merchant
Member
I get the misses to touch everything first.....She's still around!
New dual battery isolator
- Thread starter equipt
- Start date
Help Support Nissan Navara Forum:
I get the misses to touch everything first.....She's still around!
Haha!
I aim to never let electronic devices of any type get wet. It just means I have to replace it at some stage.
You could - if you wanted - bring two pairs of cables into the cabin. 12V in from the engine bay, hook it up to the inverter input, plug the charger into the inverter, then connect the other pair to the charger output and run that back out to your battery.
While it might seem like a little bit of mucking around, it solves the electrical danger issue although it doesn't give you 240V for powering the fridge (unless that's in the cabin with you, I don't think you told us about that).
I aim to never let electronic devices of any type get wet. It just means I have to replace it at some stage.
You could - if you wanted - bring two pairs of cables into the cabin. 12V in from the engine bay, hook it up to the inverter input, plug the charger into the inverter, then connect the other pair to the charger output and run that back out to your battery.
While it might seem like a little bit of mucking around, it solves the electrical danger issue although it doesn't give you 240V for powering the fridge (unless that's in the cabin with you, I don't think you told us about that).
equipt
Member
That is an Idea, I could probably put it in behind the back seat, I have the 2nd battery, a Projecta air compressor and a Dick Smith 7L cooler all in a steel toolbox mounted in the tub, it is rain proof, but has a big vent on the back so the battery can breath so if I get much water in the tub it will get into the box, but saying that I would probably need over 3" of water in the tub before it will get into the box.
K
KraftyPg
Guest
I think you're letting your water worries take over a bit too much. Like the government says "be alert not alarmed", by all means take it into account but don't let it influence your ideas too much. You've already got a compressor, a fridge and a toolbox in the back and with the exception of the tool box they don't particularly like being dunked in water so why treat the inverter any different.
As you say you need quite a bit of water before it gets into the box so mounting any inverter in a water proof/resistant enclosure is more than likely adequate. Accidents and moments of idiocy are always going to happen, who says someone isn't going to get over excited and spill a drink over your back seat and render any internal installation as risky as an external one.
As you say you need quite a bit of water before it gets into the box so mounting any inverter in a water proof/resistant enclosure is more than likely adequate. Accidents and moments of idiocy are always going to happen, who says someone isn't going to get over excited and spill a drink over your back seat and render any internal installation as risky as an external one.
equipt
Member
Lol. Good point. My main concern was the possability of being electrocuted.
K
KraftyPg
Guest
It's not the volts that kill you it's the current, you can get just as good a shock from the 12volt side of the car under the right conditions as you can out of a small inverter. Don't get me wrong the threat is there but there is other threats too.
filobz
Member
As a "Sparky" I often find it hard not to comment when Voltage & current get mentioned.
Voltage attempts to make a current flow, and current will flow if the circuit is complete. Voltage is sometimes described as the 'push' or 'force' of the electricity, it isn't really a force but this may help you to imagine what is happening. It is possible to have voltage without current, but current cannot flow without voltage.
Current is not used up, what flows into a component must flow out.
I have seen very nasty burns from 12VDC carrying 150A. But helped save a welder hung up on 120VAC with only 30mA. He was in real trouble.
This was in the old days before we had RCD's or earth leakage devices & the fuse was 30A or something.
I used to work for a large American firm that only used 110VAC for all its control wiring because they claimed it was safer. Debatable.
Voltage attempts to make a current flow, and current will flow if the circuit is complete. Voltage is sometimes described as the 'push' or 'force' of the electricity, it isn't really a force but this may help you to imagine what is happening. It is possible to have voltage without current, but current cannot flow without voltage.
Current is not used up, what flows into a component must flow out.
I have seen very nasty burns from 12VDC carrying 150A. But helped save a welder hung up on 120VAC with only 30mA. He was in real trouble.
This was in the old days before we had RCD's or earth leakage devices & the fuse was 30A or something.
