David Mack

A single 95mm2 cable may be fine in practice. But it doesn't comply with Victron's installation instructions, which specify 2 x 50mm2 for cables up to 5m long and 2 x 70mm2 for cables over 5m. I suspect part of the preference for 2 smaller cables may be the tighter bend radius and generally easier installation than a single larger cable.

Any such search will be hampered by the fact that https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/ doesn't seem to recognise Leigh (in Lancashire) as a valid place!

So what accreditations does he have, and what powers to strip him of those do Trading Standards have?

And just out of curiosity, what do you hope will be the outcome of your taking this matter up with Trading Standards?

That wagon at Stratford has been rebuilt (probably more than once), so may not be the same size as when first built.

Well, if by CM boaters you mean holders of a 'continuous cruising' / no home mooring licence, then those boaters can only be on CRT waters, since no other navigation authority has provision for a boater to declare that they don't have a home mooring, and most actually require that a boat (other than a short term visiting boat) does have a designated mooring.

Better just to do it without telling anybody, than to announce it on a public forum!

Having just come home to four pages of posts over a 4 hour period, of the OP saying Black is White, while all the other forum posters try to advise him that Black is Black, while the mods try to erase all references to the contractor concerned, I am inclined to agree!

Why "obviously"? The "electrical system required to run the solar and the batteries" is just that - batteries, solar panels, solar controller, together with the wiring connecting between these items and the associated cable terminations, fuses, breakers, isolators, bus bars etc. Any cabling going beyond those items is not part of the "electrical system required to run the solar and the batteries". Even though the purpose of having these items is to supply power to the boat's various circuits and appliances, including in this case, an inverter. Some bizarre logic here. The solar bank does not require an inverter to be of any use. The solar panels and controller will quite happily charge the batteries whether or not an inverter is present. What I think you mean is that you chose to install new batteries to provide more stored power to run the inverter, and solar to recharge those batteries. But as the inverter and its existing undersized wiring were already present (as were the rest of the boat's domestic wiring, lighting and other appliances), they were not part of that new work.

The Victron advice is 2 x 50mm2 (for distances of less than 5m) which will have greater current capacity than a single 100mm2, due to the better heat dissipation from 2 cables. So you are still not compliant with the Victron recommendations. That said, your slightly undersized cable will be protected by the 300A fuse which is less than Victron's recommended 400A, but you may get increased nuisance trips as a result. The cables being left undersized did not cause the problem. Pulling the full 3000VA through a single 25mm2 cable was going to result in cable overheating, regardless of the battery type involved. My guess is you only tried to pull the full load after changing the batteries.

It's a bit vague. The BSS requires that cables from battery to inverter over 1000W must be of sufficient carrying capacity, and states that the minimum required cross section is 25mm2, but doesn't require a specific larger section for heavy loads - that only appears in guidance for owners.

If you've passed through the Three Locks, you've got the swing bridge at Seabrook coming up. Easy enough to operate, but you have to do so from the offside.