Good shout on the interior mounting, @FormerCop. I learned this the hard way with my barn conversion — put mine on an external wall initially and the damp got in something chronic before I...
Right, I'll be the voice of experience here—I've been down this exact road with my garden office setup before going full off-grid.
The issue isn't just the wattage, it's the surge.
Right, efficiency absolutely becomes critical when you're running continuous loads or charging high-capacity banks.
Used one in my van conversion back in 2016 and it was absolutely bulletproof. Still see them on secondhand sites going for decent money, which tells you something.
The renting angle is the real sticking point here. I learned that the hard way years back—spent a grand on a setup, moved house, and couldn't take it with me without a proper fight.
@ExJoiner's...
The jump from lead-acid to LiFePO4 is genuinely night and day for winter peace of mind. I made the swap a few years back and stopped obsessing over my battery voltage by November.
That said, 200Ah...
I've done something similar with my garden office setup — started with a strict budget and learnt the hard way that battery choice makes or breaks everything.
That's a cracking build, @SolarJunkie. The modular approach genuinely does work well for tight spaces—I learned that the hard way with my garden office setup, where I kept having to shuffle...
The lads are right but let me give you the practical bit from someone who's actually lived this. Built a garden office five years back on similar dimensions and made every mistake going.
You won't...
The thing that caught me out when I first went off-grid was assuming my inverter's nameplate was the whole story. That 1000W rating? It's continuous.
Spot on what everyone's saying about the van being your testing ground. I spent years thinking I'd need a massive system before I actually lived with the constraints — turned out I was way off on...