12 volt chill pill residence???

[778 neighbour of some guy]

I was dreaming away for a bit, thinking how nice and relaxing it would be to have a quite place in some wooded area just to chill out for a bit and still have some basic things around to make life a bit easier, I dreamed up a shack, a lazy couch, some doors that open up to a forest view and a porch to get my feet up and let my million mile stare drift away into sleepy nothingness where no worries can be found, since I like to be lazy if I can away with it ( open a fridge and get myself a nice cold beer instead of digging a hole in the ground hoping for a cool brewski), I looked around for what could make such an experience comfortable since I am a spoiled rotten city boy, and now...............

I am confused, I snooped around a bit on the interwebz and I keep reading things like how hard it is to wire a house or cabin up for 12 volt appliances, which I think is totally weird, it can be done on boats ( box on water), can be done on trucks and RVs ( box on wheels) so why should it be different for a house or cabin ( box on mud).

So far I have found 12 volt, TVs, microwaves, lighting, coffeemakers, dvd players, stereo's, toasters, fridges, freezers, slow cookers, frying pans, pond pumps, lunchboxes, mug warmers and what else have we, anywho, entertainment, dinner, water can be provided for with these things while on the move, what is the problem with he stationary version, like a house or cabin or pimped out man cave shed?

Does any one know?

I think of solar and wind generators here to charge up batteries to run the aforementioned stuffs, charge controllers and all those things are also readily available, but all I see or find is how hard it is to make it happen, is this really, really, really the case?

What would your funhut look like if you could use this stuff and it would work, how would you make it happen? How hard could it be provided you have some cash laying around, doesn't have to be much, its just nice to have a modest little dream.

[thunder24]

its not hard, you run the wires in ur house the same you would a normal house...

the control center for fuses running to your battery box is the only part that is different and is very doable...

I have no electric knowledge and learned with a buddy electrician who has never done offgrid wiring, and we were able to figure it out.

The company you order your system from should provide simple diagrams on what goes where in wiring the offgrid control room.

[Dennis Leahy]

While I was reading this... and pulled into the lovely vortex of your dream, this song was playing:

(really!)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn5G0l7PIi0

Dennis

[Atlas]

John Denver - Country Roads (1995):
PZBQjTF_Hpk
c7qmvXm4m90
:)

[Michael Moewes]

A Friend of mine in France lives completely independent. for heating he has set up 6 old radiators in line. all connected together and put into a wooden box(quite big box though) underneath them he has put a reflective foil and the radiators painted black.
they are put outside in the garden, in a forrest directed to the south west. Now the storing and transformation boiler is underneath his roof, therefore you dont need an elektric pump as it runs on phisics, for the case of a very cloudy winter, he also has put one radiator in his open fireplace. so when he'S heating up the house with the fireplace he also gets warm water. from the solarpanels outside, the maximum temerature he gets is up to 86° centigrade.
For electric power he's got several systems.
1. a spear batterie in his diesel truck. This one is charged through driving as a diesel car/truck only needs the batterie to start.
So when he comes home, he diconects the charging circuit and plugs in his home. with a standard plug built in his truck. this
powers for several hours his lights.
2. Solar panels. far more expensive and only worth if there are no heavy clouds. and the batteries are expensive.
3. a wind generator made from an old car generator, works very well. runs with a transmission belt for better results.
I hope this has helped you.
Stay healthy

[Operator]

its not hard, you run the wires in ur house the same you would a normal house...
---


Probably not entirely true ... the problem with 12V DC compared to 220V or 127V AC is that with a lower voltage
the current has to go up to transport the same power from source to appliance. You need much thicker cables to
facilitate the higher current. If cables are too thin you may lose part of the 12V potential. And losing e.g. 1V on
12 is relatively more than on 127V or even 220V.

The lower potential of 12V reduces the electric shock hazard but raises a possible fire hazard by overloading your
wiring ...

[thunder24]

i should of clarified... my fault.... I ran a 24v system useing regular romex... i think it was 10-2. then for the 120v appliances i ran off the battery into an inverter and again used the 10-2 wire to the outlets... NOT 12 volt... somewhere in there we either used 10-3 or 14-3 romex also...

other then those specifications, the wires ran through the house the same as on grid house....

[Anchor]

The lower potential of 12V reduces the electric shock hazard but raises a possible fire hazard by overloading your
wiring ...

This is so important.

If you must go down the 12V path, use good and correctly rated fuses on every circuit and get someone who understands electricity to check your work out.

Something as simple as not doing up a connector tight enough on a circuit carrying high current can make hotspots that can end up with the release of magic smoke and much sadness.

Unless you are only going to use low wattage appliances (by low I mean less than say 120W - LED lighting, small a/v systems, etc) then I would say wire for mains and use an inverter to convert your solar/wind DC into usable mains.

For cooking use LPG - avoid high power things like electric grills, kettles and toasters

In a DC only cabin the highest power drain is usually the refrigerator!

[Michael Moewes]

I do not agree to the lower risk. I'm a master electrician, the voltage is not the problem but the ampere, means the power of the current. For excample if you have 10,000 Volt but only microampere nothing dangerous happens, as what the cops use on the teasers. but if you have 12 volts and 95 amperes, like from a huge car batterie, it's mostly leathal. I do agree to the thicker wires as there has to pass the current with less resistance.
Don't play with electricity if you don't know what you're doing. You need the advice of an expert.



its not hard, you run the wires in ur house the same you would a normal house...
---


Probably not entirely true ... the problem with 12V DC compared to 220V or 127V AC is that with a lower voltage
the current has to go up to transport the same power from source to appliance. You need much thicker cables to
facilitate the higher current. If cables are too thin you may lose part of the 12V potential. And losing e.g. 1V on
12 is relatively more than on 127V or even 220V.

