A solar panel helps boost your power and is an easy DIY project, says Nigel Hutson
KNOW-HOW // CARAVAN DIY
SOLAR PANELS ARE being fitted to more and more new caravans as standard kit, and they’re certainly useful, especially if you store your van or go off-grid – even on the dullest days, it will help to keep your battery topped up.
Fitting one might sound a bit daunting, but it’s actually pretty straightforward, as we discovered when we installed a Truma 65 Wp SolarSet kit (three other sizes are also available from Truma).
You will need to do a bit of planning, and decide where you’re going to mount the panel, bearing in mind that you have to drill a hole in the roof to pass a fairly thick cable. That cable then needs to end up being connected to the battery via the control unit. Once decided, it’s time to get started.
Preparing the roof
The first thing to do is thoroughly clean the roof where the solar panel is going to sit. We washed and dried the area, before cleaning it with white spirit and then the supplied cleaning spray.
Next, from within an overhead locker inside the caravan, a 2mm pilot hole was drilled through the roof, followed by a 12mm hole. Truma suggests using a 35mm hole-cutter for this, but because the cable was quite flexible and didn’t lift the roof leadthrough housing, the 12mm hole was sufficient in our case. Any burr around the hole was removed.
Rather than having cables trailed across the roof, we decided to fit the panel over the housing – there was lots of clearance.
Take the cable (with the Y-connector and waterproof connections) and pass it through the roof leadthrough housing, ensuring that the Y-connector is on the outside. You’ll need to leave about 50cm (20”) to the outside.
Tighten the screw connections around the cable where it passes into the housing, using the 24mm and 27mm spanners to ensure a watertight fit. Once that’s done, pass the other end of the cable through the hole in the roof, leaving just enough for you to turn the housing over.
Now comes the messy bit! You need to put a bead of the supplied adhesive around the base of the roof leadthrough housing. That sounds simple enough, but one of our tubes split and we ended up with adhesive all over the place.
Once you have the bead of adhesive around the housing, feed the remaining cable through the roof until the housing sits over the hole, and gently press the housing into place, ensuring there are no gaps in the adhesive (as this also keeps any water out of the caravan), which needs to be 1-2mm thick.
Installing the panel
The feet then have to be
