Electric Dreams or Adding A 12 Volt Socket By the Bed

It began as a simple enough idea, put a 12 volt socket near my bed so I could charge my phone overnight or in the morning. Yeah, simple.

On the surface, installing a 12 volt outlet is easy. find a spot, make a hole (make sure you can get to the back of the space where the hole is. Run some wires...and Voila! power for the asking. Yup, that would work for other folks. No problems. For me, as usual...nothing is easy. Odd, since I'm a pretty good person...my "karma" should be pretty good. Perhaps a previous life??? Naaaahhhh!

Looking Into The Access Panel Opening

OK so here we go. Near the head of my bed in the RV is a magazine rack. It's really good at smacking me in the head at night. I figured it should be a cinch to remove and cover the 4 small screw holes thus fixing my cranial problems (no, not THOSE problems....if you have a couch and a LOT of time...maybe).

So I removed the screws pulled off the rack and BEHOLD there was another reason for it being there. It covers the access to the shower plumbing! OK, I'll admit that it was a good idea to have access to this. I'm sure it will eventually leak and need fixing.

I knew I was essentially stuck with the magazine rack now. I could have just covered the hole with a piece of something, though it would never match and I really didn't want a mirror next to my head. Especially given that I would have to see myself early in the morning, waking up. NOT a good thing, trust me. Truth be told, I've been using the magazine rack as a spot to store my cell phone...tablet, etc. overnight. I figured it would be nice to be able to plug them in to charge as well. The nearest 12 Volt outlet was under the vanity sink on the facing. I was plugging in there, but the cord runs across the bathroom door. Not much fun for middle of the night bathroom visits!

Vanity 12 Volt Socket

Nice Hole!

I took the, now removed, magazine rack outside and drilled a hole that was almost the diameter of the inner section of the 12 Volt socket. It was an odd size, and all I had was 3/4" or 1". Then filed the hole to fit the socket snugly -- all done outside to keep the bits of wood and sawdust inside to a minimum.


 I thought I was being smart and proactive!

The outer sleeve of the socket screws onto the inner sleeve and clamps down on the wood surrounding the hole. I screwed it down and realized the wood veneer used as the back of the magazine rack was far too thin to allow the socket to be tightened properly. I resorted to using a couple of large o-rings to bridge the gap. This works OK, for now, but I will likely cut a small block of wood and bore a whole for the inner socket at a later date. I can also screw this to the frame of the magazine rack so it will have more strength to resist plugging and unplugging chargers without cracking or breaking.

Back Of The Magazine Rack

I placed the rack back against the hole. Sort of. Seems that the cold water pipe to the back of the shower valve was blocking the socket. Oh good. I managed to move the old grey piping over a few inches toward the hot water pipe and taped them together; after it was all fitted I would have used a couple of zip ties to secure everything. That's when I realized the 4 screws on the magazine rack wouldn't line up! What was really happening was the access hole is MUCH smaller then the outside edges of the magazine rack. I had to cut a slot on the bottom left side to accommodate the 12 volt socket. At least I could release the water pipes! I didn't like that they would be under additional stress anyway.

Cutting the thin veneer paneling made a huge mess of wood chips and sawdust that, of course, was now all over the bed. Figures. At least it fit in properly now. Now to wire it all up and test.

Uncovered Wiring

Luckily there were already 12 Volt wires I could access through this opening. They're used for the wall sconce by the bed and the sealed light in the shower wall itself. I don't like to cut wires that are working so I shaved off the insulation on one side of each wire, made sure I knew which was positive and which was negative, then tapped into it with a "T."

I soldered them...did I mention I use heat shrink tubing.....no? Yes. I forgot to put that on the first wire and had to take the joint apart to slide it on, then re-solder. I have this 7 "P" rule. Proper, Prior, Planning, Prevents, Piss, Poor, Performance. I try to follow that, most of the time I am successful. The second wire joint worked out much easier. Make sure that the fuse to the existing wires will handle the additional load and the wires are sized to carry the load you will be drawing from the socket. Mine was OK.

Badly Photographed Finished Product

Once replaced and screwed all together I plugged in a few chargers to make sure everything was working. It worked! Looked OK too.

For an easy project, it wasn't so easy. Not because the steps are complicated, just that you never know what problems will come up and have to be solved to reach the finish line.

Now for a good night sleep. I'll have to watch my head, but at least I have power and an unobstructed path to the bathroom!


Be Seeing You...Down The Road,

Rich "The Wanderman"
www.thewanderman.com

Updating & Installing a Fancy New Energy Monitor

We can all agree that it is vitally important to monitor how much power you are using when not connected to shore power or running the generator. It's never fun to run out!  Since RV's have limited space, there is a maximum amount of battery storage that can be carried. Sometimes due to weight, but mostly physical size issues. When I added Solar Power to the mix I wanted to know how much I was using AND putting back each day.

