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Hi Glen, The documentation on your inverter is ambiguous. On one page it says it has a GFCI, but then in the detailed section it leaves off any discussion of GFCI. So one of two things is true: Try the NG plug and a small load. If the output works fine and all is good. Success. You've...

Mr Slash: That sounds like a nice trip. I've been in the black rock desert in late September and the weather was nice enough. Rained a bunch too. I bet you'll have a great time. I've always wanted to get up to the Steens area but have yet to do it. Note that Cedarville has a nice motel...

Glen, the NG plug cannot be used after a GFCI receptacle. It would trip the GFCI. You could however use an NG plug before the GFCI (ie plug the NG plug into one of your two inverter outputs and plug a GFCI "extension cord" into the other inverter output) The screenshot of the amazon NG Plug...

Glen, you're on the right track and are understanding the issues. Thanks for pointing out you are not connecting to shore power and are only using the outputs directly from the inverter. THat keeps it simper. Like you stated, the truck battery, frame, the neg of the 12v in the camper, the...

Glen, part 4 of the grounding tutorial covers mobile installations like our campers. It's worth reading. It includes detailed schematics that show exactly how to hook up the inverter. Long story short: you'll need the NG plug if your inverter doesn't ground the neutral internally.

This is a great topic. Lots of people working on electricals get grounding issues wrong. My goto source for RV grounding are several tutorials on the DIY Solar Forum. See https://diysolarforum.com/resources/grounding-made-simpler-part-1-ac-houshold-grounding.157/ to download part one of a...

That's a very nice camera installation. What dash cam do you attach to? Does it work well? My 2013 F250 is not an HD camera and lacks detail in the image. I'm thinking of replacing it.

I used a MRBF (marine rated battery fuse) holder attached to one of my truck batteries. I was able to attach to an unused stud on on of my two truck batteries. see Amazon.com It worked well and gives one a fuse right at the start of the wire. A lug on the thick wire attaches directly to the...

Thanks for the schematic. I use a 20 amp DC-DC with my 230AH battery and it's been adequate, I bet the 30 will work well for you. What size wire from the engine battery to the 12v-12v? Do at least 6 awg. I did 4 awg. You don't show an enable wire for the 12v-12v charger. You don't really...

Regarding your question about solar panels... Earlier flexible panels glued to the roof had reliability problems. My 2015 flexible cells crapped out and I replaced them with two rigid panels. I have a Halmark popup so the extra roof weight was not a problem. Maybe new flexible panels work...

I can think of a few simplifications to your proposed design: You can build your system without the 60A relay providing power to the DC-DC converter from the engine battery. I suggest doing what I did: mount a BlueSea MRBF fuse on your engine battery terminal that connects to a thick wire (I...

If a battery is dead enough the Noco won't start charging. Like PaulT mentioned, separate the batteries and charge each individually. If that still doesn't work, put the Noco into power-supply mode and charge the battery for an hour or so. That should put enough charge into the battery that...

How one refers to current direction is arbitrary. yours is set up so Negative current means juice is leaving the battery. Positive current means the battery is charging. That's the way my system is set up too. There's really no reason to switch the polarity of your current sensing wires. I...

Current is measured by sensing the voltage drop across a shunt. That is, the wire from the battery goes through a shunt (a low ohm resistor of a known fixed value). On most RV's this shunt is on the ground wire to the battery. The shunt has a slight voltage drop that is proportional to the...

Yes, negative amps is a thing. If the current is negative it means the current is flowing in the opposite direction. It sounds as if the sensors on a current shunt are hooked up backwards giving you readings that are negative. Hope this helps

Great to hear you're cancer free, it will make it even more special for you to be in Bears Ears. My wife and I spent a month last fall there, it's a wonderful place. Beef Basin and the "House Park" area in the north is pretty and has plenty of places to camp. You can pop out to Monticello or...

You're right Craig. The correct term is to damp, not dampen, the oscillating mass. I too often speak loosely. The Rancho adjusts with a small dial, I assume it's opening/closing a valve inside the shock.

When I replaced the shocks on my F250 w/ Hallmark Guanella, I replaced the stock shocks with Rancho RS9000XL adjustable shocks. I set them to the stiffest setting. I think of shocks as dampeners for the springs. In my case the springs are leaf springs and air bags. With the weight of the...

Not sure if this applies to your issue, but my campers stove wouldn't ignite on first one burner, then a few weeks later a second burner. The problem wasn't the piezoelectric sparker, but cheap wire from the sparker to the burner. My stove has a single piezoelectric sparker and wire going to...

Hi, Add a fuse at your truck battery before the heavy wire running from the truck battery to the camper's DC-DC converter. Something like a terminal mount MRBF fuse works great. The heavy wire allows for a larger fuse, but something like 80A is plenty large enough for your use. The battery...

I have a 2015 Hallmark Guanella and it's worked great in the six years we've owned it. We use it 1-2 mo/yr and do a lot of back country camping. It works well and we have a ton of fun with it. To answer your questions: We like the outside shower and water heater and use it regularly. Our...

Using the manual switch to put both batteries in parallel will cause problems when one battery is fully charged and the other is discharged. When you throw the manual switch and the two batteries are put in parallel, a lot of current will flow and would likely trip any reasonably sized circuit...

I assume you're talking about a 12v LiFePO4 battery. I follow the DIY Solar Power Forum, a great source of lithium battery information. The forum pointed me to a great spreadsheet showing state of charge as a function of voltage...

Hi, You ask if you can use the Xantrex w/ your existing PD 4135K load center and existing outlets: You can, but it's tricky. If you wire the Xantrex transfer switch between the incoming shore power and the load center, either the Xantrex inverter or shore power will power your existing plugs...

Regarding having two battery packs of different capacity in parallel, it can work, sort of. See the discussion at https://diysolarforum.com/threads/different-size-lifepo4-battery-banks-in-parallel.32608/ They recommend against it. DIYSolarForum.com is a good resource for solar and battery...