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or just load them into their boat.

ATV (now Central) 1972 interview with Ernie Thomas https://www.macearchive.org/films/atv-today-04121972-canal-millionaire-ernie-thomas several other interesting videos on the site as well springy

He is moored 60ft in front of me. I moored up after a full days boating. Mrs wanted to wash her hair then dry it with the hairdryer. We watched a bit of telly, then the batteries went flat.I rushed outside to hook up the genny. All I could hear was cursing and swearing coming from the boat next door. Of course, we would have moved on, but it was dark and cold.

Especially gortex

No, for that you have to do community service in the local fish and chip shop.

There is a new prison sentence for stealing Lithium iron batteries.....LiFe.

No that's not required but if you want to be precise, you could get some coarse sandpaper and a set of kitchen scales. Weigh all ten resistors and choose the 3 that are closest. Reject the other 6. Check with middle grandson to check your workings. Carefully sand the heaviest of the 3 on one side only...the one away from the solder connections ...and reweigh every minute until the weight approaches the lowest cell resistor. Keep it away from your knee. It can be painful. Repeat for the next one. Your now have carefully balanced resistors and a sore knee.

Oh no! LadyG has been trawling the net again.

oops

I think the points are that: In order to balance a bank of high capacity cells reasonably expeditiously, you need to be able to pass a lot of current with a voltage drop of 3.5v or whatever, ie quite a lot of power to dissipate. So you need big chunky electronics and heat sinks. Because rapid balancing on the fly is difficult, one can typically either choose to top balance or bottom balance. You can’t achieve both at the same, unless the capacities are identical. If you choose to top balance it means you can fully charge the battery without worrying about a cell over voltage. If you bottom balance it means you can fully discharge the battery without worrying about a cell under-voltage. Take your pick! Obviously this whole thing is a non-issue if you have well matched cells. If you don’t, it is an issue. The electronic devices you mention, unless they are huge, will achieve the balancing - possibly sometime before you die if you are lucky!

Yes. Come winter it will typically be colder, with a higher probability of snow.The hours of daylight will definitely be reduced compared to say summer.Canals may freeze.Councils will buy in their grit after a typical major freezing event ready for next summer. Come spring the weather may show signs of warmer sunnier periods, but this is not guaranteed. The hours of daylight will likely increase.People, especially up north will be seen out and about in their shorts in temperatures below 5 degrees C. Come summer June 21st-Jun28th traditionally when Mrsmelly has his annual summer holiday, it will almost certainly be torrential rain, and flooding on a biblical scale, though you will be able to see it longer due to increased hours of daylight. The following week it will be glorious with temperatures in the mid twenties.On hot summer days, people will complain that it is too damn hot. It will then revolve back to autumn, as it has done for countless millenia with everyone complaining that it is colder, wetter and windier than it ever has been in the past, forgetting that we only have ourselves to blame. Bear in mind the short time window you have for doing external work on you boat before it is too wet, windy, cold, hot, still, cloudy and that you must share that small window with actually going boating. Here endeth the forecast.

I'm not saying that it's a good idea, I'd certainly never try. I'm just saying that you'll probably meet your doom be swamping, or burning the engine out whilst being blown backwards, or getting washed off the counter, rather than by capsize. MP.

But how are you going to learn on a piece of open water with no locks

They are a bit bullish but harmless. I am an admirer of swans and ducks. To live with them you have to dominate them gently. I feed then on the remains of cereals, the small bits in the bottom that I don't like. If they are menacing and aggressive, hold the lower bill, they have no teeth, until they paddle and back off, it does not hurt them but teaches them who is boss.

8. Rub two slices of white bread together for as long as it takes. Don't overdo it or you will set fire to them both.

I had one of those on my last yacht.The grill was usless.?..............So was that device

I read it and had to buy the magazine to do so seeing they seem to have stopped my complimentary copy.

I don't THINK I was dreaming although I read the article while I was in my bed so who knows? haggis

I had a slide rule once! Nah, Mike's gone to work.

