Comment: Electricity for Camping

Submitted: Saturday, Apr 20, 2013 at 09:36

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Electricity for Camping

Revised March 2013 On an extended trip it's good to have some of the comforts of home. Electricity is obviously one of them and a good system can make all the difference to how comfortably

Pelikan

Thanks John,

I think I will follow your advice and get a dc-dc charger. I didn't quite understand your last paragraph though. I have some reels of Tycab 6mm (automotive standard) cable which in brackets on the label states that it has a 4.59 square mm cross section. 6 b&s(AWG) cable which everyone says is OK for this application is 13.3 sq mm.

Cheers, Peter

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Reply By: Member - John and Val - Wednesday, Mar 04, 2015 at 00:52

Wednesday, Mar 04, 2015 at 00:52

Peter,

I was referring to the difficulty that many people have in distinguishing the difference between conductor diameter and cross sectional area. There is also the intuitive leap required to accept that the wire size gets smaller as the gauge number gets bigger! Putting all this together and there is a lot of confusion about 6 AWG v's 6 B&S v's 6mm diameter v's 6 square mm cross section! Add in the "automotive" sizing that includes the insulation and there's plenty of room for confusion.

In the case of the wire that you already have, I wonder if it is correctly labelled? I would expect 6mm automotive cable to be 6mm in diameter, outside the insulation, with a copper core about 4.5mm in diameter, which would yield a cross sectional area of about 16 square mm. Could it be that the 4.59 square mm on the label is actually 4.59 mm diameter?? (If it's really 4.59 square mm, that would give a conductor diameter of only 2.4mm which seems pretty small for a 6mm cable.)

Cheers

John

Cheers

John