As indicated earlier in this blog, we wanted to run a 45 litre fridge and a 12V oven - and a couple of 100W solar panels.
The Solar panels were purchased off eBay with the sellers feedback indicating they worked OK but the terminal boxes fell off. I was duly warned.
They arrived and sure enough the terminal boxes were held on (or not) with hot glue - as rough as I've seen. I carefully unmounted the terminal boxes, cleaned up everything thoroughly and used Sikaflex 291 to hold them on securely.
Success! They still worked, I hadn't mucked anything up!
I was planning on having 6 of M5 bolts and spacers coming up through the hatches so that the panels were slightly free to move. When it came to mounting them I discovered that the hatches had insulation and a double skin. So I elected to go the easy way and held them on with Sikaflex 291. (This was considered unadvisable by those who I knew - know. But I figured Kismet doesn't spend all year outside so they would just have to survive. Apparently gluing them down allows them to get too hot.)
Glued down and held down overnight with various heavyish objects that I found on the boat.
The final result. The curly cord hybrid straight wiring was a construction within itself. Heatshrink, cable ties, superglue, more heat shrink and siliconed up. The curly cord was arranged so it went 310mm in either direction.
The curly cord arrangement is anchored by two P-clamps at either end. So far the jib sheets haven't caught the wiring - but it's a bit of a "lookout for" when tacking. It seems very successful and withstood 5800km of road travel well.
This picture is from the Whitsundays trip (posts soon to come). Note the 150mm long 12mm high protective pieces of hardwood on the rear part of each hatch. This prevents the diamond stays from scraping the panels during road travel. The mast really has to be raised another 30mm on the back.
Finally lots of hidden wiring and a new switch panel.
The two pieces of hardwood glued just below the switch panel support the Solar Controller.
I used 4 meters of 16 x 16mm wire duct and 4 metres of 25 x 16mm wire duct (conduit with removable lid) for the wiring. All the wiring ducts are held on with double sided adhesive tape - WHAT you say - it's useless. Well there is a new range of this stuff that promises 1kg holding for each 3cm piece. The brand I used was Permastik 10m x 24mm White Outdoor Weather Resistant Mounting Tape. None of it has lifted so far - even the little bit I used near the outboard that sprays salt water everywhere. I did clean all surfaces with Acetone each time I used it.
The fridge was wired directly from the battery via its own fuse to an Anderson plus halfway along the cabin. The rest of the boat goes through a resettable 20A circuit breaker held to the top of the 100AH LiFePO4 battery (under the battery box cover) with - you guessed it - Permastik.
On advice from the Jarcat gurus I located the battery down on the front of the starboard side floor (I had previously planned on it being up on the foot of the bed). I placed it about 70mm back from the access port for the bow water tight cavity. The battery weights 14kg.
I can elaborate on the wiring if anyone is interested.
