Finishing the electrical system on the teardrop trailer

August 28, 2018 0 By Michael

Today we will be finishing the electrical system. To start this off we needed to drill a hole in the side of the wall. This is for the shore power connection. An extension cord can be ran from a generator, campground outlet, or even a house to this inlet.

The shore power connector is then wired to the power center. In this case I’m using Romex 12/2 as it’s rated for 30 amps. It’s the grey wire in the picture below.

messy wires

The power center is a WFCO WF-8735. It will do three things for us:

It will take the incoming 120 volts and spread it out to the house style outlets.
It converts the power to 12 volts DC to supply power to the lights, fan, and USB chargers.
It will charge the battery the trailer will eventually have as long as I’m plugged into shore power.

To test out the outlets and for convenience, after I wired in the 120 volt side of the circuit, I used the outlets to power the soldering iron to wire the 12 volt side.

These helping hands can come in real handy when soldering.

Here’s one of my porch lights.

Here are my interior lights and the fantastic fan.

The WFCO power center is installed. It is the heart and brains of the electrical system.

Here you can see the panel opened up. There are only 3 circuit breaker slots. If you use all tandem breakers you can have 5 separate circuits. I only needed 3 circuits, so I only used 1 tandem breaker.

There’s also 6 different circuits for the 12 volt side. These use standard automotive fuses. I used 5 of the circuits. The bottom fuse a reverse polarity fuse to keep things safe.