Chad Heiser

Thank you Kirk, I appreciate the kind words. I don't mind the referrals at all. it is why the website exists.

I skirt through the corner of Oregon going to the WCR every year double towing. I always keep my eye out. So far I haven't had an issue. It would be a hassle and add quite a bit of added distance and time to not skirt the southeast corner of Oregon on Highway 95 going north out of Winnemucca, NV for me to get to the WCR.

If you want a dedicated inverter just for the refrigerator, it will either need to have a built in transfer switch (so it can pass shore power through or power the refrigerator from battery) or you will need a small external transfer switch. Most small inverters used to power a refrigerator (1000 watts or less) are unlikely to have built in transfer switches. If you are interested, I have the 1000 watt pure sign wave Magnum 1012 inverter (I know you don't do Amazon, but this is just for information on what it is). I just took out of my trailer when I redid my system and it is available (much cheaper than new). It is a high quality inverter and simple to hook up and use. I also have the remote on/off switch for it (and in line Class T fuses and fuse holder for circuit protection). When you couple it with a Magnum CSW-TS15, it will run the refrigerator from either shore power or battery automatically. I have two of these transfer switches in my trailer (I left them in with the new install so they are not available from me). One is on the refrigerator circuit and the other is on a circuit in my bedroom to keep my bedside clock going. I tied both of them into the 1012 inverter with simple 12 gauge extension cords.

Glad I could help. If your going to be in the Quartzsite area in January, I'd be happy to go over your system with you and give you a better idea on how everything interacts and the various functions.

The gist of it is you can't tow recreational doubles in Oregon.

Time to start thinking about heading south for winters in the future. 😁 Merry Christmas to all.

Very nice. Enjoy it.

That is simple picture mid installation to show the VE.Bus Smart Dongle (which is why it was posted). That installation is nowhere near complete. You can see walls missing and tools laying around. Those batteries got a box built around them to cover them once the installation was complete. Anyone who would leave exposed batteries in a basement storage area where gear could fall on them should not be doing installations. That is not to say you should never leave exposed batteries. If the batteries are in their own compartment with nothing else or if they are installed behind walls where nothing can get to them, then there is no need to cover them.

You do need to have a way to tell the inverter what it is plugged into (50 amp, 30 amp, 20 amp, 15 amp, etc). If you don't have a way to change this setting, the inverter will blow the breaker when plugged into low amperage sources because the charger will try to pull more power than is available. You also need to tell the inverter what amperage is available from shore power so it knows when to start power assisting if more power is trying to be used. This functionality does not require a display or physical remote panel though. The easiest way to accomplish this task is to add a VE.Bus Smart Dongle. This device will allow the user to connect to the inverter via Bluetooth through the Victron Connect app (the same app you use to connect to the smart shunt or BMV 712 battery monitor as well as the Smart Solar controllers). With the app, you can turn the inverter on and off and change the amperage input setting (as well as get some additional information about what the inverter is doing). The remote displays and panels will allow this same functionality, but require some additional wiring and installation considerations. The VE.Bus Smart Dongle plugs into the inverter via an RJ45 cable and can be wired directly to the inverter's 12 volt connections for its power. The dongle also comes with double stick tape installed so it can be stuck to the inverter for an easy installation. It takes about 5 minutes or less to actually install one. Here is a picture of one installed on the side of a Victron Multiplus 3K inverter.

The Trav'ler was installed by Rolling Retreats before I picked the trailer up when it was new (February 2017). I did this rather than having DRV install it as part of the build because it was less expensive. Winegard charged $455 for the repair. This included shipping both ways. I was right at the end of the 5 year window to get this pricing. I don't know how much more it would have cost if I was outside that 5 year window.

Took my rig in to get the annual service done. Asked the shop to try to track down an air leak on the secondary air system. The only thing they could find was a slow leak on one of the tank valves. That, unfortunately didn’t solve my problem while driving. The primary system holds air for a long time but the secondary system cycles the compressor about every 8 minutes while driving. I guess I need to pull the whisper out and start hunting for leaks.