The lower potential of 12V reduces the electric shock hazard but raises a possible fire hazard by overloading your
wiring ...

[Nick Matkin]

Yes, the trouble is the current required for the appliances. Cars, lorries, boats are only going to have lighting, TV, computer, maybe a small fridge and other low power devices.

If you want to wire your home for 12V you'll have to keep power consumption in mind.

For example a 2kW kettle requires 16.7 Amps at 120 volts mains and 8.3 Amps on 240 volt mains. (For heating, the difference between AC and DC is irrelevant, RMS and all that!)

For a 2kW kettle to operate on 12 volts you'd need 166.7 Amps! That's a lot of current which requires very thick wire, something like a 1 inch diameter copper cable for the positive and negative! Pretty expensive. Then there is the need for REALLY good low-resistance plugs and sockets because with that much current even a little bit of resistance in the metal-to-metal contact is going to generate A LOT of heat!

That's why you can't buy 12 volt devices with a power consumption of more than a couple of hundred watts, so any kind of water-heating washing machine or space heater are out of the question.

Having a 12 Volt microwave oven, your mug heater, a laptop and some LED lighting is probably all you'll be able to do if you want to keep the ring-main wiring down to a sensible diameter. (You an get a 12V toaster? That must take ages to do anything useful!)

If you have a good supply of 12v from a wind turbine/waterwheel/PV cells I suspect the best option is to use an inverter right at the source next to your storage batteries to step it up to AC at mains voltage. There will be some loss in the conversion process, but you'll be able to run normal devices, though unless you have a VERY robust 12v supply, you may still not have the power to run more that a 1kW or two at any time.

But then you'll scare all the "Dirty Mains" brigade because the AC waveform generated by most DC-AC inverters is not very sinusoidal, in fact it's often not much better than a clunky stepped 50/60 Hz square wave full of harmonics containing "frequencies" - if you are bothered by any of that.

Nick

[778 neighbour of some guy]

Cars, lorries, boats are only going to have lighting, TV, computer, maybe a small fridge and other low power devices.

Good enough for me, its a relax shack 4x5 meters max, I have modest dreams, cup of coffee/tea, light, some music, tiny fridge, for heat I'll just throw a couple of rocks in the fire pit and bring them inside, I am not dreaming of a quadrillionaire shagpad, just a friendly sweet calm place to chill and stare into a small warm fire and attempting to get some mosquitos drunk of my whisky blood, that's all I am asking for. But ok, the wiring must be up to the task, that's what I get out of this so far, so would it help if the batteries are in the middle of such a cabin ( under the floor for instance) so it spiders out at equal distances to various small appliances, or locate everything at the wall so everything is aprox in the same spot? How can this be done as easy as possible (completely idiotproof), lets say they shack is up, 4 walls and a roof, and I want to have my appliances all located at one wall ( convenience in wiring and cost reduction), small led tv, coffeemaker, light, mini fridge and a stereo, a netbook, obviously the only thing running 24/7 would be the fridge, what would be the minimum amount of power required to run that ( depends on the appliances I guess) but would a small solar setup and a wind generator do? Ah yeah need water to of course.

Thanks in advance, maybe someone else finds this useful too, so I am looking forward to any responses, not anything to complicated please, what can basic tools and gear get me and how would I do that? Step one to ? in easy digestible chunks for dummies( that's me).

I got shocked by a welder once and it scared the crap outta me so be gentle here. Lol

[Nick Matkin]

so would it help if the batteries are in the middle of such a cabin

Well it might a bit, but if you do what's done with houses (in the UK anyway) you will have a ring main, so just keep the batteries somewhere safe and secure and near/in the house. (I'm not an expert on wiring properties for 12 volts, but I don't see why a ring main isn't appropriate for low voltage circuits.)

You may need to consider cold-weather effects on the batteries and the possibility of them emitting explosive gasses if they are indoors - check local regulations!

The ring main consists of a loop of live/neutral (or for 12V DC positive/negative) wires running around the house from the supply input, back to the supply input with all outlets strung between them. It's better than running wires from just one end as the current is shared from both ends, and if one end becomes disconnected it will still work, though is a very bad idea to do that!

British homes usually have at least four ring mains - and I have no reason to believe that other countries are different. Downstairs mains sockets, upstairs mains sockets, downstairs lighting, upstairs lighting. Each ring main is fused at 30 amps for 240 volts for mains sockets and I think 5 or 10 amps for lighting. But if you're using 12V you will have to fuse each ring main appropriately. Disaster will strike without any fuses if you have a short circuit because the batteries try to deliver hundreds of amps into the short which will almost certainly cause enough heat to burn/melt the wiring and start a fire before the batteries burst or go flat!!

Just make sure you know what you're doing, or get some help.

Good luck.

Nick

Just noticed your edit. Maybe one ring main for appliances and one for lighting, although if there's only one or two lights, it's hardly worth a separate ring main.

[778 neighbour of some guy]

Just make sure you know what you're doing, or get some help.

Good luck.

Nick

LOL, thanks Nick, help it is;)