WingAndPrayer | 312 posts
@RayCross curious where you were going with "air sea" there — got cut off!
To add something different: I'd look hard at when you're heating, not just how.
@ExTrucker73 curious to see where that question was going! Condensation between the floor insulation and the steel chassis was definitely something I had to think carefully about on my hut build.
Interesting use case — I've been down a similar rabbit hole for the garden office setup.
One thing worth factoring in alongside the Orion XS is whether your Fogstar Drift BMS will actually allow...
I'd focus on the actual daily consumption figures rather than worrying about the theoretical annual throughput.
The 24/3000 is indeed bulletproof kit. Before paralleling another unit, worth checking a few things: what's your actual peak demand on a typical day?
For a Sprinter retrofit, 48V makes sense if you're planning proper battery capacity—cable losses kill 12V over longer runs. I went 48V for my shepherd's hut and haven't looked back.
For a shepherds hut fridge, you're looking at 3-5kW minimum to handle inrush — @BlownFuse's point about that 3-5x startup spike is spot on. What's your battery bank size though?
The romanticising bit resonates—I've seen plenty of folk show up with Pinterest pictures of off-grid cabins, realise there's actual work involved, and vanish within a season.
What's worked for me...
Worth noting that split arrays really come into their own when you've got decent roof orientation options.
Been wrestling with this for my shepherd's hut build. Currently running a 200W solar array charging a leisure battery via a basic PWM controller, but I'm adding a second battery for the cabin and...
in Q&A
1 year ago
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The 48/5000 really is bulletproof for that capacity—I've got one running my garden office setup and it just handles the switching seamlessly.
Been through this with my shepherd's hut build, so happy to share what worked.
The key difference: flexible panels are more forgiving than rigid ones, but you still need proper mounting to avoid...
The physical placement point @SolarJunkie mentions is spot on — I've got mine in a small cabinet in my garden office and initially had it too close to the battery bank.
The lads are spot on about the charging curve being a nightmare. I tried this on my shepherd's hut setup a few years back and ended up binning it after a month.
The thing nobody mentions is heat...
in Q&A
2 years ago
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