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Winnebago "Full Campers" / Suburban furnace thermostat replacement?

« on: January 27, 2019, 09:11:14 am »

I replaced it with a tado smart thermostat (www.tado.com)
When it's at home, the bridge lives in the house and talks to the van.
Out and about the bridge is plugged into a small router in the van.  Means I can warm the van up remotely

Works without the bridge too, you just manually set with the buttons.

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Winnebago "Full Campers" / Re: interior LED lights

« on: January 21, 2019, 09:55:36 am »

I ended up changing the original fluorescent lights for an LED light.  The cover on my fluorescent unit was hugely yellowed so LED bulbs wasn't a solution for me.  I actually fitted LED tape inside the fluorescent housing initially as a stop-gap measure.

The problem with the LED units is that I couldn't find anything the width of the fluorescent units.  Ended up building carbon fibre cover plates and fitting the LED strips to that.

Due to the fact that I am rather fussy, the LED units I completly rebuilt!  I liked the light chassis, but they had touch sensitive buttons (hate the things) and daylight LED rather than warm white.  I modified them with new, super bright LEDs and a proper switch.

The lights I got from here:
https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/led-interior-strip-lights.html
 
The pop-top light diffuser was OK so I put LED stip in that

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Winnebago "Full Campers" / Re: Winnebago AUX/house battery, solar thread.

« on: January 21, 2019, 09:32:05 am »

What a good thread!  Thanks to Albert for the write ups that I hadn't seen before.  He ran into similar issues that I did (but planned his install a lot better than me!)

I ended up fitting 4 x 50W lexun flexible solar panels as they more or less exactly fit the width of the central roof section.  Only gets me 200w of course in a series/parallel arrangement.

I started off with a larger panel but it wasn't large enough so it came off and the 200w array went on.

I also went from a Ctek D250SA solar charger + split charge controller to a victron energy Smart Solar MPPT 75/15 as this gives me load and solar monitoring over bluetooth.  It has given me a much better picture of my loads and what I can get out of the 200w panels and has charge curves and battery protection customisable to lead acid/agm and lithium.

I also went from a 110AH lead acid to a 130AH lithium.  The lead acid wasn't storing anywhere like the energy it should have.  My monitoring has only run a few months so far but on a trip my daily usage can hit nearly 400Wh which is basically Vitrifrigo C60i fridge and the stock Suburban furnace + some LED lighting.  That was about all the lead acid held in winter.. .

Next to go on is a Victron Battery monitor, this will give me better battery monitoring but will also disconnect the alternator charging when I hit a preset level to prevent overcharging.

At some point I intend to start writing up some of my own installations. . . . .

As a European, I actually ended up ripping out all the 110v stuff and have not had any reason to put mains back for what I do.


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