Solar wiring on Jay Flight 198RD

[jhartline]

Hey Gang,

I am a newbie to all of this and .a hard core, dyed in the wool, gadgeholic. I am waiting for my solar charging kit to arrive and have pulled all the panels and crawled all over our new (lovingly used) 198RD I believe I will be running the solar panel wiring down the refrigerator vent, but unfortunately the wires will be on the wrong side of the trailer. I could run them under the trailer and up into the void below the oven for connection. Does anyone have any experience running solar battery charging system in this model? I have ordered the schematics from Jayco, but am insatiable for knowledge on this subject. There is a ton of experience in this group I hope to draw on and then contribute to.

Regards,

John & Jodie

'05 Chevy Tahoe
2011 198RD

[Mainenebula]

In what way will the wires be on the wrong side of your trailer? Do you plan to attach them directly to the battery? I have a wire chase across the ceiling of my x20e that I have fished wire through. Starts at the fridge and crosses to the stereo.

[jhartline]

Hi Dan,

the refrigerator is on the opposite side of the trailer as the converter panel. I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave the solar panel unmounted so I can position it in the sun if the trailer is shaded. That should solve my routing problem as I will now run the wires directly to the new charging unit mounted in the pass through.

thanks for your response.

John

[bgb2001]

please check the wire size. many say 10, but this is in no way large eneough. there is a voltage drop if wire is to small. do not believe what the tech will say. we are using 6.
for a lot of reading look at http://handybobsolar.wordpress.com
he has a lot of info,but reallly know his stuff
good luck.

[jhartline]

Thank you for the tip. I am oversizing just about all of the wire. One thing (at the moment only one thing... grin) still confuses me. I have the solar kit and it looks like the wire from the panels to the battery charge controller is pretty small, but it is from the manufacturer. I'm assuming the same loss equations apply to the run from the panels to the controller.

I also just noticed today that the battery on the tongue of my trailer is a 24Volt marine battery. All my reading says trailers are 12 Volts. How is this 24 volt battery not killing the components? So much to learn.

[Chakara]

Did I see another thread where you ID'd the battery as 12V in hindsight Sounds like you are on top of the wire gauge vs current issues and will be fine in this endeavor.

While not exactly the same, if your interested, I re-wired my trailer due to poor design by Starcraft. They put the converter at the tail with the batteries at the front - 20+ feet over a 8 gauge wire. Those poor factory batteries probably never got a full charge. I re-wired as outlined in my blog below.

Sounds to me like you are reading the right info to make this work well....

-Chak