Camping conversions!

We have only a couple of poisonous spiders here, one of which (the white-tail) was a relatively recent Australian import unfortunately, however it is quite rare to encounter any of these and rarer to have any issue with them. In general it can be taken that any spider you see won't harm you, it's just their damned webs that are the nuisance and unless you have an allergy the poisonous ones won't actually kill you. It's really just this year we seem to have this problem of vehicles quickly becoming covered in webs which looks really bad.

I've found out that our van was used as a goods delivery vehicle in Japan so it's odd that it has the rear air-conditioner; I still think it was a mini-bus to start with and they'd have removed the rear seats to make room for boxes of product.
I now have some photos which I will need to crop and rotate to make them suitable for posting. I'll put them in the 'show us yours' thread once I've done them and hosted them somewhere.
What's the syntax for inserting them in the thread? Is it the square brackets with img and /img or is it image source= followed by the URL? or what?

I think your 24 volt choice is wise as the current is half of what it would be at 12 volts and it is current which causes the power loss in any resistance inevitably present. 48 volts is even better but hard to use in a vehicle situation. Price-wise I'd imagine there would be little difference between 2x75 Ah 12 volt batteries or 1x 150 Ah 12 volt battery but I know which I'd rather carry and heave into the van! Our 115 Ah 12 volt was heavy enough and I'm only a little fellow.
12 / 24 volt front-opening fridges are astronomically priced here, much as I'd have liked one to retain the use of the space above we simply could not justify that sort of expenditure and we just struck it lucky that a local marine supplies shop had two top-opening fridges on clearance special the day we called into their shop at about a third of what other fridges were priced at so we took the smaller of the two which if I remember correctly is 40 litres capacity. It fits in nicely, goes well and can be set for any temperature from +4 deg C to -18 deg C. Carole is a diabetic so the critical thing was keeping her insulin correctly refrigerated.

Ah yes I just do everything with 1 battery

But the 24V has the big disadvantage that if one battery dies, the other one is useless after that. It will already be damaged. And you will replace both at the same time.

But worse is that if there is a small difference, cause by resistance on a terminal or one of the cells getting less fit, it is getting bigger because of the setup.

A cell getting less fit meaning a less high voltage possible on the cell or resulting in a different resistance value. This meams the other battery will get a higher voltage, resulting in wrong charging.
To prevent this you can add a battery balancer for 24v systems. If you buy a ctek 24v battery charger, allowing you to plugin add campsites, it comes with such a balancer built in.

Anyway it will work fine, you just may be replacing batteries earlier.
But for me it is not worth the trouble. If you worry about 42Amps just take a thicker cable, the losses are almost not there.

I understand choosing the inverter and then a 230v fridge.
The 12v fridges are indeed expensive. I bought one 12v weaco second hand for 200 euro, 60 liter and with a small freezer inside! Has been working really well for a few years now.
Just one Optima yellow top for starting and big solar panel with a victron solar controller.

Anyway you already bought the stuff and of course you will use it.

Interesting why the spiders are doing so well this year, maybe the things that used to eat them dies, did the road get sprayed by the council for any reason? In general pesticides (and fertilisers) attract pests - ironic really - as it disturbs the quiet chain of what eats what, and non-organic fertilizer tends to create weak plants unable to defend themselves.

Looking forward to the pics!

I think the 12V vs 24V debate is a detail, at the end of the day it doesn't matter. I'm not convinced any of 12 cells is any more likely to fail than any of 6 cells either, Lithium batteries need careful cell balancing for safety and lifetime reasons but lead-acid tends to self balance - the weaker cell just vents a little more gas. Getting rid of the gas from charging is a more relevant problem (for any domestic battery system), a H2 and O2 mix in the living area is not a great idea. There's a big oval hole where the pipes for the old heater used to end the van, I'll try to put a trunking from there to the under-seat area with a brushless computer fan to run and keep the area clear, could be on a switch and later triggered by charging.

The use of Solar solves many issues and allows you to have a single battery without a stranding risk, simpler and lighter!

I should have a 12V mains conditioning charger for the starting battery that's usually on the hookup socket, but can be plugged into the inverted power in an emergency - then I can use the starter battery for the heater. Even if it takes an average of 1.5A a whole night that's only 15AH max from a 95Ah battery, I think that's the easiest beginning.

So I can bring in the hookup via an MCB/RCD box to the inverter and a single red socket. Then the 12V conditioner/charger is plugged into that normally but can also be plugged into a van-power inverter socket instead if the battery needs a charge.

Also check the minimum output power of your Chinese heater.

For the Planar 2kw it is 800watt and even that is a lot of times too much for long periods. So it might not be so practical in the night.

Good point, it would have been so easy to buy a 5kW as heaters are also subject to the 'number game' of 'bigger must be better', but I knew 2kW would already be pushing it.

