Survival 109 build

[QUADJEEPER]

Hey guys the compressor is a york so the oil is somewhat contained. There's an oil separator but the york does put oil in the system. There is a fix to limit it but I just add oil (only once since spring). If you do this for on board air, I'd try a horizontal engine. This not a recommended mounting position, the pulley should be vertical so im only getting 70 psi but it works to air up tires. I got a one wire 105 amp alternator for 67 bucks and works great.

The space I'm dealing with is only 12" high, 19" wide and 14" deep in the m725 storage box. The truck is diesel so I have keep gas separate. If I could get a little disel to fit, that would be the ticket. It would be great to see more guys doing this, I think an application like this is perfect.

For power solar really is the way to go, your set up Scott is really nice. Once I have solar, the generator is only back up. I have a thread on m715zone on this little set up I can post if its helpful.

Thanks sojourner, yes I like solar as its quiet, automatic and fuel free. Some battery maintainance/replacement costs, but overall best. Now EMP resistant, not so sure.

 

[61sleepercab]

I would post a thread with your air/12v supply so everyone could see it. It could be built with wheels or a slot to use a hand truck to tote it around . Mark

 

[sojourner]

Sure thing, here's a link to the discussion
http://www.m715zone.com/vb/showthread.php?t=26234

 

[QUADJEEPER]

A little bit of a catch up here, some stuff I did last weekend. Trying to rough in the electrical for an upcoming campout, so laid out my 110v and 12v electrical components. Not doing the solar yet. Just used 3 of my 6 AGM batteries to see if my inverter would carry my AC unit. Ran well for over 4 hours at 90F outside temp, then shut down due to low battery voltage. Was reading 12v, so seems a bit premature. Adding the other 3 batteries should allow all night AC. Vented the portable 14k btu unit out the side of the truck. Will be in a vented cabinet once fully installed. Will be installing a screened louver over it this weekend. Also will be installing my 30A service too. Needed an assist handle so installed this fold up handle untill I get my deck built.

 

[Another Ahab]

A little bit of a catch up here, some stuff I did last weekend. Needed an assist handle so installed this fold up handle untill I get my deck built.

Liking the fold-up handle. Nice item:

- Got a source for that?

 

[RAYZER]

Looks good Scott! That's alot of batteries!

 

[61sleepercab]

Are you sure your (heater?) unit will ventilate flue gasses venting down hill with your 90* bends?????? I hope it is not a flame unit as we might read about you in the memorial service section. Or is this your AC unit?????

 

[QUADJEEPER]

Liking the fold-up handle. Nice item:

- Got a source for that?

Fleabay and Amazon both show them, as well as Camping World.

 

[QUADJEEPER]

Looks good Scott! That's alot of batteries!

Thanks Ray, more batteries to come!

 

[QUADJEEPER]

Are you sure your (heater?) unit will ventilate flue gasses venting down hill with your 90* bends?????? I hope it is not a flame unit as we might read about you in the memorial service section. Or is this your AC unit?????

That is an AC unit ( gets hot here in Florida ) with a heat pump, no gasses, just hot or cold air, depending on mode of operation.

 

[tim292stro]

...Just used 3 of my 6 AGM batteries to see if my inverter would carry my AC unit. Ran well for over 4 hours at 90F outside temp, then shut down due to low battery voltage. Was reading 12v, so seems a bit premature. Adding the other 3 batteries should allow all night AC...

If your AC cycles, but the inverter stays running, it's wasting power... The two places that most power are lost in an inverter is the transistors (BJT, MOSFET, IGBT) and the transformer (and losses here can vary based on the type of transformer and frequency of the driver signal). Loss on a common inverter can go from 10% (maximum load) to 100% (no-load) - with no-load losses being as high as 60Watts on a cheap 1kW inverter. If you think about it, this is like running an A/C and a 60Watt light bulb.

Some of the better inverters have a low/no-load circuit, which can tell that there is no or negligible load on the inverter and turn off the large stage inverter, falling down to a small low-output inverter (better efficiency). If you had a window-type A/C unit rather than the self-contained electronic type, you could easily take the mechanical thermostat contactor and wire it into the on-off switch of the inverter, and hard-wire the compressor/fan into the inverter (thermostat signals compressor/fan demand, turns on the inverter which then powers the compressor). This configuration would draw no power when no A/C is used. Same principal on a cheap mini-fridge...

You might be able to "hack" one of the electronic A/C units - find the low-voltage circuitry and power it directly from the battery (small voltage regulator circuit) and have the electronics signal the inverter to turn on when the compressor/fan is needed. For my S250 build, I'm going to peak efficiency, so I'm going to be building the A/C and refer from scratch to get the most out of the batteries.

