Magnolia Beach

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Using My 1,000W Pure Sine Wave Inverter As a Whole House Inverter

My inverter finally works the way that it should and I really enjoy it being technically a whole house-type installation.

How I have it wired is that it has short beefy runs directly to the battery, and then I have a 120V heavy duty extension cord running from the inverter to the shower power cable compartment. In there, I use a 30A to 15A adapter to plug the shore power cable into the extension cord. So when I flick on the inverter, I have 120V power in most of my outlets.

The unfortunate thing about my setup is how my converter is wired. To avoid a huge drain on my batteries, I have to flip off the breakers for the fridge (so that I don’t accidentally switch it to AC), the microwave and air conditioner (in case I lose my mind), and the converter (which would stick my batteries in an endless charge and discharge loop). The converter is on the same breaker as all the outlets on the driver’s side of the rig.

This means, I only really have access to three outlets, the new one under the desk, the old one above the desk, and the hard to access one in the kitchen above the fridge in the far corner of the cabinet.

Having the one under the desk be live is great since my UPS is plugged into it and all my computer peripherals except the printer are plugged into the UPS. But the printer and shredder are normally plugged into an outlet by the converter and I have to snake an extension cord across the room when I want to use them when boondocking.

Now that I’ve ascertained that the load on the new outlet is actually very small, I feel comfortable getting an extension cord and running it around the rig to the UPS to permanently plug the printer and shredder into that outlet. So I’ll do that soon as I get a chance to pick up a good extension cord.

In the kitchen/front room, I like the outlet at the foot of the bed under a cabinet for plugging in the vacuum cleaner or the crockpot. I now have an extension cord coiled up for easy access in the over fridge cabinet and I pull that out when I need to plug something in in the kitchen. It’s a good workaround even if I would prefer to plug the crockpot into the outlet by the sink and not have to worry about tripping over an extension cord (not that I would, it’s long enough that it can sit flush across the floor).

I don’t leave the inverter on 24/7, only when I need it. Even so, it has zero to negligible draw when it’s on without a load. I’ve checked and rechecked this and my inverter is definitely not a power hog, which is a pleasant surprise.

One thing that bugs me about it is that I had to mount it at floor level because of the cable lengths available to me. It came with a remote starter, so I thought I would be able to put the start button within easy reach, but the dang remote starter doesn’t work! So I have to bend down to start the inverter. A bit of a pain, but it’s not something I do often. One good thing about having the inverter in that location is that it forces me to be more thorough in my vacuum (you know, move the chair to vacuum behind it instead of just going around…) to keep dust to a minimum. 🙂

It was a bit of a steep climb to getting the inverter to work correctly and to perform according to my expectations and needs, but it was worth the work. Being able to press two buttons (inverter plus UPS) and have my office come to life is a real blessing.

And so was being able to use my jigsaw to cut a little trim the other day. Imagine that, I’ve gone from not being able to charge my computer while boondocking to running power tools. I’ve come a very long way since the start of my boondocking experiment.

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Electrical Status Report On a Crisp Cold Beach Morning

I first woke up at about 6:00 this morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep without checking the state of my batteries.

I had gone to bed at 97% charge and voltage around 12.5. I woke up at 95.2% charge and voltage around 12.5. Amp hours used by bedtime were 7.2 (3% of 240, so the monitor’s math is right). Amp hours used by this morning about 11. The fridge uses 0.5A so 7 hours x 0.5A= 3.5 amp hours. 7.2AH + 3.5AH = 10.7. The fraction extra could be from the fridge cycling on and off. No concerns there.

You know what I did? I plugged in the electric blanket (dang it was COLD this morning) and the cats and I went right back to bed. 🙂

I got up just a few minutes at about 8:00 and my numbers were close to what they had been at 6:00 with 45 minutes of blanket use factored in (about 4.5AH).

All was well so far. But I hadn’t yet tried to charge my batteries through the alternator with the new solenoid installed.

I ran the engine for less than a minute, just to make sure the two battery banks were talking to each other and I saw amps going in start at nearly 30 and then go down steadily, which makes sense since both batteries are at just about full capacity.

I’m too jaded to do a happy dance, but I am optimistic this morning.

In other news, cats are dumb, right? Then how come by the time I was done fiddling with the electric blanket settings they were already under the blankets staking out the warmest part of said electric blanket?

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2036 Hours and All Is Well

I got home to 12.5V and 0.5 going out. Very normal readings. I may actually be able to sleep tonight. L and I think that I had the great misfortune of checking the monitor when the fridge was cycling on.

Speaking of the fridge, I woke up to it being 3.5 degrees Celsius warmer than I normally keep it (4.5 versus 1), which is on the high side of okay, since it had shut off due to low voltage. I restarted the fridge once the batteries were topped up, but the temperature was veeeeeeery slow to drop. It’s now 2.8 after being at 3.5 when I left an hour ago, so it is steadily going down. But it just goes to show how long it takes for a fridge to cool down and how little time it takes for it to warm up. I’m glad I have my thermometres now.

L and I had a nice time at the saloon reminiscing about our travels in Yukon, Alaska, Manitoba, and Scotland. It’s always nice to meet an American who is so well traveled in Canada (he’s been to every province plus Yukon). We are both annoyed that the saloon allows smokers, so we’re both pretty smelly right now. I’m due for laundry anyway. 🙂

I’m beyond exhausted but willing to concede that it is way too early for bed so I’m going to shut down everything, put on a movie, and let my batteries sit for a couple more hours. Da da da dum.

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Phantom Draw

Night has fallen.

With everything off but the fridge, I am drawing 1.0A. Normal is 0.5A. So in the 13 hours between no solar charging whatsoever and charging starting again, I will go from losing 6.5 to 13A. Not a huge deal, that’s only 1% battery capacity. But where is that phantom draw coming from? Perhaps my truck battery that mysteriously has the exact same voltage as my house batteries?

We’ll know more in the morning. L and I are going down to the saloon for a few beers and I’ll see where things are after a few hours of nothing but the fridge running.

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Appendages Crossed

The correct solenoid is in.

While pulling out the old one this morning, the guys wondered if there might have been a problem with the grounding. Lo and behold, the continuous duty solenoid had an extra connection for ground. Hmm…

We installed the starter solenoid at the same time of day in the same type of conditions. When I started the engine, I saw zip on any of my voltmetres. With the continuous duty solenoid, the voltage increased by 0.02. Curious.

I am going to try to stay up later tonight to keep an eye on my battery monitor for a bit and see if the mysterious draw comes up again.

The Walmart run let me replenish my stock of beer, so we had a few cold ones after the installation. I’d bought Lonestar, ‘The National Beer of Texas’, which is tastier and cheaper than Budweiser and the perfect thing to soothe a throat parched by an unrelenting white hot winter Texan sun.