I ordered an LCD controller for it that has a thermostat in it so it should cycle. 2kW is the lowest power one can buy and I wanted it to cycle as little as possible. There's a few videos of the chinese 2kW one and it seems to throttle down well, but also some people use them to heat their workshop with - or so they say. Not a bad idea in principle if one can get the intake and exhaust through the wall.

If the thermostat doesn't cycle I may need to use a tiny computer fan to suck or blow air past it but we'll see. Stage #1 is having any heat at all so totally manual is already a big step up from a tent or unheated van !

Yes, all burners have this problem. Also my gas burner installation in our new house which is very good isolated. 5KW minimum is too much for our house. Now it is replaced with a heat pump that can go much lower

800W is usually too much. Now here it is around freezing temperatures and it could maybe do.
Our van is the LWB with windows everywhere and high roof altough that is isolated properly

In practice in European holidays it is enough to run it in evening and start it in the morning. Be sure to reach the heater control from your bed

Also please note that they are quite noisy. Especially outside.
This way you can anooy neighbours on the campsite easily depending on the space.
And especially when starting it smells too.
Check if there are any intake and exhaust dampers on it. Intake damper helps alot, while people think about exhaust damper only.

Well I uploaded pictures to postimage and have spent the last three-quarters of an hour trying to get the images to show in a post, but all I can get is 120 pixel thumbnails, nothing I try will put the full images into the thread so maybe the forum doesn't allow direct linking to postimage pictures. I'll try another host tomorrow and see if I can get that to work.

AgathaAlice wrote:

Well I uploaded pictures to postimage and have spent the last three-quarters of an hour trying to get the images to show in a post, but all I can get is 120 pixel thumbnails, nothing I try will put the full images into the thread so maybe the forum doesn't allow direct linking to postimage pictures. I'll try another host tomorrow and see if I can get that to work.

Postimage works fine here, it's possible you need to check you didn't select thumbnails

Re. heaters, yes I think they can be noisy and startup is very smelly. I'm thinking of using the 5L tank mine came with and running mine on paraffin as the smell of paraffin is much less acrid than diesel. The old heater control had a cable for the water valve which gives a perfect place to put the fuel pipe from the inside to the outside fuel feed.

Mine has a intake air filter which may help the noise, I'll try to direct the pipes under the van to minimise the noise, maybe pointing downward toward the ground instead of straight out the side - good tip!

Postimage didn't give me any option of what to choose, however using the image host I found a few days ago it works correctly. Here's the link to my post:
https://hiace-super-custom.forumotion.com/t3539-agatha-alice#19510
Enjoy!

Just an update, my split charging relay arrived today, it's an auto-sense unit and a 100A relay, slight overkill but at least I didn't go for the 200A one!

Also my 1200W boost DC-DC converter arrived and gave me a chance to study the specs. The specs didn't arrive with the item of course - but was on the eBay listings. It has 3 adjusters on it, which puzzled me but I have now worked out what they are:

1. Cut-off voltage for the input
2. CC max current control
3. Voltage output

Because of (1) I may not need the split charge controller for this install as I can set the input threshold to say 14V and just use the PSU's built-in input voltage sense. There's a risk of see-sawing (i.e. it switches on, the voltage drops so it switches off etc) but worth a try I thought to reduce complexity. It claims to have a standby current of 15mA, which is probably no different from the autosensor for the split charge relay.

I also found out the big campers (Ducato hitops and small motorhomes) have a single 100Ah 12V battery, so with my proposed twin 75Ah rig I already have 50% more energy stored than a bigger van - so maybe that will be enough. The 75Ah have a benefit of being small and cheap, maybe if I start with that but leave space for twin 100Ah that will be well.

I've also ordered a 60mm (actually 57mm I.D.) flexible trunking to fit into the hole where the rear heater pipe grommet used to fit as it entered the inner sill. There's a plate there that has an oval hole of 183mm circumference (so a squashed 58mm pipe) which will be my extractor fan. A small reduced voltage computer fan will then be able to idle which should reduce condensation inside, vent any battery gassing and help with the toilet.

On the floor I've chosen to leave the original formed Toyota foam in place, which I'll augment where the seat cutouts are, and then use two layers of 6mm green under-floor insulation foam that they sell for laminate floors. This stuff is absolutely fantastic as insulation, even picking it up makes your hands feel warm. I'll also try to fit two LHS to RHS conduit channels in this to connect the sides for power, audio etc, and then run 9mm hardwood over the top which will be lightly secured with some seat bolts using the existing seat holes that will remain hidden under the fixed bed side.

