today on Steve Robb reviews we're going to review how I'm going to turn this hundred watt solar
panel with this control panel and we're going to start pumping some water so I'm going to take
you through from the beginning right to the end on what I've done so far and this is all mocked
up ready to go and I'm going to show you exactly what I'm doing how it's being done and the wiring
so let's get to it right off to start and let's go with the solar panel first okay let's just take a
look at the specs there first and there's all the specs on this 100 watt solar panel and I'll bring
you up to the wiring hookup that we're going to put in and as you can see right here I've got a
connector on the bottom and this would be like a string connector and a waterproof connector and
you could see I marked one of the terminals red and the other one black and if we take a look
away inside that can you just see the tops well they are diodes and they only let the voltage
go in one direction and that's a good idea when you're using a hundred watt panel and I always put
a diode in for anything that is above 1 to 2 amps so I do have lower wattage panels and I've got a
7 watt panel I've got lots of these 7 watt panels and I never put a a diode in there because I found
they're not really necessary but let's take a look at the rest of the system here and see how
this is all going to go together well let's start off at the bottom here and as you could see I've
got one line that goes up to a waterproof switch box and that just turns my water pump off and on
and I've got one line for our solar panel and this line here if we just follow it all the way along
and it's nine feet long I got the connectors on the ends here and this is easy as just putting it
through this waterproof connector and attaching it to them two terminals and that's pretty much
it now if you're wondering why these ends are soldered well I'll get to that later okay let's
go back to here and we've got this one here that's going to a battery and I'll just show you the end
of it here and it's going to be a deep cycle battery and here's the two connectors on the
end here because deep cycle batteries just have a threaded post with a 5/16 diameter post on it
with a wing nut and you can just tighten these down and all you got is black and red and that's
pretty well it okay so let's take a look at this charge controller I bought this charge controller
here online off Amazon 13 bucks I never used one of them before for 13 bucks I do have a spare up
at my camp that's more expensive than that but I'm gonna try this one here and if we take a look at
that charge controller how they could build that for $13 and it has a built-in timer so you can
actually have this turn off during the nighttime hours which I like so apparently this has all the
settings that you're going to need it's a 12 and 24 volt so when you first start this up you're
gonna have to go through the menus and it's actually got two USB charge parts that I would
never use anyways here's the instructions part I put it in a plastic bag and if we take a look
at all these terminal ends down in the end there you could see each one of them after I finished
cutting the insulation off I solder it and I'm gonna show you why but it's very simple all you
do is we have these same connectors in the bottom of the solar panel they come through and each
one has a fuse and I like to fuse everything and they're all going to be fused at ten amps so the
solar panel will never put out ten amps but the pump will probably draw the pump I'm looking at
a 12 volt pump will probably draw around seven amps so I used all 14 gauge so I'm good up to
about 15 amps no problem so you could see where the connector comes in here and all you got is
just your red and your black for each one so if we take a good look there that's hard to tell but you
can see shows a symbol of solar panel here shows the symbol of battery and a light well the light
symbol just means your load and for me the load will be the water pump it comes around here goes
out here it goes down to a switch because I want everything to be switched so let's take a look at
the bottom of this line and see what it looks like okay just bear with me here all I've got
is the end of an extension cord yes this whole project is built from an extension cord and I
like to use the see-through ones so you can see the black connector is going to be your ground
and the red is going to be your hot and that is just going to go to a box where the pump is plug
it in and that's it and at the other end well you know I used an extension cord so what I did was
I just saved the end of the extension cord yep there she is right there I'm just going to plug
that into the end of the extension cord and at the end of this is going to attach to my water pump so
that's pretty much it right there now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you why I solder all
these connections and I do something else to it as well so let's just take a look at that okay so
we got the end of the wire all stripped of the insulation and of course I'm just gonna put my
soldering iron on here and you don't got to put a lot just enough so it wicks all the way down into
the insulation and then what I do is I get my crimper or my pliers and just squeeze it like
that and flatten it out so I'll explain to you why I do that okay so if we just take a good look at
that you could see where it's flattened just on the bottom and the top and the reason why I do
that is because these type of connectors in here are like two flat surfaces just imagine two flat
surfaces like this and they just crimp down like this and on the top is your screw to tighten it
up now if you don't solder this connector and you just put it in there just twist it like this it
tends to flatten out and over time it'll flat note more to the point that it actually will get loose
over time and this is what I've noticed where this won't get loose and you put the two flats on it
there so when you're tightening up that that set screw that tightens it down well it stays there
and it doesn't move you know it doesn't spread the you know the conductor wires sideways over
time and loosen up your connector and not be as good of a connection either so I like to solder
all the connectors as well and inside here I did put where I had to put my fuses together you know
and join two wires well I always use this kind of a connector here and that's a butt connector but
