Airstream Electric for the electrically challenged....

[redreefet]

Are all these wires necessary? When we wired out entire home, it seemed much easier ie: Service~Panel~Lights, outlets etc.... I'm guessing this is because of the battery involvement & the tank monitoring???

I want to replace this control thing with a new clean ______ <insert suggestions>

I want to hand the ______ to an electrician and say "install this & keep in mind, we would like to add solar later". Will the average electrician be able to do this kind of work?

We're in south east WI if anyone knows anyone interested in the work. I really don't want to have to take it to a dealer, since we're working on other areas of the trailer and want to be camp ready come May.

[DanielB]

Most all of the wires, I believe, are for the gauges. If you don't want the gauge, you don't need the wire.
If there is an on/off switch, you probably want that switch to be somewhere, but doesn't necessarily need to be on a "control panel".

When I pulled the inner skins off mine, I took a look at all of the wires and was like.. Oh, no. But it turned out to be a lot simpler than it looked. If you look at the 12v distribution panel, mine has 4 wires coming out. All 12v junk runs off of one of those 4 wires (or the blue from the tow vehicle).

The 110 has 3 wires. One for the AC and one each for 1/2 of the outlets.

On mine I plan to put the water pump on/off switch somewhere and def. an ammeter somewhere. Not sure that I care about water level gauges or the rest of that junk.

Don't know what gauges you might want for a solar charging system.

[redreefet]

Would something like this replace this "spaghetti" system?? I'd like to get it all in one place. Inteli-Power 4560

[Jammer]

The wiring in the photo is for the tank monitoring systems and has little to do with supplying electric power to the trailer. There is probably not any reason to disturb it.

Electricians without an RV background are unlikely to be of much help.

The panel you link to is a fine product and would be ideal for replacing the original Univolt converter in your trailer. I believe that the converter is accessible from the exterior in trailers of that era, from a compartment on the street side.

[robwok]

I just replaced my bunch of wires and control with an all in one Intellipower.

Couple comments on that. Like the post above, you only have a few #10 gauge wire that run everything. Blue, Orange, PInk are the hots for mine, with the white wires all being the common ground. You have to seperate your DC from your AC. One of the confusing elements is if your system has any dual voltage. For example, mine had 2 sets of wires running to the lights and to the furnace. My lights ran off of AC or DC and my furnace off of either as well. I basically just tested most of the circuits with a 9v battery and a voltmeter to map them.

As for switches, you may have a water pump switch at the sink in the kitchen, and the rest of the guages may be able to be remapped. With the explanation above, I think any electician should be able to map it out. The intellipower does have kind of a tight box when it comes to running the breakers though. I used solid wire for my main just to save some space inside the intellipower. Also, the board for the intellipower isn't well supported for those really tight DC fuses, so I put my finger behind it to make sure I didn't break the circuit board while I pushed in my fuses.