This is starting to get out of my pay grade! It is interesting though. I calculated the Ahrs needed to take out of my high cell using the 'divide by 4' as 40Ahrs. In practice to balance it took 80Ahrs so half way to what you were saying Nick. The most important thing is to get an approximate idea of how much power to take out. The problem when you start to do it is that you are a little constrained when top balancing. I will comment on the video Richard posted about bottom balancing next but if you are charging with an alternator you need to top balance. If you only have a 30-40W load circuit ie 3.3V 10A then you are only reducing charge in a cell by 10Ahrs in an hour. If you have to drain the cell by 50Ahrs then that is going to take 5 hours. You can only check the voltages when under charge ie you are looking at the delta but it is only valid when there is amps going in and you are in the voltage knee. Therefore it is a bit trial and error to discharge one cell then put the bank on charge, go to nearly 100% and check the delta and then discharge the bank to put the resistors on the high cell. You cant really keep charging for the 5 hours you are bringing your target cell down. The answer then is to have a bigger drain but I couldnt find resistors that would take 200W and 50A. Nick, can you think of something that would take this sort of power? On my system I now know how long I need to drain one cell from all the voltage data but it will be different on Mike's 24V system. Something that drains at more than 10A would be so useful. Just a comment for Mike. Your bank at the moment is out of balance but it is not a drama. It will only be an issue when charging to over 90% so as long as you discharge the bank to 80% it will be fine for weeks. Get the bits together you need and spend a few days doing the balancing. You said you only took out 10Ahrs. Make sure you discharge to 80% soon. Not a good idea to leave them full. Now, Richard's video on bottom balancing. The guy is using them on a solar only system. This is interesting but not that applicable if you are using an alternator and have an LA in parallel. Once you are down to 3.0V per cell, you are down to 12.0V total so your LA will be severly discharged. Not a good idea if it is your starter battery and it will sulphate if left down there and you dont use 14.4V+ to get it back to 100%...which is then bad for the Li's. Also if the bank is bottom balanced then when you get it near full with the alternator it will be significantly out of balance ...far worse than Mike's case. So my advice is top balance, not bottom balance. I never let my bank go below 12.7V to protect the LA's so that is circa 3.2V minimum. Now bottom balancing is quite easy as you have plenty of time to do it....ie discharge to 3.0V each cell and you can easily see which is high or low and the bank can remain there and you can modify the voltage via the resistor pack with the voltages meaningful. You cant do that at the top end as you dont want to hold it with a charge on when the top cell is at 3.6V. In the video, the guy did the coarse adjustment with the resistor pack and then did the fine tune with the cell monitor. You cant do this at the top end as you wouldnt leave it on charge for 6-8hrs to do the final balance on the cell monitor with cells up at 3.6V. Certainly not on a 30A charger. If you had say a 5 or 10A charger it might work. Those cells in the video look to be smallish...ie <100Ahrs and maybe the BG8S will work at the low end...but I doubt if it transfers anywhere near 1A so would take a long time to do 50Ahrs. I must admit I have not tried to balance on my BG8S as I can only balance at the top end under charge. I did like the bit about internal resistance to point out which cells could be susceptible to inbalances. The important thing to mention is you cannot use cell voltages when between 20-80% charged to indicate how to balance.

Cor what a faff! I suppose these were the days before you could just pop down to Sainsbury's to get fish.

I guess the gap in the middle is where the smartgauge use to live

Did you need to balance the resistor tolerances first?

I bought a pack of 10 * 1 Ohm 20 W wire wound resistors from RS online. Wire 3 in parallel to give 0.33Ohm and mount on any old piece of metal as a heat sink. When connected across one of the 3.3V cells, it draws about 10A. It does get hot!

When I get myself out of bed I will work out the circuit I made up and take a picture. If one cell is lower than the other two, it would be quicker to just charge up one cell. I have a cheap variable voltage power supply. Which you can set at 3.6V and 7A which can raise one cell. If you read the Norsk site or the marine how to site, one of them talks about charging a 3.3V cell using at 12V charger. Monitor the cell voltage and the Amps going in with a clamp meter and you should be able to put say 20Ahrs in to balance. I have not tried this but maybe someone like Tony or Nick could advise. Work out how out of balance the low cell is...i.e. How many Ahrs are needed to put in from your voltage measurements. Let me know if your not sure how to work that out. With my bench supply, I raised my low cell by 6Ahrs in the summer

Near total white out.

I always try to avoid sitting anywhere near others in doctors' waiting rooms. I'm of the opinion the fact they are where they are suggests they may not be of the best of health. Now call me picky but I don't intend to add their Verruca to my Bubonic problems.

Ok, I admit it. I did drink 4 pints of harvey's shiehallion, we did win 3-1 and Harvey's gone home so can't sign anything.

But the pub is in a fixed location, and presumably there have been complaints over a period of time before the council have taken action. The same can't be said about a passing noisy boater or even a local shuffler who moves his noise every few days.

Why did you choose to moor there? Perhaps their criteria for a good mooring is the same as yours. To be honest 60ft away sounds reasonable, it’s when they stop 6in from your fender that annoys me.

The Chinese manufacture is not the root of the problem, I'd be amazed if a lot of the content of Victron stuff is not Chinese. It is the quality control you get with branded stuff that the higher price is paying for. A subtle point normally overlooked by people who are "buying the price" as they say in the world of selling.

We are boaters and thats what we are supposed to do, look after each other and their boats. I always think our moorings are still stuck in the fifties