you put your heat gun to it and it melts there's like a resin on the inside here and it just
shrinks this down like some heat shrink tubing and just melts it right together and seals it in
good so the last part I want to show you is the battery box now where is it here it is here hold
on okay so here's the battery box just our regular battery box right and I think this is gonna be I'm
gonna take group 24 deep-cycle battery now if you take a look here you can see where you have room
just to put the extension cable through there and attach it to the battery but you know what I have
tried to use in the past like just a cheap what do you call it like a tote like a cheap plastic
tote don't you get big failure huge fit hell yeah you know what happens you get condensation inside
here and it just coats your terminals like crazy so I decided yeah go with the battery box okay so
now you're taking a look at this panel here and you're wondering okay you can't leave this open
right well I'll tell you something that container came from like a dollar store for four bucks and
I'm gonna show you well it's nothing of a fancy deal but I'm just gonna show you the whole idea
behind this of just making it with a little bit of a shield here I just screwed it you know four
places and put the cover on in here for you and show you that yeah you gotta have a cover right
so let's get to the cover part and I'll show you how that all goes together well let's just put the
cover on here to stick my fingers back in there and snap it all on and that's pretty much it right
there well what is the objective for this whole project well in the previous video I showed you
the tools when I was going to use to dig a shallow well and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set up a
pumping system using a 12-volt pump and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go over the shear flow pumps I've
had good success with them in the past and I have to pump water roughly 200 feet from where my water
source is going to be to where I'm gonna want to use it so this is all for the setup of this
and if you're taking a look at a system like this that I'm building well this is a really low cost
alternative like this would never be acceptable to any building codes and that kind of stuff this is
way up an ardent Ontario this is something that I do write I'm just showing you how I'm doing it and
how I find it so easy to do myself now for people who have never done anything like this there's
lots of great reading material out there and what I did was I just went to my local store and I
bought myself 27 foot extension cord or 24 foot I forget and what was it now 5 meter something like
that and I find this is the best now a 14 gauge cable is fine for what I need and if I were to go
to say your local hardware and just buy it by the foot while you pay a lot more because I paid like
12 13 bucks for five meters or 25 feet whatever it is but this is the setup here and I'm going
to be bolting this to my frame I'm gonna make for the solar panel so the solar panel if you
can just imagine it's going to be on a roughly a 45 degree angle I'm going to have it mounted to
a wooden structure the battery is going to be built into the structure itself this is going
to have all self-contained I have to be able to transport it so it's got to fit in the back
of my pickup truck it's got to be able to fold down and it's going to be an interesting build I
hope you watch for it in the future and I'm just going to show the whole system all set up well
when winter gets over and I can actually mock it all up and show how it actually all works I'd be
very curious to see how good this low cost charge controller is because do you really need a charge
controller if you don't put a charge controller in well you're just going to boil your battery that's
all you're going to do and wreck your battery but there's there's people out there on the internet
that are talking about taking a solar panel and running your your your load or your pump strictly
off of the the solar panel and I didn't want to do that I think I could if I went with a with a
smaller pump but I like to use this type of system because the battery will of course be depleted as
you're used using your pump and the solar panel will keep your battery maintained and charged up
over a longer period of time or if you just try and run it off your solar panel well what happens
is a cloud comes over and your pump stops the Sun comes out your pump starts I don't like that kind
of in frequency especially when you want to pump some water now I did show the system of my camp I
have before and I'm using a submersible pump I can pump 40 gallons in less than a minute and I put it
on a holding tank and then I get my tractor and I haul it up the hill to where I want to use the
water the whole idea behind this is to no longer have to do that I just want to go down there flip
the switch pump all the water I want so hopefully you can follow along in the series as I go and if
you stumble across this video I'll put the links down below as I progress through you know through
the videos and hopefully this year you're going to see this system in operation and like I said
this is how I'm doing it yeah there's a lot of people that are going to be critical on exactly
how I do it and you know the different parts and the well you know like a cheesy little box like
this right I mean nothing that this is the code right but this is something that I'm doing and
it's really an experiment because I have never tried to pump a couple hundred feet you know
but I'm pretty confident that I can do this with a pump that is valued at probably a hundred and
fifty dollars I have one in the back of my my shower room that I've been using now for well
over 15 years and has never failed me it's a share flow pump and I'm gonna probably get another one
of them and I think this is possible and it's so easy to do as far as well for me I find it
easy to do and this is low cost so I figure I've already had that solar panel that came off my
cabin I built the whole brand new solar panels I got 400 watts now I got a series on that but this
is going to be a low-cost alternative or I figure I can do everything pumping water the whole bet
two hundred and fifty dollars that'll last me well a good twenty five years hopefully so thanks for
joining me here today and hope you follow along with this project you haven't seen this channel
before you're welcome to subscribe and come back again and let's have some more fun Cheers
you