 

[zout]

I did not read the full thread.
If you can run a type of heater from your deep cycle batteries controlling the time you are far better off in the interior - they do not have to run full time.

I would never stick propane on anything - it seems 61 has seen personally the damage propane can do even with manufacture items and circumstances are under Murphy control - it is not a pleasant sight. Besides being a TARGET rich environment.
Solar heater controlled ? could be an option.
Even I have an solar controlled fan for the 7 240 amp hour batteries I have - I trust nothing.

IF your running a gen - you can use your roof ac unit with a heater unit built into it - your not going to want to run this very long in the box - it gets HOT quick in there.

Only suggestions Bro - there are a lot more folks on here smarter than I am. Look at the suggestions and work them into how ever your going to build looking at all options to keep it S I M P L E.

 

[QUADJEEPER]

If your AC cycles, but the inverter stays running, it's wasting power... The two places that most power are lost in an inverter is the transistors (BJT, MOSFET, IGBT) and the transformer (and losses here can vary based on the type of transformer and frequency of the driver signal). Loss on a common inverter can go from 10% (maximum load) to 100% (no-load) - with no-load losses being as high as 60Watts on a cheap 1kW inverter. If you think about it, this is like running an A/C and a 60Watt light bulb.

Some of the better inverters have a low/no-load circuit, which can tell that there is no or negligible load on the inverter and turn off the large stage inverter, falling down to a small low-output inverter (better efficiency). If you had a window-type A/C unit rather than the self-contained electronic type, you could easily take the mechanical thermostat contactor and wire it into the on-off switch of the inverter, and hard-wire the compressor/fan into the inverter (thermostat signals compressor/fan demand, turns on the inverter which then powers the compressor). This configuration would draw no power when no A/C is used. Same principal on a cheap mini-fridge...

You might be able to "hack" one of the electronic A/C units - find the low-voltage circuitry and power it directly from the battery (small voltage regulator circuit) and have the electronics signal the inverter to turn on when the compressor/fan is needed. For my S250 build, I'm going to peak efficiency, so I'm going to be building the A/C and refer from scratch to get the most out of the batteries.

I am running a pure sine wave inverter, fairly efficient loaded or unloaded. I've watched the amp draw and it is doable with both the AC and the heat pump. When the AC compressor cycles off, my inverter amp draw is less than 6 amps. Plus with the 1k of solar I have for the roof, it will keep the system charged. Didn't want a window type of AC unit, as it took up too much space.

 

[QUADJEEPER]

I did not read the full thread.
If you can run a type of heater from your deep cycle batteries controlling the time you are far better off in the interior - they do not have to run full time.

I would never stick propane on anything - it seems 61 has seen personally the damage propane can do even with manufacture items and circumstances are under Murphy control - it is not a pleasant sight. Besides being a TARGET rich environment.
Solar heater controlled ? could be an option.
Even I have an solar controlled fan for the 7 240 amp hour batteries I have - I trust nothing.

IF your running a gen - you can use your roof ac unit with a heater unit built into it - your not going to want to run this very long in the box - it gets HOT quick in there.

Only suggestions Bro - there are a lot more folks on here smarter than I am. Look at the suggestions and work them into how ever your going to build looking at all options to keep it S I M P L E.

My AC unit is also a heat pump, so no other heater needed. Blankets and sleeping bags if too cold for heat pump or no 110v available. Doesn't get real cold here, although may be in the mountains someday. No propane will be used, I don't like gas and want to stick with diesel only if possible. That's why I'm looking for a small diesel inverter generator. My AC unit is inside, the pic shows it not yet fully installed. Roof air would be too high and interfere with my solar panels. They are 7.5 feet wide and 11.5 feet long, my entire 109 roof area.

 

[tim292stro]

Fyi, "less than 6-amps" at 12Volts is still "up to 72watts" idle.

If space is a concern, mini-splits are fairly easy to fit in most things, and directly reject the heat to the outside with only a small refrigerant plumbing hole in the enclosure. Interestingly, most home HVAC equipment works on 24V except for the fans and compressor, so again a simple hack to only "invert" enough power to run a specific load can have you in the upper 90% of efficiency pretty much all the time.

I recognize you already have your equipment, so changing anything is probably out of the question, I'm just mentioning this for posterity

 

[QUADJEEPER]

Fyi, "less than 6-amps" at 12Volts is still "up to 72watts" idle.

