Was totally gutted for you for a moment there

Haha yes it was a genuinely great moment! It was joy mixed with relief tbh. Yeah that will be awesome! Do you have any ideas of when you’re coming to England next?

Good luck with that! Hope it goes well 😀

Oh I know - it definitely took a lot of brain power working it all out. It was just the best feeling when that fan finally came on!

Thanks!!! 🥰 Still can’t believe I actually managed it! 😜

Ah thank you, so glad you’re enjoying them 😀 A Vito would definitely make a really cool camper! And you’re at a head start if you’ve already got the van too 👍

Yep we have now ☺️

@@TheWholeWorldorNothing Thanks, that made me slightly worried ;) 3 * 110Ah 35mm2 cable is a massive current surge. Love your build series and want you to stay shooting :)

Ah thank you, we really appreciate it 😊

Thanks so much! It was pretty daunting at first, but felt soooo good when that fan finally turned on!

@@TheWholeWorldorNothing I think I was just as nervous as you guys. Not looking forward to the day I have to turn that switch but super well done.

It’s such a great moment when it works though! Wishing you the best of luck with it 😅

Oh thank you. It often didn’t feel easy at the time. But we definitely feel that if we can do it, pretty much anyone can 😅

Ah yeah, you see the B2B charger mounted on there. That moves later! 😜 I think it's almost impossible to get them all in the best place on the first attempt. Good luck guys - hope it goes well. It's such a good feeling when you get that first load working!

@@TheWholeWorldorNothing Thanks a lot, really looking forward to it! 😁

😀

Haha, I thank you 👊🏾 It was definitely hot work! But we’re massive sun lovers so you’ll never hear us complaining about that 😀

Cheers, thank you 😊

😀

Ah thanks, glad you liked it and we appreciate the feedback 😀

Price was a big consideration plus we figured that the technology is only going to get better and cheaper. AGM batteries should have a life of around 5 years and by that time (hopefully) the price of alternatives will have come down significantly and if we need/want to upgrade at that time or beforehand then it’s always an option. If money hadn’t have been an object we’d have definitely gone for lithium but we decided our cash was better spent elsewhere at that moment. We’ve had no problems charging them and keeping them at a safe level, particularly as we have a battery to battery charger as well which kept us going over the long winter nights 😅 Hope that answers the question!

Thank you 😊 We used a Double Pole Isolator (25A), the link to the exact one is in the description below the video 👍

Yes, if I (James) had been in charge of electrics we would have had no fan and be using candles for lights 😅 No, that’s definitely not a Tesco tray in the van 🙄🤥😅 Actually it was so handy to keep all of our electric bits and pieces in one place, we’d highly recommend them for that 😂

Hi! We really appreciate it 😄 With regards the batteries, if our budget had allowed we would have gone for lithium but we decided to spend it on other stuff. That said, we’ve actually been really pleased with our batteries. And they haven’t been depleted below midway once. We generally just do a couple of visual checks on the battery display monitor but we’ve got used to them now so we know when they’ll be ok and when they might not. Sarah designed the system so that generally they’re fine for our daily usage, the only time we need to top up with the battery to battery charger is over a couple of months in winter when there’s no sun, but even that was by design as we’re not planning on spending winters in England which should mean we’re fine all year round! Lithium is definitely the better technology but the cost to value (for us) ratio just didn’t make sense to us at the time. We figure the price of lithium batteries is only gonna come down and by the time we need to replace the ones we have in 5 years or so (hopefully) they might be significantly cheaper. Plus we can always upgrade if we get a windfall in the meantime 😅 Hope that helps!

@@TheWholeWorldorNothing thanks that has helped, think you've got the right approach there!

Great stuff 😊

Yes, we have got a battery to battery charger as well, we installed it a bit later on so that video will probably be in a couple of weeks time. But for about 3/4 of the year the solar is absolutely sufficient to charge the batteries, it’s only when there’s only hardly any daylight that we need the battery to battery charger 😀

Thanks, your advice is really helping

No problem at all, glad you’re getting some value from it 😊

5A at 50V, about 250W or 20A at 12V

So the reading showing there is the power coming from the solar panels into the MPPT charge controller, not the batteries. The MPPT then converts the voltage to 12V, so no as a result the Amps are much higher. The incoming power obviously varies depending on how much light there is, but usually we get a full battery charge within a few hours. Also because they aren't lithium batteries, they shouldn't be discharged below 50%, so the maximum they would need charging is 165ah. That's how I understand it anyway - hope I managed to explain it okay!

@@hakanmansson2725 🤟🏾

​@@TheWholeWorldorNothing @Håkan Månsson Thanks so much both!! I thought 66 hours seemed crazy but makes sense! Really appreciate it!

No problem 😌

It was a toss up between £s and lbs and £s won! We may switch them out for lithium at some stage but we just isn’t have the budget. And we’d accounted for the weight in our planning so no issues there 🙂

Does it?! Not sure what you mean!

@@TheWholeWorldorNothing oh you don't play games with me i'm watching you both you know what i mean. ur building a time machine to escape the pandemic aren't cha, confess spy

Haha busted 🤪😆