I replaced the turret on our Winegard Trav’ler antenna today. I got an azimuth motor error when trying to deploy the antenna while at the coast the end of October. Couldn’t get past the error and ultimately called Winegard. The only way to fix the problem was to remove the turret and send it off to them, which I did in mid November. It came back last week repaired and I finally got time to reinstall it. All is back to normal now and we have our satellite TV again.

I also got called today and made my reservation.

I also got a call today and made my reservations.

I updated my website with a complete description of my system and all the pictures. Here is the link.

I finally had some time to play with power draws through the inverters. I was able to run all three air conditioners, the refrigerator, living room entertainment center and the microwave all at once from inverter/battery power. I still had more power available from the inverters, even with all that going. The inverters were producing nearly 6000 watts of AC power, so there was another 2000 watts minimum available. The were pulling 624 amps from the batteries in order to do this, so I can't do it for any extended period though 😁. This experiment did make me realize I need to better balance some of the high draw circuits between L1 and L2 in the power panel. I will get that taken care of in the next day or two.

There are two different mounts for it. The one I used has a slight stand off from the wall. It allows the HDMI cable to come out from behind the display while it is mounted to the wall. My HDMI cable goes up into the ceiling of that cabinet and then over to the sidewall and down to the Cerbo GX. It comes with a different mount that can be mounted directly to the wall without a stand off. That mount requires a hole be cut in the wall for the HDMI cable. I couldn't cut a hole in that particular wall because the routing of my HDMI cable wouldn't have worked to get to where I needed it. A completely flush mount to the wall would have to be some kind of custom inset. It could be done relatively easily if there was access to the back side of the wall it was mounted on, but in most cases in an RV that is pretty difficult to do because of the lack of access.

Here is the Touch 50 hanging under the Touch 70. It gives a little more perspective on the sizes of the units.

The new GX Touch 70 display showed up this week. It is significantly bigger than the GX Touch 50 I am used to dealing with. Who would have thought 2" could make such a difference 🤪. Of course it is 2" on the diagonal, so it is very noticeable. It needs a decent amount of space to mount it, which not all control centers or cabinets will have. Luckily my cabinet has plenty of room. I really like it and am glad I went with the larger one. It is easier to interact with the menus on the larger screen too. Here are a couple of pictures. Hopefully I will get some time this weekend to play with running some heavy loads from the inverters (who knew retirement would keep me so busy 😁). Now that I am thinking about it, I have a Touch 50 sitting around. I will have to take a picture of them side by side to show the difference. Stay tuned.....

That’s what I would do. On my 80” panels, I come in 10” from the end and one dead center on each side. With a 10” longer panel, I’d probably come in 12” to 15” from the end.

My cutoff is 60”. With 60” or less panels, I use two mounts per side. With panels that are longer than 60”, I use three mounts per side. The large residential panels we are discussing here are typically intended to be mounted in a static position on a rail system. Often no holes are used at all in residential systems. The mounting rails have squeeze mounts that slide into the mounting rail and then clamp down on the top of the panel frame. In an RV installation there are more factors to contend with than in a residential installation. The movement of the trailer as it bounces down the road, tree limbs and other hazards as you drive through RV parks, wind loads potentially from more than one direction at the same time while driving, etc. Because the RV mounts have to contend with more forces than residential mounts, I error on the side of caution. With the 80” REC panels I installed on my rig, I could see the panels bow slightly while they were sitting on saw horses being prepped for installation. These panels have slim (30 mm if my memory serves) frames rather than the typical thicker (50 mm if my memory serves) frames on many panels though. To get three z brackets per side on a large panels, I often have to drill holes. I have even had to drill holes on smaller panels I only used two brackets per side on to get them in the correct location. Some panels don’t have matching holes on both sides of the panel. I basically always plan to drill holes for mounts. Sometimes I get lucky and don’t have to, but there really isn’t a predictable pattern used across panel manufacturers for frame holes that I have found in my experience.