If space is a concern, mini-splits are fairly easy to fit in most things, and directly reject the heat to the outside with only a small refrigerant plumbing hole in the enclosure. Interestingly, most home HVAC equipment works on 24V except for the fans and compressor, so again a simple hack to only "invert" enough power to run a specific load can have you in the upper 90% of efficiency pretty much all the time.

I recognize you already have your equipment, so changing anything is probably out of the question, I'm just mentioning this for posterity

72 watts are not much when I'm charging with 1000 watts of solar. Plus AC only used intermittently. Looked onto a mini split, too costly and used too much wall space. Thanks for the input though.

 

[QUADJEEPER]

Got a little bit more done today. Installed and wired a 30A shore power connector, installed a combo fresh/city water inlet and put a screened louver over my AC vent. Also got started on my breaker panel and some branch circuits. I'm using stranded 14ga. boat cable.

 

[tim292stro]

72 watts are not much when I'm charging with 1000 watts of solar. Plus AC only used intermittently. Looked onto a mini split, too costly and used too much wall space. Thanks for the input though.

Not to be argumentative here, but 72Watts is 7.2% of the peak/ideal generation power of your solar (very nearly 10% or 1/10th). Also recall that in order to recharge batteries you need to put about 125% of the used charge into the battery (charging is not 100% efficient either). This means that to replace 72watts used during an hour (72W/hr), you need about 90Watts for an hour to do that (90W/hr). If your load is drawing power while the battery is also charging, that's another 72Watts that isn't available to any other load. This means to run a load that draws 72 Watts over an hour while charging the battery that supplied power for that load over another past hour, you are actually using about 160Watts from your solar panel (about 16% of your total peak/ideal generation capacity).

Introduce cloud cover issues on a single generation "plant", and you can see generation variability from +/-15% to +/-40%. This means you could see as little as 600Watts generated due to environmental causes - and that 160Watts (run+charge) starts to hurt at about 27% of your total solar generation capacity (round it up about a third for dramatic effect ).

And my point again here is that if your inverter was switched off for the time period that it would have otherwise been running "ready to support a load", your draw and charge impact for that same two hour example would be 0Watts - you'd get that 27% of your generation capacity back. If you start looking at your whole system cost (panels, charger, batteries, fuel to move the total system based on size/weight), you might find that spending an hour to reconfigure a relay and an inverter so that it really only draws power when it's needed would be time well spent versus jacking up the size of a system, running a generator to make up the remaining power, or limiting your total run-time.

 

[QUADJEEPER]

Not to be argumentative here, but 72Watts is 7.2% of the peak/ideal generation power of your solar (very nearly 10% or 1/10th). Also recall that in order to recharge batteries you need to put about 125% of the used charge into the battery (charging is not 100% efficient either). This means that to replace 72watts used during an hour (72W/hr), you need about 90Watts for an hour to do that (90W/hr). If your load is drawing power while the battery is also charging, that's another 72Watts that isn't available to any other load. This means to run a load that draws 72 Watts over an hour while charging the battery that supplied power for that load over another past hour, you are actually using about 160Watts from your solar panel (about 16% of your total peak/ideal generation capacity).

Introduce cloud cover issues on a single generation "plant", and you can see generation variability from +/-15% to +/-40%. This means you could see as little as 600Watts generated due to environmental causes - and that 160Watts (run+charge) starts to hurt at about 27% of your total solar generation capacity (round it up about a third for dramatic effect ).

And my point again here is that if your inverter was switched off for the time period that it would have otherwise been running "ready to support a load", your draw and charge impact for that same two hour example would be 0Watts - you'd get that 27% of your generation capacity back. If you start looking at your whole system cost (panels, charger, batteries, fuel to move the total system based on size/weight), you might find that spending an hour to reconfigure a relay and an inverter so that it really only draws power when it's needed would be time well spent versus jacking up the size of a system, running a generator to make up the remaining power, or limiting your total run-time.

Thanks for your input. I have been working with 12v DC systems and alternative energy for over 30 years. I have calculated what my intended loads are and with all of the variables figured in, I feel it will work as intended. I have a larger system for my home and it has worked well for nearly 10 years.

 

[QUADJEEPER]

Whew. Tired, but got a fair amount done this weekend. Installed 4 outside outlets, two shown, got about 98% of my 110v ac wiring in, and about 75% of my 12v dc wiring done. Still need to install and wire the 12v fuse box. Breaker panel mostly wired. Need to instal the wall board, ceiling boards and the bathroom walls before much else wiring wise can be completed.