It’s not a job we looked forward to, in fact I think we had huge doubts about doing this, but when you break down each task it’s so easy. Our biggest worry, aside from drilling a hole in our van roof as you do try and keep water out of your van so putting a hole in the roof is scary, was that our roof was not flat and the fixing plates we had all were flat. So we had to reshape some of the fixing plates to go over and around the ridges in our roof.
We bought a 150W solar panel kit which included the panel, brackets, wires and solar controller.
We found the best way to position the solar panel where all the fixing plates had good contact points on the van roof and then started to clean up the roof, using isopropanol, and lightly keying the van paintwork with sanding blocks, so that when we applied the Sikaflex 512 bonding glue it would really bond the panel fixings to the van roof.
We also had to ensure we positioned the panel to ensure the cables from the panel to the solar controller and our leisure batteries were the shortest length possible, this ensures minimal loss of solar power. Our other consideration on where to place the solar panel was to leave a space for a future roof skylight we are going to install at the front of the van, at some stage in the future we might install a Maxxfan.
So we marked up the corners, sanded the paint and bottom side fo the brackets the solar panel was now attached to and we worked out our cable entry point on the roof, it was DRILL time!! We seemed to have chosen a ribbed part of the roof to drill through so we went through 2 skins of metal before we got into the inside of the van. As our van is already fitted out we had worked out the cable entry point would be inside a cupboard which is next to our batteries and solar controller. So it was quite an easy task to then feed the cables through.
Connecting the solar controller was easy, the + & – wires we had marked up with tapes as we fed them through the roof and the solar controller has the connectors clearly marked, + & – for the solar panel connectors and + & – for the battery connectors. We don’t use the Load connectors as we are just wiring the solar panel to the batteries so they provide a charge at all times.
Links to buy…
150W Solar Panel Kit – Buy yours here
We are John & Mandy, and sometimes Cooper too. We travel, mostly in our campervan, to explore new sights and eat great food. Our videos will mostly cover our travels or campervan maintenance.
Please visit our video sponsor if your UK Business wants secure online data backups & Storage https://www.xlclooud.uk