We have not spent much time in the trailer this weekend, so the testing I thought I would be doing hasn't really happened like I thought it would. I will say our site is horrible for for solar production. I didn't pay any attention to the site layout when we arrived because it was late and dark. I slept in the next morning and didn't go outside until it was time to leave for the family get together, so again I didn't look at the site layout. It was dark again when we returned to the trailer on Thanksgiving night, so another opportunity to look at the layout was lost. I was aware based on monitoring the system throughout the day on Thanksgiving that solar production was not what I expected though. I finally looked at the site this morning during the daylight before we headed back over to the family gathering. The trailer is oriented north south in the site and there are definitely trees on both sides of the site that cast shadows on the roof unless the sun is directly overhead. This meshed with what I was seeing from monitoring the solar production of the system during the day while we were at the gathering. We got decent production for about three hours midday, but the rest of the day (both mornings and evenings) the production was sub par because of the tree shading. This is a long winded way of saying our solar production never got us out of the hole I created the first night we arrived and used over 350 amp hours of battery capacity. I decided to plug the trailer in when we returned to it this evening to charge the batteries up a bit and do some testing. When I did this, I discovered something I didn't expect. The site we are in is a 50 amp, full hook up, long, pull through site. It is ideal for a large rig like we have. We have stayed at this park many times in various sites here. They are all similar and we like the park for its convenience when we are visiting my wife's family. What I discovered when I plugged in is their 50 amp pedestal doesn't produce true 50 amp 120/240 volt power. It has two legs of 120 volt, but they are not in opposing phases and don't produce 240 volts. I have never actually checked the power here because we have a built in EMS from Surgeguard and I rely on that to keep the trailer safe from bad power pedestals (unfortunately the EMS doesn't check for true 240 volt power). We don't need 240 volt power unless we want to run the clothes dryer (which is 240 volt in our rig) and we have never needed the clothes dryer when we have stayed here because we usually only stay here for a few days at a time. In other words this has never come up before. The reason I discovered this is because when I plugged in, the inverters were only producing half the charging power I was expecting. I checked the inverters and realized L1 was charging, but L2 was still inverting. As I explained previously in this thread, the way the inverters are programmed to produce 120/240 volt power, they will always produce that power regardless of what the shore source is or regardless of whether there even is a shore source. When there is less than 50 amp 120/240 volt power, L1 will pass that power through and L2 will invert in an opposing phase to make 240 volt power. Because L2 was inverting, it wasn't charging and only half the charging capabilities of the system were being used. This is what clued me in to the issue. I pulled my meter out and verified this power issue at the pedestal. I didn't pull the pedestal apart to see if it was a four wire feed (just with non opposing phases of power) or if it was a three wire feed and they just jumpered the other side of the 50 amp plug to make it appear to be a four wire 50 amp feed. If it is a four wire feed with non opposing phases of power, it could cause a dangerous overload of the neutral wire if the rig were pulling near 50 amps on both L1 and L2. This is a possibility in the summer up here because it gets hot. A rig like mine with three air conditioners and other high draw appliances could easily have an issue like this in the heat of summer here (luckily we never stay here in the summer). If it is just a three wire feed jumpered to L2 then there is only 50 amps total available at the pedestal and overloading the neutral wire isn't an issue. Trying to run too many appliances (like three AC's and a few other things at the same time) might be an issue though because of only having 50 amps total power available instead of 50 amps on each leg (a total of 100 amps) in a correctly wired 50 amp power pedestal. I'm thinking about talking to someone at the park about it tomorrow before we leave, but I doubt they will really know what I am describing unless they have a background in electricity. Just an interesting (at least to me) development. 😀

