"Big Foot 53"

 

or

 

Container and Big Foot (May till June 2010)

 

 

Meanwhile the Container is completely sealed, a window was built in,

 

 

The biggest scratches and dents were levelled out and afterwards the container got painted – because of “corporate identity! J as well in RAL 1002, sand-yellow.

 

 

For easy access I have bought a ladder for quick remount.

 

 

In the container I have installed a 230V wiring plus lighting and hopefully sufficient plugs. For safety I have installed a ground fault interrupter and two automatic fuses (for + & -) which I connected to each other for simultaneous operation.

 

The interior became a work bench and two shelves, meanwhile I have added more shelves and tool brackets to the walls. And as you can see the walls got painted white.

 

 

 

But I worked as well on Big Foot. Finally I have a rubber sealing above the rear door. This will prevent water rinsing heavily down between the gap of the rear door and the rear wall. (NB: The grey aluminium profile was meanwhile sprayed in sand yellow, but because you would have problems to identify it on the photo I chose the photo with the grey primer.)

 

 

I have now swapped the normal 230V refrigerator against a special RV-built version working on 24V, the „old“ one will be used in the new appartement. The exchange wasn’t caused by a damage or so, he still works after 6 years of usage in Big Foot without any problems. But because of the refrigerator I have to operate the power transformers permanently which draws in stand-by mode approximately 3,5A. OK; just 1,5% loss by 3kW and 2,5kW , but the new 24V refrigerator has a max. consumption of 80 Watt, more or less the same as the two transformers – BUT the refrigerator has even in hot conditions not a run-time of 100%! So at the end a substancial energy saving.

My first choice was a compressor refrigerator from Isotherm, but it was not useable form interior because the doors were fixed tot he wrong side. Kissmann was too deep and therefore no choice either. So finally the only “choice” was WAECO and with just adding a layer of 1 cm underneath the refrigerator I could even use the cover-doors from the previous one. Here a photo with and without cover-doors – you don’t see a difference to the previous refrigerator? Bingo! Everything fitted perfectly by adding just a 1 cm spacer.

What I cannot understand is why they sell such high priced units especially designed for RV or boat applications without a barrier at the front of the intermediate shelves!

 

 

I had a really good offer for two solar panels with 175 Wp each from Alexander Grimm (GWS Energie GbR), and so I finally mounted one onto the roof. So far I had two main sources to charge the batteries, a 24V 50A Victron charger and a 100A generator at the engine. For back-up I had mounted a diesel generator from the German army with 28V 72A. My average travel habit is to stay 1, 2 or max. 3 days before I hit the road again, so the battery capacity was sufficient. Therefore the prices for solar energy 2, 3 years ago was simply a waste of money for my habits. But this deal now I couldn’t let pass. The mounting was done with the normally mounting brackets; here a first rough test-placement:

 

 

The panels are quite huge. So I added a support-bracket with Trocellen glued on in the middle of each panel to prevent vibrations. The basic mounting profile was simply glued to the roof.

 

 

In the cabin I installed a solar charging controller 2010 with MPPT-technology from Steca.