Exquisite Fred.
Over my head though for DIY. So, I shopped your components and found that there is no more than $20 difference between the stand alone approach, and the all-in-one approach, presuming of course that you had to buy a transfer switch. I like your approach better because you have built in the possibility of failure. All in one will be expensive if there is a failure. I took your advice to purchase a dc/dc charger. Makes a lot of sense.
Just wondering whether you re-used some of the existing dc wiring from the breaker box to connect to the new converter. and whether you just ran a AC 30amp extension cord to get shore power from the breaker box to the inverter, and another 30amp cable from inverter AC out back to the breaker box. Also, did you remove the old converter, and remove the deep cycle on the tongue? If so did you reconnect dc for tongue jack and slide out to the new battery box?
Yes, I did buy the transfer switch.
I didn’t change any of the DC wiring on the MM. I pulled the existing battery wires, which ran to the battery on the tongue, back through the frame and ran them up through the existing hole in the floor below the cut-off switch. I then terminated the wires in a junction box that I added near the cut-off switch. Here is a
link to a previous post with pictures explaining what I did. You may also want to read this additional
post, it is in the same thread, it has a link to our solar install that contains additional pictures showing our original setup in the pass-through. Since then, I have added the inverter, lithium charger, DC/DC charger and second battery.
From the junction box near the cut-off switch, I ran 6 AWG wires that terminate in a gray Anderson connector that mates to the gray Anderson connector coming off the Power Center/Battery Boxes that I noted in my earlier post, see first picture below.
I did remove the standard deep-cycle battery and battery box from the tongue and replaced those with a carpenter’s tool box mounted with self tapping screws. I store leveling blocks and ramps in the toolbox, see second and third pictures below.
As for the AC side, I connected 14/3 AWG Triplex AC Marine Wire from the 1000W inverter located in the pass-through to the WFCO T-30 automatic transfer switch which mounts to the side of the WFCO Power Center located under the refrigerator, see pictures 4-7 below. I then disconnected the incoming 10/2 shore power wires from the WFCO Power Center and connected them to the transfer switch. I then connected the output wires from the transfer switch, labeled “To Distribution Panel”, to our Progressive Industries hardwired EMS-HW30C Surge & Electrical Protector using additional 10/2 wiring. Again using additional 10/2 wiring, the output from the EMS-HW30C was connected to the WFCO Power Center at the same connection points where the shore power wires were originally removed.
A couple points about the automatic transfer switch. There are two inputs; one is labeled “To Shore Power” and the other “To Generator”. The “To Generator” input is what I would call the default input. By that, I mean if power is coming in on both the “To Shore Power” and “To Generator” inputs, the transfer switch will default to using the power from the “To Generator” input. If power is lost on the “To Generator” input, the transfer switch will automatically switch to the “To Shore Power” input and automatically switch back to the “To Generator” input once power is restored to that input. You can find a copy of the automatic transfer switch
here.
I also disconnected the converter side of the WFCO Power Center since I’m using the lithium charger in the pass-through, see last picture below.
Since we mainly dry camp, I connected our shore power wiring to the “To Generator” (default) input on the transfer switch and connected our inverter power to the “To Shore Power” input. I did this so that when I connect our generator to the shore power connection on the MM, the transfer switch will automatically default to that power source and disconnect from the inverter power source. Hope that makes sense. Also, when we’re home, I have our MM connected to a 30A power pedestal, which then becomes the default power source.
I’m still working on the post on how I ran the AC wiring from the pass-through back to the transfer switch without dropping the underbelly, I will also include how I installed our DC/DC charger and ran that wiring so you have that information. This post may take another day or two, this weekend has been a little busier than I expected.
