Tiny House Build and 12v fuse block

[Sabatical]

Ceiling vjoint is installed. After sanding it'll get covered with boiled linseed oil.

 

[Sabatical]

I've spent the last couple days working on the kitchen. I had a basic idea how I wanted it to look and have just been letting it take me where it wants. The sink side is not quite finished. I had to finish roughing in the plumbing so I'd know how to cut the shelf.
Thanks for reading!

 

[highdesertranger]

looking good, it looks like it's going to be real cozy. I like how you incorporated the shelving into the stairs. highdesertranger

 

[Sabatical]

It seems like we are going to have way more kitchen storage than we need. Hopefully I can fashion enough clothing storage. We'll be moving into it from the camper so the downsizing is already done. I'm thinking about long legnth hanging space in the bathroom for the wifes dresses. The loft will only have enough height for shirt hanging. Any ideas out there?

 

[Sabatical]

The wife started painting yesterday. We got paint from the "Rebuild" store (they recycle paint and mix it into batched colors). It turned out lighter than the marked color but it's staying put for at least a year.

 

[sassypickins]

Beautiful sight to see so far.

You say the kitchen has plenty of storage. Could you shorten the 2nd countertop to the counter leg and turn the under-stair space into a narrow dress closet with a false floor over the batteries? There might be room for little cubbies against the risers under there. If the vertical dress space requirement does not go all the way up, could you remove that piece from the upper stair-back and use that space for a shelf or two?

Sassy

 

[Sabatical]

Great ideas Sassy! Thanks for your input.

 

[Sabatical]

Today was productive! I made the window casings the other day and today they got painted and hung. Also the ceilings were sanded and linseed oil applied. It's feeling like we're getting closer which is a GOOD thing.

 

[WheelEstate USA]

Beautifully done.

 

[Sabatical]

Thank you Jay.

 

[Sabatical]

Trim work today. [SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH]

 

[highdesertranger]

nice, and great use of space. I like the full size range/oven. highdesertranger

 

[Sabatical]

Thanks HDR. Use of space is key as you well know. We don't have much stuff so the space won't look crammed in which makes my minimalistic inner self happy.
The stove is a Peerless Premier (made in the U.S.A.) apt. size gas range with battery ignition. Plenty of cook space for us especially considering we've been using an RV range for most of a year.
We're getting closer...can't wait to live in it!

 

[Sabatical]

We got the solar setup installed yesterday. Yeah! I need to go through the setup on the Kid charge controllers. It seemed to be stuck on bulk all afternoon. The 6 battery 675 amp hour bank got to 100% but the controller didn't register that.
After wrapping up some other loose ends we moved in. The previous night in the camper was bitterly cold and last night was going to be colder so there was big incentive to make it happen. It's going to take some time to get adjusted to the space and get all the little bugs worked out. More pics to follow.

 

[akrvbob]

That is a VERY clean install!
Bob

 

[MikeRuth]

We got the solar setup installed yesterday. Yeah! I need to go through the setup on the Kid charge controllers. It seemed to be stuck on bulk all afternoon. The 6 battery 675 amp hour bank got to 100% but the controller didn't register that.
After wrapping up some other loose ends we moved in. The previous night in the camper was bitterly cold and last night was going to be colder so there was big incentive to make it happen. It's going to take some time to get adjusted to the space and get all the little bugs worked out. More pics to follow.

It may not be stuck and indeed your batteries are just sucking up the juice. My brand new Trojans that were dated one month old took several hours to come up full. 

Do you have a clamp on amp meter? Do you have a Hydrometer? The amp meter will tell you for sure how much current is going into the bank, the hydrometer will tell you exactly what the state of Charge is (SOC). 

Just an observation from your photo, how are the batteries secured? I also noticed the Blue wire running over the vent caps, hopefully you have some slack there making it easier to remove the vent cap when you checking the water level.

 

[SternWake]

It may not be stuck and indeed your batteries are just sucking up the juice. My brand new Trojans that were dated one month old took several hours to come up full. 

Do you have a clamp on amp meter? Do you have a Hydrometer? The amp meter will tell you for sure how much current is going into the bank, the hydrometer will tell you exactly what the state of Charge is (SOC). 

Just an observation from your photo, how are the batteries secured? I also noticed the Blue wire running over the vent caps, hopefully you have some slack there making it easier to remove the vent cap when you checking the water level.

