Turning our Wiring Rats Nest into a thing of Beauty! |e173

After the last few upgrades, Gary was ready to pull his last hair out over our basement wiring. So, it’s time for a wiring rework to help keep our new electrical additions both functional and “pretty”.

Below is a picture of the Host power and ground studs before we made any changes to wiring.

The wiring was functional but a bit messy, so we had originally updated this area to a set of 4-post power blocks in 2021. Yes, it was still messy but the power and ground wires were better distributed on the multiple posts.

At this time, Gary only taped off unused wires and left them in the main harness, since it’s not an easy task to untape wire bundles, remove wires, and then re-secure.

With all of the recent wiring of new functions (we needed to route wires directly to the stud on our 12V refrigerator install and our diesel heater install), as well as other electrical features we added over the past few years, it was getting a bit messy again and our stud was getting a bit too busy.

STUFF WE BOUGHT

Victron Lynx Power In Module – While we could have purchased the correct Victron Lynx Distributor, we decided to save a few pennies by installing hardware ourselves so we can add fuses to the unit. We added:

4 M8 1.25 bolts (30mm)
8 M8 Nuts
12 M8 washers
4 M8 Lockwashers

While these units were pretty large, they allowed us to use mega fuses instead of the breakers were were using, which helped on wall real estate.

We were also quite excited to have the ability to manage BOTH the power and ground wires within the unit as well. Gary took a bit of extra time trying to figure out which ground wires went where – not the easiest of tasks – Host had regularly included 2-3 wires in a terminal which makes for “fun” wire tracing.

Blue Sea Systems 5025 ST Blade Fuse Block 6 Circuit with Ground and Cover – This block was really what we needed – something smaller to get a few circuits in that could be added in multiple areas in our basement. Gary ended up putting one of these close to the basement door on the driver side, and another on the passenger side wall above our gray tank.

These blocks also allow you to manage both power and ground wiring so this worked perfect for our needs! Each of these fuse blocks could handle 100A, which was sufficient for both sides of the basement.

Result

This work was RIGHT up Gary’s alley – taking the time to figure out which wire was what and match it to the ground wires. This took a few days but the results were pretty great – we now know our electrical system even better and have a method that allows us to add more items (if need be) without creating another mess – BONUS!

This new system gave us a solid main power distribution which then branches out to two fuse blocks in separate areas of the basement. The below picture is above our gray tank on the passenger side in the basement.

The next picture below if the fuse block on the driver side. This is accessible from the basement door and handled a lot more of the new functions we added over the past few years.

I created a schematic of the new system, but you’ll see the physical results better on the video. Direct link to the Google Presentation

Our Camping Locations

If you’re interested in seeing all of the places we’ve stayed, I’m keeping a (mostly) updated list on Google Maps by Month. Enjoy!