When I bought my RV had an existing Energy Storage Monitoring system, it was a decent working system, but had some problems. Mainly the display was the size of a pocket calculator and the backlighting was so dim you couldn't tell whether it was on or off. It would either tell you what the volts of your battery bank were OR the amount of amps going in or out. You could also toggle a switch to let you know what it believed you had used from the bank (or put back in) But only one at a time. I wanted to be able to read the status of the battery bank at a glance. All the info on one screen AND one I could read from a distance, in the dark.

Most battery monitoring systems sense how much power you are using by running all your loads through a device called a SHUNT These take the large amperages you draw for running your lights, inverters, water pumps, etc. and turn it into a tiny amount of current called a millivolt. This can then be read and displayed by a gauge or computerized battery monitoring system. It sees millivolts, you see amps on the screen. if you didn't use a shunt and hooked the monitor up directly.....it would be bad. Melting stuff bad. A long time ago, a friend told me all electronics contain "magic smoke" if it gets released the component will not work anymore.

A Variety Of Battery Monitors

I started looking at all the commonly available battery and energy monitoring systems. First off, if you wanted a lot of features and a nifty display, it looked like the costs was VERY high. Around $800.00 plus the cost of the SHUNT which would be around $80. I was becoming afraid that I would have to "bite the bullet" and cough up around $1,000.00 to accomplish my goal. I could have gone the other way and used a much less expensive system, but it really would not have solved the problems I had.

Oh well, back to the internet!

After much exploration I found a product built in the U.K. (and sold here under a different name) that sure looked like it was the right tool for the job. Big backlit display, all the info on one screen....looked to good to be true. I sent some email to the company in England and waited. And waited some more. Then sent another e-mail and waited. And waited. No reply. I managed to track down the U.S. distributor of the product and left a few messages. No reply. Why does it seem that manufacturers and vendors seem to NOT want to sell any merchandise? We are willing customers.....shouldn't they WANT to sell to us?  I gave the distributor one final call...behold, someone answered. We chatted about the product. They had a new version that would read 200+amps, which was exactly what I needed for my RV. The biggest possible power draw for me is my 1,800 watt inverter which could draw 150+ amps. That left me a bit of safety overhead. The entire kit for this monitoring system came in around $200 including the shunt! Needless to say, I bought one right then and there. There were some problems with delivery to the distributor from the manufacturer in England, but it arrived in a few weeks.

New 200 Amp Included Shunt

The install wasn't terrible. I removed the older, much larger shunt. (a 400 amp one) and managed to put the newer one in its place. There was some fiddling with heavy gauge wires and the inevitable dropping of screws in impossible to reach places. (Thanks to Passenger Pete for the retrieval!) All in all, it wasn't bad. If you don't have a shunt already in place, it may be a bit tougher since ALL negative load cables to the battery must feed through the shunt to get accurate totals for the monitor.

Next was the installation of the display unit. I thought I had measured it perfectly. Nope. One day, I will get through an entire project without so much as a single "gotcha!" Wasn't going to be today. Seems that the old flush mount panel was an 1/8" larger than the new surface mount display. Bleh. I'm good, but not good enough to UNCUT an original hole in my dash. Ultimately, I used some leftover self sticking, closed cell foam to fill the gap until I can find a nicer trim solution. I am also not crazy about the fact it sticks out from the dash about 1 1/2". I'll learn to live with it!

Finally, we were ready to wire it all together. I re-used the 4 conductor wire that was part of the original energy monitor system. Due to thick headed-ness I wired a couple of the conductors backward and wasn't getting a reading and blew the 5 amp fuse. Once I figured out why the display wasn't displaying (no power, duh.) I swapped the wires and had an operational system.

New Battery Monitor Display (Backlight On)

Looks nice in the dark. AND I can read it from my bed. That was a bonus! Now I have to figure out how to turn on the backlight remotely....ah well, I'll put that on my list.

After figuring out how to calibrate the new system, it seems to be giving precise readings. I'll be testing it in the real world in the coming weeks to see if it's as accurate as advertised.

Be Seeing You.... Down the Road,

Rich "The Wanderman"
http://www.thewanderman.com

Water is Evil. How to Find and Fix RV Vent Leaks - Part.2

Well, Passenger Pete and I tackled the repair of the leaking roof vents recently. Mostly it went well. Of course there were the unavoidable....(Well, OK they could have been avoided if I hadn't been so eager to get the job done before it rained!) issues.

Scraping Begins

First, we began by scraping the existing caulk so it was mostly flat and removing the goop from all the screw heads. It is CRITICAL you get all the silicone (new and old) removed. The tape will NOT stick to silicone and you will not get a watertight seal!