I got to agree with this.

All battery monitors need to be properly programmed and some need to learn the system.

I am not familiar at all with your solar controller, but I could program mine to stay in bulk no matter what by setting absorption voltage unattainably high.

All too common on  forums is the magic belief that a battery monitor is alwyas 100% accurate, or a blinking green light indicates a fully charged battery.  Trust if you really really want, but Verification of full charge is the wiser course.  And since you have flooded batteries, the Hydrometer is the battery polygraph.  Set absorption voltage on those T-105s at 14.8v, and the absorption duration will vary from anywhere from 1 to 5 hours depending on many factors as to when the Specific gravity maxes out and the controller should drop to float voltage.

If it drops to float voltage when the batteries are only an actual 92%, then they will sulfate quicker, lose capacity quicker, and when an equalization charge is performed to try and regain lost capacity, it might be too little too late, or it might take 6 hours at 16V for the specific gravity to max out, which is kind of abusive to the battery, and certainly more so than getting to 99% every day and a 2 hour equalization every 2 months.

So it is better to prevent the sulfation than treat the sulfation, and to do this requires maxing out the SG or nearly so, every charge cycle, and this is done by figuring out the time needed at absorption voltage in your usage.  And this will be different for different levels of discharge, so one needs to know when to adjust downward for a non deep cycling usage, and then crank up the settings when cycling hard and heavy day after day.  The whole set it and forget it, automatic aspect of charge controllers is marketing at work.  If they flat out told you they some fine tuning is required to be accurate for each and every system, well they would sell a lot less.  

Just like the 12v chest style compressor fridges that come with the horrid ciggy plug connectors.  They do not have a biog asterix n the package that says that this connector is problem prone and the consumer is wise to cut the cord and attach directly to battery terminals fusing at the battery terminals over thick wiring.

But that is exactly what the compressor controller itself says to do

Solar is great, but getting the adjustable controller dialed in to really make the batteries happy, takes some effort initially, and some further understanding of the battery's needs.

Also a battery monitor usually needs to be rezeroed occassionally.  Mine gets tricked by my alternator into declaring 100% and 0AH from full.  My alternator will allow 14.9v.  When it brings the battery to 14.9v the solar controller does not have to provide anything and absorption voltage is exceeded, and it believes the batteries are full, erroneously.  I foolishly believed the monitor it those first 4 months too, and the blinking green light, but those batteries were far from fully charged, and they died an early death because of it. 

Please read MaineSail's articles about battery Monitors.  He explains it better than I.

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/battery_monitor

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/programming_a_battery_monitor

 

[Sabatical]

Thanks for the kind words Bob.

Mike the batteries are only secured by gravity at this point, but the tiny house is not going to be moving anywhere. I need to build an enclosure which I can vent but it was more important to be able to sleep someplace warm. In the next few days I will make a cover to go over the top of the batteries and run a piece of pvc through the wall for venting.
I was thinking last night that if we ever do move it that we'd better empty out the contents first. I would imagine we are really close to gvwr with just the structure.
Those blue wires are for the battery temp sensors and there is a mile of slack so I'll re-route them to tidy it up. I arranged the batteries so that none of the cables cross each other. I was pretty happy about being able to do that, in the previous setup the wires all crossed each other. I don't know if that causes an issue (it hadn't for me before) but a buddy thought it might so on the chance that opposite polarity wires cause trouble, we'll be safe.
I should also note here that I am breaking one of the big rules here and using 4 new batteries and two 10 month old batteries. We've had way more capacity than needed in the camper so that system is being downsized to 225ah. We will live the same way in the tiny house that we did in the camper but added a 12v 5cf fridge so we upped the bank size. The question in my mind was what to do with two somewhat used batteries. Being on a tight budget we opted to just buy 4 new batteries and add the 2 used ones to make up the bank. I know that some would scoff at that but i was willing to take the risk. The used batteries haven't seen anything less than 90% state of charge in their life so fingers crossed we'll get a good life out of the bank.
I do have a cheapo clamp on amp meter Mike. I hadn't thought to use it to check amps in. That's a great idea. I did check all cells with the hydrometer prior to installation. The new batteries were all right on. The used ones needed some water so they didn't get checked but will when I'm working in there over the next couple days.
One thing I noticed a huge improvement in is the solar panel performance. They were flat mounted on the camper and now are on a rack somewhere near 45 degrees of tilt. I'm not sure of tthe numbers yet because i didn't have time to watch yesterday but previous best was 9 amps which is just a hair more than one panels rating.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Scott

