okay so i am here at my lovely blm campsite in escalante just outside of escalante utah
dan actually scored the spot before i got into town and this is rosie down here he offered to
help me with my solar installing an inverter and when i say help me i mean he's doing all the work
this unit did come with solar it came equipped with 200 watts of solar on the roof however that
solar only powers 12 volt so it only trickles into light my lights and do a very few things
it does not power the outlets if i'm hooked into shore power i have power on my outlets if i'm out
here boondocking i have no power in my outlets i'm going to let dan explain we've done some a
little bit of a just kind of recon this morning as to where we're gonna install this inverter and
everything but i'm gonna have him fill you in a little bit more about what the inverter does and
why we're putting it in i'm gonna pass my little microphone to him hello everybody um yes this
is an awesome boondocking spot i'll have to tell kat to turn this around so you can see what we're
looking at right now it's hard to look at the camera when you got that kind of view behind you
and the weather is perfect so we're going to try to tackle several projects this is the first one
to pick up where cat left off the solar that comes on this rig is very minimal 200 watts
it only charges the battery and only works for 12 volt which means in a rig like this in an rv that
means your water pump your lights your fan things like that and she cannot charge her laptop or use
any electrical appliances without this device right here which is an inverter it takes 12 volt
dc from a battery and makes it into 120 volt ac which is what you have in your regular house
we're out here living i'm full time just like cat is and we're out here living we want to have at
least some assemblance of uh you know normal life and having 120 volts is is really important so
that's what this will do for her fortunately and unfortunately keystone said it was inverter ready
to yes her her rig this this keystone mini um they did do a little prep but very little it's um
they left a lot of things out i'm sure it's just to save money but uh we'll get it all
worked out we're going to do it in several phases and this will allow her then off of her batteries
to run the 120 volt appliances so this unit here we'll show you in a minute where it's going to be
installed a very tiny space uh we're going to go ahead and get it mounted in there and wired
up and everything and that's just phase one we've got i don't know how many phases are we going to
have here solar panels we have to upgrade the solar controller we don't want to confuse you
with all that right now but uh we'll we'll do it in segments hopefully that will make it a little
bit more understandable so this first one will just get her 120 volts ac like a house on her
existing outlets this unit unfortunately was not set up that way so for my first very first edit
i used my anchor portable batteries thankfully i had those so but this will allow me just to use
my my onboard house batteries which are not lithium yet may go lithium down the road but
all these upgrades cost money so a little bit at a time a little bit about the inverter itself that
we're installing for those of you i mean i'm sure there's quite a few viewers that have an idea what
an inverter is or maybe even have one but for the ones that don't some inverters only come
plugs on the front of them and that would be your 120 volt ac but what we want to do is power
the plugs inside the rig so we got one that actually has a terminal block that we can hook up
and hard wire into the camper so that's what we'll be doing we'll be connecting 120 volt wires here
on the back side of it is where the big wires go the wires basically have to be
10 times as large for 12 volt as they do for 120 volt it's these two large cables together
that have to go from red and black here to the battery uh it will actually be drawing at max
190 amps that's a lot uh but that's the way it works with dc so we will have to get these cables
routed out through the front of the rig and to the battery and we'll show you a little bit of
that in just a minute where it's going and how we're going to get those cables to the battery
all right this compartment here is where we are going to install the inverter we're looking at the
wires right now that were pre-wired to the outlets so that did save us a little bit we'll still have
to add a transfer switch the inverter will be mounted to the ceiling of this compartment to get
it out of the way and then after it's connected to those wires which provide the 120 volt
we come around to the front of the rig and that's where the two batteries are currently
we will be coming drilling a hole through the front here or coming underneath and wiring those
big wires to the batteries so dan has been hard at work out here and don't worry i have been offering
him food and water he has done some more work and some updates so i'm going to let him fill
you in on what he's done here all right we have done some additional prep work on the inverter
it's a lot easier to do out here on the table than it would be in that tiny little bay over
there that we showed you so let me show you what we've done and a couple other items that are
very important about installing an inverter first of all an inverter should be installed as close to
the battery as you can get it so most inverters do come with cables and hence they give you very
short cables these are three footers and that's pretty standard if you buy almost any kind of
inverter we're going to be able to make these work because we are installing it that close and they
will just barely reach to the battery but you want to keep this length as short as possible
one other item that's very important is a fuse now this fuse has to be sized
based on the size of your inverter this is a 2 000 watt inverter and it works out that the
maximum it can pull is 190 watts so there's a 200 watt fuse there and that is critically important
it has been several days since we left you last and dan has gotten a ton of work done it looks
quite different underneath that cubby now he's not only completed the inverter install but he's also
almost done with the solar install which you will see on a separate video i'll link that up here
once it's done i'm going to go ahead and hand it over to him and let him explain to you what he's
done as cat just mentioned the inverter install is finished and a few things i wanted to include here
specifically for the keystone mini owners it may apply to other models i do not know but i
now have experience with the keystone mini they do indicate that it's inverter ready or inverter prep
is done and that is true to some extent there is a wire that is looped in the storage bay
that you will need to cut and one side is shore power and the other side of that wire
