Tag Archives: Airstream

Toy-hauler flavor

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One of the trade-offs we had to do with our solar install was to remove our front battery compartments from the trailer to give us more room under that couch for our 4 batteries and electronics.  However, I could not remove the doors for the batteries (not enough time) and had to caulk them sealed.  It was not pretty, in fact, it was so ugly I never took photos of it.  Time to do something about it!  I decided to cover up the holes but try to make it look nice.

I decided to take a page from the toy-haulers.  I ordered some diamond plate.  Now that the trailer is back (after 43 days) I can work on it.  The first step is taking off the old doors.  I guess you get to see the old ugly one in this sequence.

Above you can see the original door, the door opened, the door removed, caulking around the edge, a piece of aluminum to cover the hole, and the cover riveted.

The next step is preparing and installing the diamond plate.  With guidance from Vinnie Lamica of Vinnie’s Northbay Airstream Repair.  He concurred with my plan of using 3M VHB tape for securing the diamond plate.  I know that many solar companies use the same VHB to mount the solar panel brackets to roofs.  Vinnie also recommended that I apply a bead of Trempro 635 around the edge to protect the tape.  I also put on some finished edges to make the diamond plate look nicer.

This is the diamond plate, reversed and cut.  I have markings for my orientation.

This is after placing the VHB tape and finished edges but prior to the bead of Trempro:

The installation was easy to do alone.  Once one part of the VHB grabbed on it was just a matter of pushing on the panel where the tape was and it was done.

Here are some shots:

I am very pleased with the results.  My son said to me, “It looks surprisingly professional”.  Not sure how I should take that…

A quick trailer repair update.  We got our trailer back on 2/9 after 43 days in the shop.  We are glad to have it back and ready to get moving again.

Charging the batteries

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Be warned, this post is a bit heavy on technical issues and one image.

Life in a trailer, especially boondocking, requires monitoring your battery capacity and usage.  The first thing I did to help this when we had our ’92 25′ was get some Sears AGM batteries.  This gave me a larger capacity and less worry about them.  Changing both trailers to LED lighting helped a lot more.  We purchased a couple of generators to help with charging when we needed it and ostensibly run the air conditioners with two of them running.  I also purchased a set of portable solar panels.  I had all the pieces lined up for extended battery usage, except one.  Solar on the trailer.

This was accomplished early this year, shortly before we started our fulltiming/CalExit.  In our travels since May (2017) the solar panels have performed fantastically!  But events during our travels have made me rethink my charging methodology.

Before solar, there were two methods of charging.  When we were hooked into shore power, the converter/charger will charge the batteries and provide 12v DC power.  When towing, the tow vehicle will provide a small amount of charge through the 7pin umbilical cord.  I remember my father hooking up our station wagon to the trailer and letting it idle for extended periods to give the trailer a charge while boondocking.  I have not tried this method.

The converter/charger that came with the trailer was a single-stage charger, meaning it was either charging or not.  On or off.  This can wreak havoc with your batteries, especially if you leave it plugged in while ‘stored’, as we did.  I replaced the converter/charger with a multi-stage version.  This flavor will do a heavy, high amperage charge until the batteries reach a certain voltage.  The next stage is a consistent, lower amperage charge until a different voltage setpoint is reached.  The final stage is a trickle charge just to keep a preset voltage level.

The one issue/problem when adding a solar system, and its inherent charge controller, is to ensure that the two charging ‘brains’ don’t conflict with each other.  Luckily the solar charge controller is adjustable in what voltage it shuts off at.  This way I was able to research the voltage level for the shore power converter/charger and adjust the solar charge controller to just below that voltage.  That way, if we were on shore power the 110V converter/charger would do its’ high amperage charge and get it to a voltage higher than the solar chargers threshold and the solar charging would be negated.

What change have I made in charging the batteries?  Let’s lay a bit more groundwork first.

I no longer have 2 generators, I never did use 2 to run the air conditioner which made the 2nd one expendable.  After our 4+ months on the road I never used our portable solar panels, therefore they are for sale (contact me for more info).  We are now down to shore power charging, solar charging and generator charge (which is essentially shore power charging since the generator creates 110V AC).

The months on the road brought up some odd issues that have steered me to my new path.  We had problems with our refrigerator when we started that were hard to diagnose and explain.  It was not working when we left and started working mysteriously after we were in Arizona for a few days.  It got weird again in Texas.  When talking to the repair shop they mentioned that irregular 12V power has been seen to cause problems with refrigerator circuit boards.  I changed the shore power cables and it started working just fine, making me think it was the cables, but maybe it wasn’t?

We did great on power for about another month until we were in Williamsburg VA.  The spot for the trailer there was very shady and I noticed that the battery was down to about 82% capacity and the shore power was charging it slowly, if at all.  I immediately thought it was the shore power converter/charger and ordered a replacement.  Once it was swapped out, charging was back to normal.

That got me to thinking that maybe our refrigerator problems earlier were symptomatic of a failing converter/charger.  I am now fairly convinced that is true as the refrigerator has not exhibited any type of issues, even when the internal fins were coated with ice due to humidity.

When we were in New York and taking advantage of some courtesy parking, we had some issues with the 15amp shore power that was provided.  The electrical management system that I installed, before we left, would disconnect our power and reconnect continuously.  It made the power connection unusable so we relied upon the solar to take care of the batteries.  This allowed me to notice another aspect of the shore power converter/charger.  When it is in its’ first stage of charging it uses a LOT of amps!  I saw about 18 amps at one time!  That was overloading our 15amp connection.

My next thinking was if I could turn off the shore power converter/charger, I could then control when I used it and turn it off when we are on 15amp.  One option is to turn off the breaker but that would also make the inverter inoperative.  I didn’t want that.  I made my own solution.  I got some parts at Lowes and created a device that the converter/charger plugs into and then it plugs into the wall.  It contains a switch that I can easily turn on and off.

This relates to an ability for me to disable the shore power converter/charger when on a minimal power connection and allow the solar panels to exclusively charge the batteries.

The empirical proof is in.  For the last three weeks, we have been on 15amp power, with the shore power converter/charger turned off, and we have full battery power going into each evening.  I feel it is a great success.