mullerb's musings

I've always looked at power outlets as magic. How do those electrons do their thing? It took a bit of research and consulting to get my head around the details of loads, wire gauges, amp hours, AGM vs flooded batteries, and on and on. I have to give lots of kudos to a neighbor who recently added wiring to his van. He steered me in the right direction and gave me a tour of his system. As with the rest of our build, simple is the theme. Our power needs are low: we want to charge phones, laptop, run a few LED lights and a low-power fridge. Where to start...well, figuring out how much juice you need for those items comes first so that you can figure out how big a battery is called for. Once you know that, you can: figure out how big a house battery you need and how much room you need for it; how to connect the house battery to the alternator in order to charge it; whether you want or need solar to keep it charged; how many circuits you need to wire and what size fuses they need;...