Sirocco II Elite Low Power Usage Wall Fan for Van Life

Jeremiah Luke Barnett
5 min readOct 15, 2020

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Materials needed for this project →

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Seriously! Reach out on Instagram or YouTube with questions.

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Watch the video if you don’t care to read.

Step 1:

Decide where you want your fan.

Some people place their fan over their bed. Some people place it over the kitchen.

I am lucky enough to be able to do both! I designed my van using SketchUp and therefore already had a 10AWG wire running through the van and hanging near where I believed I would want to put the fan (right between the bedroom and kitchen)

I am more worried about not being able to sleep on super hot and clammy nights and therefore wanted to make sure the fan was able to blow on me while I sleep. But having the ability to turn the fan toward the kitchen in case I need to get rid of an odor there is also nice.

Step 2:

Mount the mounting plate.

The fan comes with a mounting plate which gets screwed into your wall (hopefully into a furring strip) which you then slide the fan onto and bolt together using two provided screws.

NOTE: Ideally, there is space behind your furring strip or between your paneling and furring strip for wires to run out the back of the fan, through the wall and connect with the 10AWG wire in your walls. If there is not, you will have to figure out a creative way to connect the wires.

I chose a spot on the wall and then used two wood screws from this little box of them to secure the mounting plate to the wall. I used screws that were skinny enough to fit through the provided holes in the plate while still being long enough to reach the furring strip behind my paneling.

NOTE: before you mount the plate, there are two nuts that come with the fan that are to be stuck into little openings on the back of the mounting plate.

Step 3:

Feed the wiring into the wall and mount the fan.

First, attach the provided wires to their respective terminals on the back of the fan using the provided nuts and lock washers.

Then, drill small holes through the two holes in the center of the plate you just mounted on your wall and feed the provided wires (which are now connected to the terminals on the back of the fan) through those newly drilled holes.

Keep feeding the wires through the holes until the fan is snug against the plate. The fan is mounted by fitting the main fan unit against the top of the plate so it slides into the little grooves, then pushing in and down until it snaps into place. Then take the two provided bolts from the package and screw them into the two remaining holes on the front of the fan. These will catch in the nuts you so cleverly placed in the back of the mounting plate and pull the fan snug against the mounting plate.

Step 4:

Connect the fan to your electrical system.

My walls are made up of individual planks which I am able to unscrew and take down at will. This allowed me to access the wires now hanging in the wall of the van, do my work, and then re-attach the wall panel to hide it all.

Take your respective positive and negative cables from the fan and the 10AWG ones hanging in the wall, strip back some of the insulation on your 10AWG wire (the provided wires are already stripped), split the strands of the 10AWG wire in half like pigtails, intertwine the little provided wires with their respective bigger 10AWG copper brothers, shove each of those wire clumps into an end connector cap and twist clockwise until the wire catches and pulls tight (you’ll feel it).

Wrap that little connection point in electrical tape (around the wire and the cap) so the whole thing is sealed.

How exciting! You’re basically an electrician at this point.

Step 5:

Insert your fuse and let the fat lady sing!

In my electrical system, all my DC loads run out of a fuse block which requires ATO blade fuses to be inserted into each slot to allow power to flow through any given wire.

So, up to this point, the DC wires in my wall I was using to connect my fan were connected to the fuse block (negative to negative terminal and positive to a positive terminal) but the ATO fuse was NOT in the fuse block thereby keeping the wires from being live.

Now that everything is connected and ready to go, stick a 3 or 5 amp fuse into the appropriate slot and watch your fan come alive!

You should see blue lights on the fan for the first few seconds after connecting it.

After that, start pushing buttons to test it out!

Final thoughts:

The fan barely uses any power at all (about 2 watts per speed) and is very quiet! I love it. I am very happy with it.

One thing I did mess up when first installing the fan was that I inserted my ATO fuse into the fuse block before finishing all the wiring then accidentally touched my 10AWG DC positive and negative wires to each other thereby blowing the ATO fuse in the fuse block. It is an easy mistake to make and therefore why I suggest leaving the ATO fuse OUT of the fuse block until you are all ready to go.

Originally published on my site, Storiesfromtheroad.life.

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