cherterr said:
Proudly displaying inverter right on top of battery box?
While batteries only really offgass during charging at higher states of charge, and this battery is unlikely ever to attain higher states of charge with 10AWG from solenoid, but say it has been bubbling at 14.4 for hours( unlikely to be held by vehicles Voltage regulator). Perhaps the concentration of hydrogen and oxygen has gotten to the point where it could ignite, then the switch is flipped on the inverter right above it.
Unlikely to happen, but a possible BOOM scenario.
Also the inverter is susceptible to the sulfuric acid mist that escapes the battery with the Hydrogen and will be in a very corrosive environment.
Do not put Inverter on top of battery, even an AGM battery in a box. It is unwise in the extreme, and puts all other information in the article under suspicion.
Each socket should be wired with 12 AWG wire and fused no higher than 20 amps. This current level may be too high for many sensitive small electronics, so be careful what you plug in to these outlets.
Absolutely Ridiculous. DC devices draw what they require, You can hook a 0.001 amp LED right to the battery terminals with 0000 gauge cable at is is not going to blow. 12AWG is good, 10 AWG is better for 12v power ports, but the eciggy receptacles and plugs are absolute jokes of electrical connectors, any voltage drop saved on thicker wiring to receptacle from battery, will just be lost again in the connector itself when passing higher wattage and heating up greater.
10 awg wire from the starter battery to solenoid to house battery will severely limit charging, go for 6 or 8 awg minimum, or fatter unless it is an 'inexpensive' AGM which should not be allowed to feed on more than 30 amps per 100AH of capacity.
In the pic showing the Napa brand battery cable. That ring terminal is steel, which is a very poor electrical conductor. it will have significantly more resistance than a proper tin plated copper ring terminal, and it will rust, causing even more resistance and heating and corrosion and failure. Autoparts battery cables are SAE gauge and SAE gauge is 12 to 20% thinner than AWG. AP stores battery cables might be very Convenient, but are very poor cables.
Get professional custom length/terminated cables from this guy made with professional tools with top quality components:
http://www.genuinedealz.com/custom-cables
You will find them barely any more expensive than store bought cables and their quality is a hundred fold that of the AP store cables. Very fast and free shipping, just figure out the lengths needed beforehand and allow for some slack going around radiuses, and make sure the wire insulation cannot chafe.
Putting a 2000 watt inverter on too little battery, battery that never gets anywhere near fully charged makes little sense.
It might fulfill some warm and fuzzies, but a 2k inverter powering a 65 watt load will in general be much less efficient than a 200 watt inverter powering that same load.
A 2Kw inverter on a 100Ah battery is like a top fuel dragster pulling up to the starting line with 1 gallon of methanol in its tank, and it needs 20 gallons to make the 1/4 mile run under full power, and then the delusional driver bragging that their tank can hold 25 gallons right before the tree goes green.
A 200 watt load on an inverter is close to 20 amps. With the peukert effect, a healthy fully charged 100AH battery could only power it for about 1.75 hours before dropping below 50%. With a 10 awg feed from starting battery through solenoid, it would take about 2.5 to 4 hours of driving to get this battery back to ~80% charged, and at least 4 more hours to get to 100% charged and that would be if the vehicles voltage regulator was trying to hold system, voltage at 14.4v+ the whole time. Almost no vehicles will allow this high a voltage to be held to this amount of time, even if you were to drive for 8 hours, the battery is likely to still be well less than 95%.
I love the alternator, I wouldn't be without alternator charging of house battery, but it is NOT the magical instant battery recharger the public believes it to be. it is not free power either, as the more juice it has to make to maintain system voltage, the bigger the load on the engine, and the less MPG one will get, albeit a small factor in MPG.
Fully charging a battery regularly and promptly after any significant discharge is the Key to getting a good lifespan from it. Anything less is just that, the only variable is the degree of detriment to it.