We headed out on Wednesday evening after dark. We arrived at the RV park at about 9:00 pm. I hooked up water, but no power when we arrived. It was cool in the trailer (and outside) when we arrived. My wife wanted to run the fireplace (electric heater) to take the edge off in the living room. It ran for a while (pulling about 1500 watts continuous). I don’t remember exactly how long, but well over an hour. We then kicked on the furnace for the rest of the night and it ran on and off all night. We watched TV (until almost 1:00 a.m. - I’m a night owl), used the microwave to cook dinner, had lights on, etc. By the next morning we had run the batteries down to about 67% state of charge when the solar kicked in. That’s over 350 amp hours of usage between travel and our use in a little over 12 hours. We didn’t exactly conserve 😜. In the morning the TV came back on, the coffee pot was used, wife’s flat iron got used, etc. in other words, we used most of the solar we were producing and there wasn’t a lot left over to charge the batteries. We left the trailer to go to my wife’s family’s house for the holiday at about 10:30 a.m. The trailer sat with just basic loads on the rest of the day. I monitored the system remotely for the day. It was a sunny day, but we are fairly far north in Northern California and the trailer isn’t positioned ideally for solar production. Ideally the trailer would be facing east/west for best production the way I mounted the panels. Unfortunately our site at the park has the trailer facing north/south, which allows the AC’s to shade some of the panels and there are some trees around the site that also potentially added some shading. I got some decent production for a couple of hours mid day, but the rest of the time was marginal at best. The batteries got back up to 85% state of charge before the sun went down again. That is just under 200 amp hours net back into the batteries for the day, including our morning usage. Not bad for the conditions. Proper positioning of the trailer would have definitely improved that a bit. I haven’t played with any really heavy lads yet, but will over the next few days. I still need to program the new Easy Start I installed on my third AC. It was too cold the day I installed it (Wednesday morning), so I couldn’t get the AC to actually come on to run through the programming process. The remote monitoring capabilities are great though and the history tracking makes it really easy to see usage/production over time. With my old Magnum system there was no remote capabilities and history tracking entailed me looking at menus on the small display periodically and writing values down over time. The new way is much better. 👍

I finished up the installation today (in between some honey do list items I had to get done). All the Victron components are in and talking to one another (I am still waiting on the GX Touch 70 display to come in). I was able to connect to the system both through the internet and locally via WIFI. Both connections give me full functionality just as if I was standing in front of the GX Touch 70 display (once it is installed). All of the components also allow for individual connections via Bluetooth and the Victron Connect app. With the Cerbo GX now installed and hooked up, the remote connectivity allows me to see all the components in one spot instead of having to go into each component individually (and I can do it from anywhere with internet access instead of just within Bluetooth range). Victron offers some amazing features that I will finally get a chance to actually use instead of just read about. I have remotely connected to other systems before, but that was typically just to make sure the functionality worked or to solve an issue for someone who wasn't local. Now that I have my own system to connect to, I can really take a deep dive into all the functionality and tracking capabilities it provides. I will probably geek out on it for a while. I did find one issue today that could have been a very bad situation. While I was installing the generator control module (Atkinson Electronics GSCM-Mini), I had to access the junction box where the generator wires come out of the generator enclosure and connect to the cable going to the transfer switch. The GSCM adds a couple of wires here to sense 120 Volt so it knows when the generator is running (or not). When I pulled the cover off the junction box, I found a burnt wire. I don't know when it happened, but luckily it was contained in the metal junction box. I ran the generator last at the end of October for about half an hour. I don't know if that is when it happened or if it had been there for a while (I haven't accessed this junction box for several years). It looks like one of the wire nuts used to connect the wires worked its way loose and caused heat to build up and eventually burn the wire. It took a little doing to yank all the wires out of the box, cut off the burnt wire (about 6 inches of L2 - red wire going to the transfer switch) and reinstall everything. This junction box isn't the easiest to get to now that I added a new wall in the basement. I originally wanted to install the GSCM before I put the wall up because it would have been very simple to access the junction box then, but I couldn't. FedEx in their infinite wisdom routed the package with the GSCM in it from Utah to Sacramento (about an hour and forty five minutes from my house). Then it got on a truck to Minneapolis for some reason before it came back to me (apparently it got put on the wrong truck according to FedEx when I called). Because of all this, I didn't physically have the GSCM before it was time to install the wall. This is a long winded way of saying it would have been a lot easier to find and fix the burnt wire early on in the install (if I had the GSCM when I was supposed to get it). I guess if everything were easy, life would be no fun 😜. This is what the GSCM looks like. It is mounted to the front wall of the trailer just above the old battery box access door, under the overhang of the fifth wheel. It is a pretty neat bit of circuitry. It gets installed in line in the Onan generator control cable. It allows a simple open/close relay signal to fully control the functionality of the generator. The Cerbo GX has a relay built into it that can be remotely controlled based on conditions you set up or via manual intervention while you are interacting with the system. In other words, you can manually start or stop your generator from anywhere you have an internet connection or the system can do it automatically based on the conditions you set. I set the relay up to start my generator based on a specific battery state of charge (for now). There are lots of other conditions you can use in addition to SOC. They include battery current, battery voltage, AC load, inverter high temperature, inverter overload and periodic run. You can also program in quiet hours and have a second set of conditions for some of the triggers to only start the generator during quiet hours for emergency purposes. You can even set up a regular exercise cycle (periodic run) in which the system will automatically exercise the generator on a regular basis. Just another neat bit of functionality Victron offers. As before, I added some additional pictures to my Google drive if you follow the link in my signature. We are heading out with the rig Wednesday night so I can start testing some of the system features in the real world this weekend. Just to get an idea what you can do, here is what the online portal dashboard looks like for my system right now: And here is me accessing the Cerbo GX remotely via the internet. This is called remote console and it lets you run through all the screens and menus on the Cerbo GX just like if you were standing in front of it and using one of the connected touch screens.

