gary955

My dodgy fridge has exposed some dodgy batteries, I'll get into this later but for now.... It's been recommended that I remove my battery bank and discharge them and recharge them individually (My battery bank is 4 x 115ah Leoch Superior Lead carbon AGM wired series/ parallel for 24v) In the interim I thought I'd press a couple of old knackered sealed batteries into service wired in series, while my batteries are in hospital. When I dug them out of the garage they were both at 11v and I intended to charge them with a numax 12v-10A smart charger, before installation. One goes into charge at 14.5v but the other goes into float at 13.7v. I guess the smart charger thinks it's already charged but I've no idea why. Should I take it off charge? is it likely to go bang and spray the utility room and all the clean washing in acid? Edited to add. After about 15mins It's just started charging at 14.3v

Thanks Tony

Does your fridge have an exposed radiator/condenser Mike? Mine doesn't so I'm not sure if it uses the case or part of the case as a heat sink .....I've just felt the sides and they are both pretty warm to the touch so I guess that answers my question. What a stupid idea! My fridge has about 3cm clearance at each side but domestic fridges ( of which this is a modified version) are nearly always boxed tightly in between kitchen units. Why use the sides as a heat sink when there is going to be next to no air circulation? Ahh I see. I think you're saying that a low voltage above the LV cutout point may limit the speed that the compressor runs at? In fairness there's a tiny wire to a fridge isolation switch but its pretty short, less than a meter but the main feed is small too, not sure what size the conductor is but the insulation is only 3.2mm. Bare in mind it's 24v though so doesn't need as big a wire as 12v. The fridge is drawing 1.7amps at the moment. Where would I measure the voltage while its running to determine the voltage drop? OK using a calculation for voltage drop. Assuming a 10m cable length of 2mm dia copper wire (3.14mm2) and a nominal voltage of 24v with a current draw of 1.7amps. The voltage drop would be 0.2v or less than 1% I don't think cable size is the issue although admittedly it seems on the small size. The voltage drop calculator assumes that the 10m length would be a round trip so uses a length of 20m for the calculation. In reality the return is via a busbar to a massive cable so voltage drop would be even less.

The voltage at the moment Alan is 27.4v (I did mention it was a 24v fridge) I'm aware of the low voltage cut out (22v in my case) but that's not the issue here, the compressor is running constantly I've just contacted Inlander who say they've been fielding similar calls all day! It seems that their fridges can't cope with high ambient temperatures! That seems a little surprising has anyone else with an Inlander fridge had a similar experience?

I have a 24v inlander fridge on the boat. It usually cycles between 2 degrees and 7 degrees. I've been away from the boat for a while and since turning it on when I returned it's been running constantly ( 8 hours) and is unable to get the temp below 7.7 degrees which it's been at for a couple of hours at least. The ambient temp on board is 31 degrees. What do you recon?

I'm replacing my solid fuel stove on my little tug Steadfast and think the boat would benefit from a couple of radiators to spread the heat into far end of the saloon and the sleeping cabin. I have sourced a Squirrel with a back boiler for this purpose. I'm aware that the boiler is rated at 8000btu and the two radiators I intend to fit amount to a combined 3700btu's... a bit of a shortfall. There are quite long pipe runs and the loss through them adds another 2335btu's for the feed pipes giving a total load of a little more than 6000btu's (I've disregarded the return runs as they will probably be predominately plastic and the temp delta will be very much less on the return making the loss calcs a bit more difficult) Still a little short I know, but I'll bet that the stove would be nearly cherry red before the boiler would generate 8000btu's. I'm inclined to think that this will be OK and would be interested to hear of the experience of forumites with solid fuel central heating

Can we have a mod steer this thread back to HVO? One of the most frustrating features of this forum is topic wander. Only about half of the replies to a thread about HVO are actually about HVO. It's a very busy forum if your interest is wandering off the subject, start a new thread! you'll still have plenty of input.

To bring the thread back on topic! Crown oil told me today that they will no longer deliver from a tanker to a boat. I wanted 1500lts of HVO and had an agreement from a marina for the delivery to be made at their fuel pontoon, directly from a tanker. If anyone knows of an alternative supplier, I'd be grateful.

Hello All. For good or ill, I'm a fan of the Morso Squirrel and want to install one with a back boiler in my tugboat. Morso's eye watering prices mean that I'm shopping second hand. I've had a couple of squirrel 1410's in my narrowboat over the years and find them easy to control and simple to keep in overnight. I've been offered a 1435 model which appears to be very similar, apart from a larger window glass and a different way of controlling the secondary air. What is the forums opinion of the differences between the 1410 and 1435?

Do you mean 10 milliseconds?

Good point. I'll bear that in mind

I tend to view all boaters as kindred spirits, so it's particularly galling to find that one has gone to the trouble of sneaking ashore on a private boat club mooring, and cutting or breaking the lock to a lamp post of my mountain bike and making off with it! The premises are well secured with high (locked) steel gates and a high perimeter fence backed up with thick hawthorn, so it clearly was a boater of some description. I'd quite like it back, although I realise it's a long shot. So if anyone spots a fairly scruffy white and black Cube Attention, with or without the distinctive wooden wine box rear carrier, on a boat. Please feel free to poke the boater sharply in the eye and recover my steed. Alternatively snap a picture of bike and boat and PM them to me with the location and I'll pop along to have a word. There's a drink in it for you. Stolen from the lower end of the Shroppie, so may have gone North, or South onto the Staffs and Worc's or BCN Cheers me dears.

The "pureheat" on the link you posted does look like my coal...however the "pureheat" in this photo from another merchant does not. I think many merchants just use any name without consistency across different parts of the country

I've been up in Wolverhapton over winter. I've been sourcing my coal from Mark at Coven Heath pump out, it's apparently called Warmfire and is supplied by N&R Fuels in Wolverhampton. I've never heard of it before, and a google search draws a blank. In my stove it burns hot and is long lasting, it leaves absolutely no clinker and produces minimal ash. The size of it is quite large and the nuts are clean with a soft matt look and with very little dust in the bags. I'm now down on the Thames and as I've nearly run out I'd like to get a few more bags to see me through the last of the cold weather. does anyone on the forum know of a supplier of it in the West London area or perhaps recommend something with similar properties? I've previously burnt Taybright, Stoveglow , Superblaize and Homebase Blaze. The Stoveglow is OK but the rest have been disappointing