Wiring a small cabin for 12V? - Small Cabin Forum


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Small Cabin Forum / Off-Grid Living / Wiring a small cabin for 12V?

Author	Message
TheLoringLank Member	# Posted: 9 Jul 2009 19:40 Reply Hey there, Stumbled on your site while "simple solar cabin". My wife and I have just built a small (600 sq. ft.) cabin off-grid in a town called Loring, ON. We were planning on going solar for our very limited electrical needs. Our desire was to install a simple solar panel (50W or less) and a deep cycle battery and wire our cabin for 12V. We would simply be running a few 12V lights and possibly wire in a few 12V receptacles to plug in a small 100-200W inverter to power a laptop computer or other low wattage devices. Our fridge is propane and all our cooking would be propane as well. We don't watch TV, and if we need to power tools we just borrow a generator from a friendly neighbour. I don't want to go AC, since we want to keep things simple I would love to stay completely DC. A few questions: - what gauge wiring should I be using to wire in a few outlets (furthest being 30 feet from the power source) - I know that wiring for DC is funky with voltage drops and amperage loads - I don't want to overheat my wiring. - where do I find DC circuit breakers? Has anyone else done this that could give me some hints/tips?
soundandfurycabin Member	# Posted: 10 Jul 2009 00:48 Reply For the circuit breakers, I think the Square D QO series of AC breakers are also rated for up to 48V DC.
Vince P Member	# Posted: 12 Jul 2009 10:06 - Edited by: Vince P Reply Quoting: TheLoringLank I don't want to go AC, since we want to keep things simple I would love to stay completely DC. This is very difficult. Not only does this limit the types of things you can plug in, your wiring length must be very limited due to DC power loss. Better to run lines for AC and lines for DC. My own solar wiring marathon went like this: 1. Decided on inverter AC exclusively, because with 3 kids, I wanted to keep them happy with charging their games, music players, etc. 2. A couple years in, my batteries (3 deep cycle), took forever to charge, so I decided to convert to DC and keep the inverter plugged in one DC outlet for occassional AC need. I had to buy Compact Flourescent DC lighting (expensive) via ebay and backwoods solar. 3. Found out after converting to DC that the bigger CF lamps required a minimum of 10 guage wire! Went back to inverter AC exclusively. 4. Found some of my solar panels, not functional, but still under warrantee. Replaced no problem. 5. Need to reassess how to keep my batteries charged. Either take out some trees that are shading the panels, or buy a top quality battery charger to run off the generator, as cheap chargers don't seem to work well with generator power.
lamar5292 Member	# Posted: 26 Sep 2009 02:09 - Edited by: lamar5292 Reply I use 10 gauge stereo wire for dc wire runs but you could use heavier. The secret to not overloading your wires is to not have to many dc gadgets running at once. I use direct dc for lights only and use rv style dc lights which use very little power. Tvs, laptops etc will run better off an inverter and I use a 400 watt to handle laptop and tv at same time. RV supply stores have fused bus bars for running your dc wires to. These accept auto fuses and a 20 amp fuse is what I use LaMar
Moontreeranch Member	# Posted: 3 Oct 2009 12:20 Reply I modified some 50 watt Halogen lights to run on 12 V DC LED'S I have not installed them yet as the cabin is still in construction mode, but my light plan went from 700 wat to less than 40 for the entire cabin. I plan on using 12ga for running the lights...each light is 1.8 watts and puts out about 80% of the light the 50 watt halogen does.
treeangel	# Posted: 18 Nov 2009 16:17 Reply when we began cabin living 25 yrs ago my brother-in-law gave me the best advice ever--he had been living that way for years. he said to put 12v, 110, and propane for lights in every room. redundancy is great. i have lived with my cabin that way now for 20 years, and although the world has changed now and most people have opted for inverters and 110 exclusively, i find that my way is the best--the most efficient, and my inverter is a trace 612--20 yrs old and still ticking! this is because it only gets used when needed, and is off a lot of the time. i wired all the 12v with 8 gauge wire, not so easy to work with, but it has very little voltage loss in our small 2-story cabin. the propane lights can be left on all evening--no worry about having to limit their use, and they add heat, which is very helpful on cloudy and marginally cold days and nights to avoid having to crank up the wood stove. hope this is helpful to you.
treeangel	# Posted: 18 Nov 2009 16:19 Reply Quoting: TheLoringLank I don't want to go AC, since we want to keep things simple I would love to stay completely DC. my post at 16:17 today was in answer to this quote. sorry, just learning the setup here.
hbarker1 Member	# Posted: 28 Jan 2010 22:35 Reply propane lights ,, where you get those at treeangel?
lawnjocky Member	# Posted: 5 Feb 2010 18:00 Reply West Marine carries a lot of 12v stuff. Also there are a bunch of books on wiring boats. Jocko