I used to work for a large American firm that only used 110VAC for all its control wiring because they claimed it was safer. Debatable.
If we want to describe it at the atomic level ...
Voltage is potential difference, which is directly proportional to the energy that each electron has as it jumps from one atom in the conductor to another. Because there is a small amount of heat generates in the jump, the electron leaving the atom has a very slightly lower energy level than the one that came in. Thus, over a long distance, you get voltage drop. The energy that each electron has also dictates the distance that the electron is capable of jumping.
Current is proportional to the number of electrons that are jumping (the technical term is "propagating"). Large numbers of electrons moving at once all generate heat that compounds and, if the conductor is not large enough, can cause the conductor to heat to unsafe levels.
A conductor that is carrying far more electrons than it was designed for will compound this heat rapidly and reach the melting point of the conductor - this phenomenon is used to advantage in fuses to protect everything, and used far too often to disadvantage by people trying to save money by installing cables that are not rated high enough for the task.
You can have a very large number of electrons jumping at the same time at low voltages (eg in an arc welder) or you can have a few electrons jumping a long distance (television tubes worked this way - high voltage, low current, shoot the electrons and manipulate a magnetic field to deflect the electron path from the cathode (where the electrons come out at the back of the tube) towards the screen.
Pop a spark plug lead one day and let it arc while the engine is turning over. There is a limited current and a limited voltage. As the lead moves further away from the body of the engine, the sparking stops - the potential difference (voltage) is not high enough to allow the electrons to flow.
Thus you have the reason for voltage drop over distance and the need for cabling that is good enough for the task.
Just as an aside, the voltage drop is the reason why we don't have power lines on 240V. The big lines can be 32,000V and a substation will bring that down to 11,000V, 415V and 240V for delivery or redistribution. The 11,000V lines will enter a transformer mounted on a telegraph pole and be reduced to 240V for household use.
Clear as mud?
Voltage is potential difference, which is directly proportional to the energy that each electron has as it jumps from one atom in the conductor to another. Because there is a small amount of heat generates in the jump, the electron leaving the atom has a very slightly lower energy level than the one that came in. Thus, over a long distance, you get voltage drop. The energy that each electron has also dictates the distance that the electron is capable of jumping.
Current is proportional to the number of electrons that are jumping (the technical term is "propagating"). Large numbers of electrons moving at once all generate heat that compounds and, if the conductor is not large enough, can cause the conductor to heat to unsafe levels.
A conductor that is carrying far more electrons than it was designed for will compound this heat rapidly and reach the melting point of the conductor - this phenomenon is used to advantage in fuses to protect everything, and used far too often to disadvantage by people trying to save money by installing cables that are not rated high enough for the task.
You can have a very large number of electrons jumping at the same time at low voltages (eg in an arc welder) or you can have a few electrons jumping a long distance (television tubes worked this way - high voltage, low current, shoot the electrons and manipulate a magnetic field to deflect the electron path from the cathode (where the electrons come out at the back of the tube) towards the screen.
Pop a spark plug lead one day and let it arc while the engine is turning over. There is a limited current and a limited voltage. As the lead moves further away from the body of the engine, the sparking stops - the potential difference (voltage) is not high enough to allow the electrons to flow.
Thus you have the reason for voltage drop over distance and the need for cabling that is good enough for the task.
Just as an aside, the voltage drop is the reason why we don't have power lines on 240V. The big lines can be 32,000V and a substation will bring that down to 11,000V, 415V and 240V for delivery or redistribution. The 11,000V lines will enter a transformer mounted on a telegraph pole and be reduced to 240V for household use.
Clear as mud?
K
KraftyPg
Guest
Dammit I thought voltage drop in cars was just because there wasn't enough stuff using power (which is why we add second batteries) and after it dropped on the road it was transferred to other cars by those rubber strips people hang off the back of cars (which secretly have metal braces up the middle to conduct the sparky).
Similar threads
