Need help for powering skoolie

[shalverson]

So I bought a partial conversion. 40 ft Thompson. The guy I bought it from has sureline set up, going into 2 12v marine batteries. From there into a 4000 watt inverter(I believe this goes into the outlets for fridge, chargers, etc). Then a separate battery bank runs the water pump(dc) etc...

So I may be completely ignorant, I’m a new Skoolie guy, but when I plugged in my sureline, I assumed I could just run my outlets off of my buddies house power. But, the battery monitor kept tripping to a fault protector saying the batteries were low. Is this because the sureline May only be set up to charge the batteries?
If so what is a good solution to fix this?
(E.g. sureline straight to the outlets, or more batteries?)

What have you guys done for power systems?

In my head I was hoping to have a sureline set up so I can plug into outside power sources when available.
And solar power set up going into a battery bank for boondocking. Is this unrealistic?

[PNW_Steve]

I am going to have to confess ignorance.

I have wired multiple homes and two buses and I have no clue what a "sureline" is.

Can you tell us more?

[family wagon]

The line you describe sounds like what we conventionally call "shore power."

It sounds as if your bus has a power input cord that goes only to the battery charger. To make it work as you had intended, you might need a heavier power cord, a transfer switch, and possibly a circuit breaker panel.

You'll probably have to sketch out in detail the system that currently exists, search for examples of what you wish it did, and then figure out how to adapt from what you have to what you want.

[PNW_Steve]

Originally Posted by family wagon

The line you describe sounds like what we conventionally call "shore power."

It sounds as if your bus has a power input cord that goes only to the battery charger. To make it work as you had intended, you might need a heavier power cord, a transfer switch, and possibly a circuit breaker panel.

You'll probably have to sketch out in detail the system that currently exists, search for examples of what you wish it did, and then figure out how to adapt from what you have to what you want.

Ahhh, I got it

Sureline had me picturing a stapler..... Not shore power....

I would agree with Family Wagon's assessment.

[ThunderstruckStudios]

I agree with familywagon and Steve.


Perhaps the easiest solution to this is to put a male plug on the end of your AC fusebox input. Then you can manually plug into either shore power or your inverter/batteries. Usually the inverters have a few female outlets on the appliance itself, so that's no problem. You can wire a female outlet to the connection of the outside of your bus - that way you don't have to run any extension cords through the inside of the bus.

[shalverson]

Thank you I appreciate the terminology correction and the suggestion! It’ll make searching waaaaay easier. ��