This installation was completed in March of 2023.  The owner of this 5th wheel was referred to me by Battle Born batteries.  He contacted me and we discussed what he wanted.  He had just purchased his (new to him) Grand Design Reflection 28BH 5th wheel.  He had modest needs for some basic boondocking capabilities.  I presented a plan that we discussed in detail.  The more we talked about what he wanted to accomplish, the more tweaks we made to the system.  He finally agreed on a design and we set an installation date.  The installation took place over a three day period.  I had never seen the 5th wheel until the owner showed up for the installation.  I took some time at the beginning of the installation to plan mounting locations for all the equipment.  I decided to mount everything in the front compartment.  This was not a climate controlled compartment so I ended up building an insulated battery box to house the batteries.  The inverter and solar controller were mounted to the wall of the compartment.  The battery box took up more floor space than the OEM battery, but the top of the box could be used for storage.  Overall very little storage space was lost when compared to the original factory set up.

This 5th wheel did not have a solar wire chase from the roof to the basement like a lot of Grand Designs.  I spent some time trying to figure out the best way to run the wire down from the roof.  I pulled the vent cover off the tank vent pipe and found enough room alongside the pipe to run the wire.  The pipe ran through the bathroom wall and the interior of the wall was open and already being used as a wire chase.  Other than having to drill a hole in the header holding the top of the pipe in place, the access was fairly good.  I then drilled a hole in the roof near where the vent pipe penetrated the roof and fished the solar wires from the chase by the pipe over to that new hole.  I mounted the combiner box over the new hole and connected the solar wires.  We had planned to mount four of the 365 watt panels to the roof, but the OTA TV antenna was in the way and the fourth panel just wouldn’t fit.  There was no way to move the OTA antenna as it was of the style that penetrated into the interior ceiling of the trailer to allow it to be manually rotated from inside.  Even with just three solar panels, there is still slightly more than three to one solar watts to battery amp hours.  This is a good ratio for solar wattage to lithium battery storage.  When the owner came to pick up his trailer, it was full cloud cover and sprinkling.  Even in those conditions, the panels were producing approximately 375 watts and putting approximately 25 amps into the batteries.