Next, I removed the screws from one side at a time to check for damage and how tight they were. For some of them I placed a dab of wood putty in the hole (below the plastic) before replacing the screw. I figured the tape would hold everything together, but why take chances!

Bad Crack Number #1

Some of the cracks in the caulk had been sealed (by me) with the same paralastic adhesive we used to adhere the Solar Panels to the roof in a previous project. No silicone in that stuff, so it was okay. There were some places that the cracks were VERY bad, you could see into the roof structure if you squinted enough.

We made sure that those were as flat as we could make them with a scraper and a razor blade. You know me, always paranoid and a bit of a perfectionist! Better safe than sorry when it comes to roof leaks in your RV. Water will destroy so many things if left unattended. I'm still thinking about adding some expanding foam to the sections of the roof that allowed the water to seep from the crack all the way out to the edges of the interior.

A reader recommended a product that would prevent additional damage to the wood that had already gotten wet. That's probably a good idea as well.

My roof is fiberglass, so I used soap and water to do the basic cleaning of the areas that the tape would be applied to. After that a scrub down with isopropyl alcohol to prep the surface. If there was any oxidation, we made sure it was all removed with those cleaning steps.

Now the sticky part. I had a 50 foot roll of 4" wide tape to work with. It came wrapped in shrink plastic. Once removed, there were waxed(?) plastic disks on either side of the roll. These are important! I read a forum message someplace that someone had permanently affixed the entire roll flat on their roof! I really didn't want that to happen! I tried to make sure the roll was put CAREFULLY back on the disk or stood up vertically in a safe spot. yes, there were some tense moments....but no disasters. This time!

First Cut piece of Tape

By partially unrolling the tape upside down, we were able to measure and cut each piece. I used an inexpensive pair of "miracle scissors" like the ones Paramedics use for bandages. They work GREAT. You know, you can even cut pennies in half with them, but you shouldn't because the Federal Government frowns on that sort of thing.

Once measured and cut, we flipped the tape over and took a look. So far so good! You have to be careful of the edge of the tape as the sticky stuff is squeezed between two pieces of plastic and has oozed out a bit making the whole edge sticky. Believe me, it WILL stick to almost anything and the gooey residue is hard to remove. Mark where you want the tape to be, we used blue painters tape.

One Side Done!

The trick to removing the backing on the tape is to hold it in both hands, between thumb and forefinger and vigorously "waggle" it back and forth. This releases the backing at the top edge and makes it easy to remove. ONLY remove a couple of inches!!!! This stuff will stick to almost anything, especially itself! Better to have only a couple of inches to work with. Flip the tape, sticky side down (DUH!) then affix it next to the previously set tape marks. Pull the plastic backing slowly back toward the other end while gently pressing the tape to the surface. Make sure you have the inside edge lined up against the vent. I hate crooked seams! Rub the tape down so it forms over and around all the bumps and imperfections underneath it. You can use a small wallpaper roller if you like. Try and eliminate as much of the air bubbles and creases that you can for a smooth professional appearance.

Three Sides Done

Repeat for the other three sides. I left the side with the hinge for last as it was going to require trimming the tape the long way. At each side we went back over the previous ones to further smooth out the bumps and make sure it was tacked down all the way around. Especially at the seams where the tape overlaps. You can choose which order to do these, since you may want a different pattern for the overlaps.

The Hinge

And now for the hinge side. As you can see by the photo, this one was pretty gunked up and needed some special attention. After it was cleaned and prepped, it didn't look all that much better! One of the nice things about a 4" piece of tape is that it will cover a lot of visual evils! One of the roof vents only had to be trimmed along one edge (near the solar panel), but the other had to have 1"+ removed to make it fit. This wasn't super hard to do, but my ability to cut a straight line isn't so great to start with. I'll spare you the photo of that crooked mess!

Finally, the first vent was completed. there was some residue from where the glue bled out of the seams. I will have to figure out how to remove it...mainly because it looks bad. The other vent had much more trimming to do, but since we'd already done one it took about the same amount of time. We also did the flanges on my slowly dying shower skylight. this was a much bigger job and every side had its problems. I am pretty sure no one else will have those sorts of odd Aero Cruiser issues. if you do, let me know I've already suffered through THAT fix.

One Of The Round Roof Vents

All that's left were the round vents for the bath, stove, water heater, tanks, etc. Those are all round. I've managed to get one of them done. It looks OK, not great, but OK. I left the bonding tape square around the outside edge since I couldn't manage a true round cut. Ah well...better it works well than looks good!  At some point I will figure out how to remove the tape residue.....

I'm going to practice my scissor work before the other ones get done get tackled. Besides, they're not leaking....YET!

Be Seeing You...Down The Road,

Rich "The Wanderman"
http://www.thewanderman.com

See Part 1: Click Here!