This is a little out of sequence but I wanted to show you some images of our solar installation. I apologize up front because I don’t have an image of the actual panels on the roof; I’ll get some of those in a few days.
Many people seem to install the equipment in the most convenient location for them – notably they mount the hardware and batteries on the walls and floor of their basement which takes up storage space. I chose to use The Dry Campers to do my installation. One of their strengths is they always hide the installation behind walls or wherever they can find space that does NOT take away any existing storage space. In fact they will usually give you MORE storage than when you started the install!
Oftentimes that will require wiring and plumbing rerouting to make room and access easier. In our case, it seems like Grand Design has started using more “solar install friendly” routing schemes; in the past many wires and plumbing lines were run between the black drain pipes as you can see in the “before” images below. The rear wall of our storage area has been removed here and a few items have been removed as part of the process: the original converter and the vacuum cleaner are the most obvious.
The next photos shows the area mostly cleaned up with some of the solar wires already routed close to where they’re required.
The area under the steps need to rebuilt to support the weight of the additional equipment being added. The original 1″x2″ wood strips are replaced by 2″x6″ lumber which provides additional mounting surface and strength:
Four of the Battleborn 100A Lithium batteries are mounted behind the black drain pipes on a shelf which is actually an extension of the main flooring of the RV behind the bathroom wall. The other two batteries will be placed on the basement floor just in front of the drain pipes:
Here is Mike from The Dry Campers doing his thing including making some quick DIY install videos:
And here is the near-finished final product, complete with tools all over the floor. The wall still has to be replaced including an additional 6″ of space from the original wall. If you notice in this image, there is no water line (seen in some of the first pictures above) that ran from the ceiling in the middle of the wall to the left outside wall where an exterior faucet is located. That line was relocated to run down the exterior wall out of the way.
That’s about it except for the final install images of the basement and the panels on the roof. I’ll try to get some of those for you soon.
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