Sounds like your project is coming together nicely. It's so much better when you have the actual items in your hand so you can work out exact space allocations and methods of mountings; you can do only so much with cardboard models and the dimensions quoted on websites are not always accurate.
I set up our VSR (which I made myself) so the sensing is done from the KEY ON connection so there's no standing draw. The only things which draw all the time in ours are the original dash clock, the backup in the radio, the large clock which is inside our tailgate (see the pictures) and the alarm. Of those only the alarm is significant and is probably about 20 mA, each of the others will be less than 1 mA. 20 mA is enough to drain a battery over several weeks though as I have found with my two cars which get little use; I quite often need to put my charger on to bring them back up.
Do you, or will you have an alarm in yours?

Interesting. Yes there is an alarm, and I have a earth terminal battery isolator and a clamp meter and have measured the alarm at around 10-15mA.

I did connect the roof controller up permanently until I discovered it took 0.25A so now I have a switch between off, Acc1 (the original Toyota setting) and On, when On a voltmeter lights up to tell me a) how the battery is and b) to remind me it's on! This is so I can play with the roof without the Acc1 being on.

Yes much easier to work with the items actually here, the only down side is that I have loads of items sitting about.
I decided to completely remove the rear window wash tank in the end as I discovered it was pinching the rear LHS sunroof drain, and looking at the dirt in the pipe it had been for some years. I just need a blanking grommet for the filler hole now and it's done.

I also worked out how to bolt wood to the side of the van. Toyota added nylon 'nuts' that sit in the holes which are great but scarce, and there are a number of empty holes. So I decided it may be easier if I stuck/screwed a narrow piece of 12.5mm ply behind the holes and then I can simply put a wood screw through any hole (as long as there's no wiring or pipes there) to screw the side to the van. Then the side will contain a 4mm blanking panel for the big opening to keep the insulation in, the panel covered in aluminium foil as a vapour barrier. On top of the top edge can then be a 100mm wide piece of 9mm ply to run next to the window to allow insulating foam to fit between the window rubber and the van, then a 33mm x 33mm wooden rail on top of the sandwich which allows the cupboard top to be laid in and support the inner side of the cupboard, which can be in 9mm ply too to support the bed rail.

I've also worked out how to suspend (about 30mm into) a 16" x 25" panel inside the side of the van where the old rear heater matrix and blower lived using the Toyota metalwork there. This will be my electrical board and will contain the incoming RCD/double MCB and Victron plus an internal hook-up-only socket and any other gear like the 12-24V converter and 24V to 12V converter. I want to keep the Victron upright for cooling as power tails off when it gets warmer (it's self regulating and passive cooled).

Hi GPW nice progress.

But how do you charge and in which direction? The 1200W DCDC converter is for charging? What way?
Im wondering what you will do when you have an empty/dead starter battery and two charged batteries in the back.

Hiace4wd wrote:

Hi GPW nice progress.

But how do you charge and in which direction? The 1200W DCDC converter is for charging? What way?
Im wondering what you will do when you have an empty/dead starter battery and two charged batteries in the back.

Hi! The DC-DC boost converter is only for charging the 24V pack from the alternator.
It has a built-in adjustable 'split charge' detector (presumably to protect any battery it is supplied from) and an adjustable output current limit CC (that I'll probably set to 5A (10A draw from the 12V system) and an adjustable max output voltage.

The situation you describe is solved in the following way: The Victron has a 1A 12V auxilliary charge line on it for the starter battery when on hookup, but if instead I put a 10A (or so) digital battery conditioning charger on the hookup side to charge the starter battery I then have a 'spare' pre-wired starter battery charger.

So all I need to do if the starter battery is too low is to make sure this 12V battery charger is on a mains plug so I can move it from the special hookup powered socket in the electrical panel to an inverter output socket: i.e. As I have 230V in the van I can just use this charger to recover the starter battery. It's not super efficient but it's an option to get me started

Maybe I can even put it on a switch, to switch it between hookup and inverter output, I just need a 240V relay or a decent domestic DPDT switch. A relay is probably better then I can bring it out to a panel switch. The same switch could also disconnect the boost converter which may be fooled into switching on when the starter battery is charging...

Sounds complocated to me but it will work. At least I'm happy to reas that you wont apply jumpstarting cables to one of of thr batteries in your 24v system, that was my main thing to ask it.

Also please note that the heater fuel pump is quite noisy. Mine came with the Planar but I think they all have the same design, it is ticking the fuel towards the heater. So one nock per second or a bit faster.
I wish I would have fastened mine with a big piece of rubber, or to have put it in a different location (or in a small box)
No big deal at all, but since you start with a clean sheet it is good to know.
Soes your Chinese heater let you read error codes? That woukd be more useful (and safe)
I already had 2 error codes, which were not caused by the heater but detected by the heater correctly.

Hi, yes jumpstarting a 12V from a 24V pack would be 'bad' . Worse with Lithium...

Thanks for the reminder about the pump noise, I was thinking mounting inside away from the dirt outside but perhaps outside is better, they are cheap so I don't care if it gets the weather.

