Adding electrical to Teardrop


CADLAC

New Member
I have a teardrop with a 12v battery and two lights and a fan. There is no charger for the battery and it is not charged from the tow vehicle. I want to add shore ac, a charger/conditioner for the battery and possibly an inverter. Is there any tech manuals or sites I can visit to learn how to do this? What am I going to need? Where can I buy these items? :question:
 

hertig

Senior Member
Adding electrical to Teardrop

If by adding 'shore AC' you mean adding an electrical outlet with a cord you can plug into an external 110V AC socket, it would be just like adding electricity to a structure which did not have it. Check out any basic electrical wiring book. For parts, see your local Home Depot or Lowes, etc., and for RV specific parts, any RV parts store (Camping World, etc).

If you just want to charge your battery and run small appliances, standard 15 Amp should be adequate. If you are going to add an Air Conditioner, you may want to go with 30 Amp (standard RV configuration). To find the Air Conditioner, you may be able to use a standard window unit if you don't mind cutting up your RV. Better but more expensive would be to check out Camping World, etc for RV specific units.

With 1 battery designed for 2 lights and a fan, you won't be able to drive a big inverter, or any inverter for long. Your best bet is one of those 'car' inverters which you plug into 12V and get maybe 400 watts out of. If you did have a battery bank big enough to support a, say 2KW inverter, those often have pretty good battery chargers built in. Battery and inverter information is available on a lot of battery or solar energy web sites, as well as RV sites. Do a search in this forum for some which have been posted.

Other than that, to charge the battery, you can get a regular charger, an 'intelligent' charger (possibly with desulfator), a solar charger, or a 'converter'. This last thing is a RV specific gadget which when plugged into 110 AC, provides 12 V DC to the RV and charges the batteries (but not very intelligently).
 
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