are your actual outlets inside the rv so that's how you would get the power from the
inverter to those outlets but one piece several pieces that they do not include
is add a transfer switch and a transfer switch is absolutely required it can be a manual switch
or what we put in is an automatic switch so whenever it's on shore power
uh it will switch when we turn on the inverter it will switch to the inverter so
it automatically switches between the two sources and that's probably the best way and safest way
to do it one additional thing for the keystone mini owners is the way that it's pre-wired
the shore power side of that circuit that will show you uh or just showed you in a clip
is not just shore power it actually includes the connections for your ac
for your microwave and for the converter which is how you charge your battery if you're plugged in
the other side is strictly the outlets so what we're doing we're going to actually wire in the
microwave separately so that that can be run on the inverter also but normally that is not
included in the inverter circuit this storage bay has been my home for the last week yes i can fit
all the way inside there and had to to do a lot of the install but we'll show you here in just
a second everything is installed either on the ceiling or on the front wall of it so it's up
out of the way for using it as a storage bay well here we are in my temporary home away from home
i've spent a lot of time in here but i'm going to point out the components and what
was done to do all the final connections again the one thing you can't see but
we've included a segment to show you is where i'm pointing is where the actual inverter prep
was it's up behind this transfer switch so let's go through the components there is the inverter
it's a 2000 watt inverter here is a 30 amp transfer switch if you're doing a
something other than a keystone mini you would be sizing this either as a 30 or 50 amp depending
on what your rig is set up for and then this item right here is the solar controller i'll
cover that in a lot more detail along with the wiring and breakers and everything else
on the solar video so we've connected from the solar prep through these wires a 15 amp
circuit to the terminal block on the inverter and then that actually goes into the transfer switch
the transfer switch again as i mentioned how it works it switches automatically
between shore power and inverter power and and when i say inverter power that's really solar
power that's coming from either the solar panels the batteries or both simultaneously
that will determine which one is plugged in which one's being used and switch
and then from here it goes back out and supplies the power to all of the outlets in the rv
all right just wanted to show you a little bit out here what was done at the batteries themselves so
there's a lot here so just kind of give you an idea and starting with the batteries as with any
new rv these batteries are not even true deep cycle batteries they're called marine batteries
they're the cheapest that's what rv manufacturers are going to install i am sure a lithium battery
reseller or manufacturer is going to be contacting cat soon with the size of her channel what she
really needs is four lithium batteries which would be mounted inside that storage bay so hopefully
we'll be showing you a video on that in the near future just to cover what's coming out here these
large double cables here positive and negative are from the inverter and then we have several
other items for the solar coming from the solar charger i also wanted to point out this device
right here this is a it's called a shunt you don't really need to know that but what's important is
this device will measure exactly how much current is put into these batteries
and how much current comes out of the batteries so it's very important to monitor your battery usage
these lead acid batteries you should only drain to 50 percent state of charge which is around
12 volts a lot of people don't know that and they drain them down too far and they don't last long
whereas a lithium battery can actually go all the way down to zero each cycle so monitoring
the state of charge or how much capacity your battery has left is very important it's it's
very important with a lithium battery but it's extremely important with these lead acid batteries
the lead acid batteries again should never be drained below 50 percent and the way we're going
to know that is that shunt actually talks to a battery monitor and it's a little display a screen
that we're going to mount inside and we'll show you that part in the solar video because it really
ties the whole thing together between the inverter and the solar wrapping up the battery side of it
it is very important to size these cables correctly as i mentioned but it's also very
important to size the cables between any batteries so these are hooked up in parallel 12 volts
and you need to size these properly the wires that came with this rig were literally not even
a quarter of this size so we have sized these properly there's a lot of connections in here
and with that many connections normally you would want to use something called terminal blocks
again this is temporary until we get the lithium batteries installed inside
and something that dan has installed inside the trailer is an inverter on off switch that way i
can remotely turn on and off the inverter from inside the trailer it's important to keep the
inverter off when you're not using it because it does draw power itself so the inverter install
is 100 percent complete and working perfectly again this video was meant to be an overview and
not a detailed technical how to do video gives you an idea what's involved we were very fortunate in
where we're at out in the middle of nowhere almost that we found some really kind people in town that
basically let us use their eight-foot ladder and a great hardware store
yes i definitely want to personally thank all the kind folks at the do it best escalante home center
for all of their help they allowed us to receive packages there they lent us a ladder they made
this whole production possible so thank you all so much if you're in the escalante area make sure you
stop in and see the folks at that hardware store it's the only hardware store in town
i'm really excited that now i have power to all of my outlets inside the trailer i can use it just
like i would a home i have many outlets in there i can get my videos edited and function properly
in my new home and i want to send give dan a huge huge thank you he's a good human did this out at
the kindness of his heart and as a good friend he's not for hire he's retired but he did this
for me as a huge favor and i am eternally grateful thank you so much dan you are welcome so that's
going to do it for this inverter overview stay tuned for the solar install and we'll see you soon
you