This is specifically to plug into a portable "floating ground" generator when using it with an RV shorepower cord.

But you can read more in the link above, as I'm not an AC or generator expert. I just have the general concept.

Note that you would not have run into this "problem" with your Rube Goldberg setup, as you would have been bypassing the entire shorepower inlet, main breaker, and branch breakers (heh, in case you were thinking this was rogue)

[deppstein]

Good info on the Surge Guard! Thanks...I didn't know that.

With the elements of the plan in place, I have begun "noodling" around in my head about connections. I need to take a closer look at what I have and assess what connections are required with the new system, and where. Too cold and blustery today to go out and take a look at things...maybe tomorrow.
David

[Blue~Go]

I'm not sure why they have it labelled "surge guard." AFAIK it's just tying the neutral and ground together ("bond") which is what shorepower hookup expects to see. IOW you could make one yourself by taking a little three prong plug and putting a small wire across the white and green terminals. This is just pre-made.

I hope you might want to post some photos of your DC distribution area? (Probably at this point house battery with a giant spider of wire on it, but in any case, can we see?) That will make it much easier to give some ideas for a plan (with the brown box and LVD, I basically could "see" without photos).

Not that you need to rush out into the blustery cold.