Will try to also arrange so it points up a bit, they say 45 degrees I think. I think you can get rubber holders for them now.

I bought the little LCD control panel to go with it which shows error codes and nifty things - there's a few videos of it working, on entertainment value alone it was worth £12.

Heater install! I'm now fitting the Chinese heater.
It's a bit further forward than I first thought as there's a nice flat bit of flooring there. I used some thing foam stuck in as a gasket there. Bolts facing up so the threads stay clean inside.

I'm positioning the exhaust blowing into the van exhaust under the heat shield so I hope it's quiet and OK there. The inlet has a silencer which a 50mm stainless P clip with the rubber removed fits perfectly, so that was lucky. Everything is positioned loose in the photos. It looks OK, particularly for a 1st effort, the van's 8mm bolt holes from the old heater pipes are used to bolt the brackets for the new heater.

The fuel pump is in it's rubber that's bolted to a 19mm rubber coolant pipe I had spare, which is then bolted to a bracket. This is my attempt to isolate it's noisy 'tick' from the van. Rubber 4mm ID hosed have been ordered to stop the noise travelling that way.

The big hole in the sill you can see in the distance is where the old coolant pipes for the heater went, my extractor fan pipe is going to exit there.

Inside the van there will be no real insulation in that area unless it's heatproof engine-bay stuff, which I may add later. I'll put the floor in with a cutout leaving that area alone.

Looks good! And well done with fuel pump.

I am not sure if it is a good idea to blow the exhaust under the van. Did you check manual on this?

Yes I'm not happy with the exhaust yet. It looks too complex to me and I've now decided that I want any 'plume' to make it's way out just forward of the heater to the side. That way on a still night it will be away from the sliding door and from the MPV vents at the back of the van.

I was trying not to cut the pipe but it's clearly too long and the off-cut can be used to direct the gad away in any direction I want regardless of the mounting of the muffler.

BTW the max exhaust tube length is about 2 metres IIRC and looking at the silencer it looks to be a pretty thorough attempt at silencing (complete with wadding) so it's almost tempting to use a 2nd silencer on there to make it super quiet. Maybe a 2nd silencer is a later mod to try.

You are correct about the intake noise as the air intake 'filter' is not really a filter at all but more of a silencer itself. The exhaust silencer would also make a great (better) inlet silencer too BTW, they are only about £7 each.

I would first try it without any extra work, maybe it is already silent enough.

You could fix the exhaust damper the otherway around (so it is pointing to outside of van), and then just attach a short exhaust tube with a slight bend, so it will just come out to the side of the car. Because you can bend the exhaust pipimg a bit into shape.

Here I'd like to add a small tip I discovered: The exhaust pipes are made by rolling them in with a spiral so they can be bent, this makes the internal diameter rather smaller than the things they have to fit over. So contrary to the info I looked at last night it's not possible to cut them to size and fit them to stuff, the most that can be done is to cut a little of the straight tube down if required.

I.e. if you do cut them you can no longer fit the cut end onto anything. I knew there was a reason I didn't want to cut it LOL.
ETA: This applies to some pipes only, the better pipes seem to be externally corrugated so they'll still fit!

They're pretty cheap (£4 ea.) and I now have my bendable 'ends' for directing the exhaust, but I've had to order a new pipe so I can connect up the heater outlet to the silencer again.

The inlet pipe is easier, that can be cut anywhere as required as it's soft aluminium pipe that has no special ends.

Cutting out the floor now.










Just checking the fit. Flooring chosen is 9mm hardwood structural ply, in 8' x 4' lengths, cut into 5' x 4' parts before shaping.

I found it easy to run some wires through the channels that exist before you put the floor on.

Hiace4wd wrote:

I found it easy to run some wires through the channels that exist before you put the floor on.

Good point - especially as the old seat slider channels are huge. But I need wires going from side to side on my layout..

The MPV floor has a tough sound deadening insulation layer that is moulded to the channel shape so I'm augmenting that where it doesn't cover (holes for seat fixings etc) with 5mm flooring insulation panels that are used under wooden floors in houses. The stuff is super at insulating, they always feel warm when carrying them. So over the top of these Toyota mats will go 2 layers of this green 5mm floor insulation giving a 10mm layer.

Side to side channels of 10mm x 20mm oval ducting will then be put into this insulation layer to go side to side so I can thread any wires I need when I remember them at a later date. On the RHS (long) next to the fixed bed there is a 100mm cupboard the full length, on the LHS a shorter deeper cupboard of about 2m.

So the floor sandwich is van, Toyota sound proofing, house floor insulation, 9mm ply, then carpet on the walking areas. Of course the single glazed windows make it a bit academic but the principle seems good!

BTW: the rear section of the floor and cupboards will always have to be removable (given a while with a screwdriver) so if the dampers ever need changing it's possible to get to the top mounts....