Such a system in that article will have heavily sulfated batteries in short order. How soon their capacity will be so compromised that the user actually notices their capacity loss could take some time. Perhaps enough time passes that it is no big deal and they just replace the battery(s) every 8 months, but proper recharging can and will greatly extend battery longevity to 2 years or more, and yield a much better cycle per dollar ratio, and perform better the whole time, with much more capacity to deliver the whole time.
When I first started out I had a much better house battery charging circuit than shown in that article, and I was going through wally world marine batteries like candy, and rotting my teeth and mental health when it was time to go try and get another warranty replacement.
There is useful information in the article though. Hooking up a solenoid tends to confound Newbies, in how to get it to activate when the engine is running, how to choose a fuse panel circuit. One needs a digital multimeter or just happen to know which particular fuse to tap to activate the solenoid.
One could stuff wire stranding under a glass fuse, but they have products designed for a cleaner install such as these:
http://www.amazon.com/Wirthco-30200...qid=1463679257&sr=1-1&keywords=glass+fuse+tap
http://www.amazon.com/Littelfuse-FH...8&qid=1463679296&sr=1-8&keywords=ATC+fuse+tap
The blower motor circuit is usually a good circuit to tap as it is not live during engine cranking. A circuit live during engine cranking would energize the solenoid and the house battery would contribute to starting the engine. this is not desirable as the contacts in solenoids do wear out, and will wear out faster passing starting current. When they fail they usually seize closed, and then there is no longer any battery isolation with engine off. One will start cycling their engine battery in parallel with house battery, unknowingly.
Another reason is if there is delicate electronics hooked to house battery. When the starter is disengaged it can send voltage spike transients which might be able to damage such devices. Either instantly or it could be cumulative damage over time.
One can also put an illuminated switch to control the solenoid on or off. Sometimes with a cold wet engine and depleted battery, it is desirable to let engine arm a bit and allow the belts to dry out as a depleted battery can cause enough drag on the alternator to cause belt slippage and squealing and belt wear, but with 10awg connecting the batteries through the solenoid, this is unlikely, but a long length of 10 AWG feeding a depleted battery from the alternator is unlikely to ever cause belt squealing, or even come close to allowing a 100% recharge either.
By all means use the alternator as a chrging source, but please do not believe it alone is going to keep the battery happy. it takes time at absorption voltage to fully charge a deeply cycled battery. Getting absorption voltage to the battery is an Issue. Thicker cables between alternator/solenoid/house battery will greatly increase charge rate and reduce the time to full by a considerable margin.
Slowly charging a battery to full is good, and best for the battery, when one has all the time needed to complete the charge at a slow rate. But, in Van Dwelling, maximum charging current for fastest possible recharge times will yield significantly better battery life and allow one to have more useful power. Yes High recharge currents are not as healthy for the battery, but it is more healthy to get the battery to a higher state of charge before that next discharge cycle begins, than it is to baby a battery with Grandpa's 'trickle charge everything' recommendation which has been handed down through the generations.
Alternator in the morning and Solar the rest of the day is a winning combination, and those seeking even better battery life likely need to plug in every so often for a while and allow a grid powered charging source get the battery to full and hold it there for a while, but even smart chargers are not that great at getting a battery to full as they are too timid to hold a high enough voltage for long enough on a heavily worked marine/deep cycle battery.
So if a 6 to 8 month battery life is acceptable to you then the articles recommendations are 'just fine'. Just do not freak out when your battery 'no longer takes a charge' you have murdered it by improper recharging of it.
A little more money spent on thicker cabling could easily double the time before it reaches that point.
Better cabling + solar and once could get 3 years before reaching that point.
Is the cost worth it? Only you can answer that and likely only after batterycide has occurred.
Just keep in mind usually the warrantied battery has no warranty, or its prorated warranty might save you only a few dollars over a new battery, and you are stuck with a marine battery of dubious quality and likely not even close to one of true deep cycle construction.
(Not saying lacking a vitamix would make me miserable, I'm just trying to better prepare on short notice as a newbie w/battery set up!)