 

[Sabatical]

So if i understand you correctly SternWake, after a "full charge" (switch to float) i should check specific gravity and if not 100% adjust the absorb time up?
If so that seems to make alot of sense. I had been wondering about the best way to tell if the absorb time was long enough. Unfortunately i keep too many irons in the fire at this point and do the "set it and forget it" method. I'm embarrassed to say that i hadn't check my batteries since June and the water was just above the plates. Shame on me. At least i'm only hurting myself with complacency.
I've been judging health of the bank soley based on the Whiz Bang jr. readings which is not very smart. When i removed the system from the camper i left the blinking light dummy meter on the wall. I realized quickly that it was useless and my wife would hang her purse in front of it to block the light at night. I'll take it down and throw it in the box of stuff headed for the free pile at the RTR. Maybe it will be of use to somebody. If it doesn't get grabbed up i'll toss it.

 

[SternWake]

Ideally the older slightly used batteries would be charged separately and fully before connecting them in parallel series with the newer batteries. Hopefully the resting voltages when fully charged would be within 0.02v of each other. When the restiing fully charged voltages are more than 0.1v difference then one either really needs to get the lower batteries up through a long equalization charge, and if not possible, then should not parallel them with the Newer batteries, as the newer batteries will always be charging the older batteries, slightly.

New and old batteries in parallel are never ideal, how how unideal they are depends on how aged the older batteries are.

Considering no two batteries off the assembly line are exactly the same, the recommendation that old and new batteries HAVE to be same age make and condition is a little unrealistic, but it is not wrong.

Old batteries can certainly drag down new batteries when in parallel, and they can also make it hard to fine tune absorption voltage and duration as when the older batteries finally max out the SG, the newer batteries might have been there for an hour or more, and that hour they were using more water and having their positive plates migrate to the negative plates, unnecessarily.

Fine tuning absorption voltage and duration is the key to battery longevity, assuming the charging source can attain absorption voltage and hold it long enough.

The capacity is King mindset is not always right either. Too much battery for too little solar should not give the warm and fuzzies, especially when the bank is drawn below 80% SOC often

Keep in mind Trojan's 10 to 13% 'recommendation' which assumes a plug in charging source. This would be about 25 amps for a Single pair of T-105s when draws to the 50% range, which is about 450 watts of Solar.

Rolls Surrette make the worlds best Flooded lead acid batteries. In this extremely well written article, they recommend way more solar wattage to battery capacity than is commonly accepted by the Off grid community who use to say 5 to 13% was the acceptable range.

http://rollsbattery.com/uploads/pdfs/documents/user_manuals/Rolls_Battery_Manual.pdf

please read from page 26 ON regarding solar charging of batteries, and read the whole thing twice. If one can understand it all, then one would know everything possible about lead acid battery care.

A
Renewable Energy PV system should be designed to provide a charge current that is
capable of recharging the batteries quickly, efficiently and within the window of time
when the system is generating peak power (peak sun). The charge current should be
within 10-20% of the 20 Hr AH rate (C20) rate of the battery bank

This is Much much higher than the often stated and recommended 1 solar watt to 1Ah of battery capacity.

200 watts for 200AH of capacity is about a 5% rate.

Rolls Surrette recommendations are not to be brushed off lightly. Do so at the expense of battery life. Dialing in absorption voltage and duration on lightly cycled large capacity banks with too little solar wattage, will greatly offset having too little a ratio that can achieve a 10 to 20% rate.

When I lowered my battery capacity to better meet my Solars maximum ability, I came close to 10%, and my cycles per dollar ratio was significantly more agreeable than more feel good capacity cycled shallower.

So my point is, more capacity than needed might make a person feel better, but it might not save them a dollar, and could very well cost more money for those warm and fuzzies of having a lot of battery capacity.

I've gone from 345 total AH capacity, to just 90AH total, and I take 45 to 60 AH each night. But I employ high alternator currents or a 40 amp charger whenever my solar has no chance of replacing those 45 to 60AH + ~5% more.

Nothing to freak out about, having more capacity than needed or which is ideal for the charging sources rate, just be aware it is not ideal, and when setting up a new system, the typical 1 to 1 ratio, with 50% discharges, is way too little to keep the battery happy.