Today was another productive day. I wired in the 120/240 volt side of the system. I spent some time figuring out the best way to route the wiring. Once I had that figured out, the rest was pretty straight forward. The transfer switch for the trailer is behind a sliding wall on the back side of the basement (the opposite side of the basement from where the inverters are located). I needed to come from the output of the transfer switch, go into the inverters, then come out of the inverters and go to the main power panel. In that process I needed to split the four wire feed (L1, L2, N, G) into a six wire feed, with three wires going to each inverter (L1, N, G to inverter one and L2, N, G to inverter two). The return run then needed to re-combine those six wires back to four before the trailers main power panel. I accomplished the split and recombination with two small panel boxes. Each panel box has a 50 amp double pole breaker in it so I can completely isolate the inverters input and output if necessary. I was able to mount the panel boxes next to the transfer switch. I removed the wire coming from the output of the transfer switch and moved it to one of the new panel boxes. This panel will now feed the main power panel in the trailer. I then ran a new 6/4 Soow cord from the output of the transfer switch to the other panel box. This panel will now feed the inverters. I then ran two 6/3 Soow cords from the inverter feed panel (grid side of the system), with one going to the AC In on each inverter. Finally, I ran two more 6/3 Soow cords from the AC Outs of the inverters to the other panel feeding the trailer. Here are the new panels (I had to move the vacuum to the left to make room for the panels): The system is basically done now and everything works 😁. The trailer was running from the batteries with no charger in the system since yesterday. Today, the little inverter was keeping the refrigerator going while I was working on the electrical feed to the trailer's main power panel. (I unplugged the trailer from shore power so I wouldn't electrocute myself working on the transfer switch 😜). Once I had everything wired up, I tested all the connections with my meter and then powered up the inverters. The batteries were down to 90% state of charge when I powered up the inverters. They immediately went into bulk charging mode. They were putting about 325 amps or so into the batteries. Each inverter has its own charger and I have the chargers set to a max of 165 amps each. With that much power going to the batteries and the fact the batteries can absorb so much energy, the batteries went from 90% state of charge to 100% state of charge in 30 minutes (actually slightly less). With my old system (single 125 amp charger and AGM batteries), that same 10% increase in state of charge would have taken several hours. This means much shorter generator run times to recharge batteries (when conditions are not ideal for solar). It also means we will be using a lot less propane to run the on board generator when it is needed. I am a happy camper. 🤑 As before, there are additional pictures on my Google Drive if you follow the link in my signature. Tomorrow I will finish the system up. I still need to connect the Cerbo GX, the generator control module and change the wiring between the original Main Power Panel and the original Sub-Panel. There are currently two long 10 AWG romex cables between the two panels. One comes from the main panel and used to feed the old inverter. The other was the feed from the old inverter to the sub panel. They are just wire nutted together right now so there is power in the sub panel. These wires will get replaced with a short run of 10 AWG romex run from one panel to the other (essentially making them one big panel). Oh yeah, I also have one Easy Start to install on my third AC (the other two AC's already have Easy Starts on them). It will be nice to have the system completed. We will be in the trailer for Thanksgiving, visiting my wife's family. We will be in a park for the long weekend, but I intend to "boondock" in the park to test out the system.