blackrose

I thought a UK or imperial ton was 2,240 pounds which is 1,016 kg?

The title of the thread was simply an explanation as to why I was asking about coal in the middle of summer. Yes you tried to oblige which is welcome but you also didn't seem to understand the other aspect of the thread I've outlined above. Perhaps next time read the original post properly before criticising and asking what the point is.

Did you actually bother to read the original post? I was asking other forum members which product they would choose because I'm not familiar with some of them. I've been living on boats for 23 years so I'm fully aware that no two stoves will burn the same coal in the same way, but I was just trying to get some opinions. So that was the point... If its ok with you... 😏

Not prohibited, but if a BSS inspector happened to see a petrol generator on a boat stored in the usual places such as on the deck above the engine, bow well deck near door vents, or anywhere else that petrol fumes or exhaust fumes could potentially enter the boat it's a likely fail. They just don't want to see them on boats. I've never really understood how inboard petrol engines on GRP cruisers get through their safety inspections. I guess they must have brushless bilge blowers or something like that installed?

That's right. Homefire don't publish their prices on the leaflet I took a picture of because it varies depending on the time of year. You have to call them or visit their website. But it's now summer so their summer prices are in effect until the end of June.

A guy at my mooring has Fogstar lithium batteries connected directly to his alternator. I think he has 3 x 280ah batteries but I 'm not sure what alternator he's got. He's had that setup for about 18 months and I mentioned it might damage his alternator and he admitted he hadn't been very far in that time. Anyway, he's just come back from a 6 hour trip each way and said that the alternator is fine and doesn't get any hotter than usual. It charges up to 14.1v and when the batteries are full the current from the alternator drops. How is he getting away with it? He said he has an old, slow-revving engine, so is that it? I'll find out what alternator he's got.

My mains fridge gives figures of 90W / 0.55A. It doesn't draw continuously as it uses a thermostat. It's probably on about a third of the time, maybe a bit more in this hot weather. Anyway, my 950w of solar has no problem keeping up with the fridge + inverter demand even in the dull months of winter.

That's what I used to think when I had a 3 way fridge, but when mains electricity prices went up a few years ago I started to install solar and when did the calculations I realised my little 3 way fridge was using far more energy than a larger mains compressor fridge with a thermostat. The truth is that although 3 way fridges are flexible because they can be run on 12v, mains or gas, they're also horribly inefficient because they use far too much energy however they're run.

They are used on boats - I used to have one. Apart from the ventilation issue that Nick mentions they don't work particularly well on 12v and are also fairly inefficient in terms of energy if used on mains. They do work well on LPG and for occasional use I found that was fine, but they will go through a lot of gas if you were running it on gas permanently. I have a 2Kw inverter and leave it on all the time. The quiescent load is 0.6a x 24 hours = 14.4ah/day which is no big deal if you have a decent battery bank & solar panels. By boat builders? I think you can still install them DIY?

I've got one which I bought because storage for my petrol chainsaw was difficult. But there are a couple of disadvantages compared to a petrol chain saw such as needing a generator or inverter/decent battery bank and an extension lead trailing from the generator or boat to wherever you happen to be chopping wood.

Everyone who knows the canal mentions the necessity of a long boarding plank, but I don't remember having to use a plank anywhere on the K&A including at Gt Bedwyn. Perhaps I was just lucky - the boat is 12ft wide but draws less than 2ft at the sides.

Not great as a significant proportion of the panels won't be facing the sun unless it's directly behind the boat. And there are much cheaper materials with which to make a dodger.

I opened my side hatch and 10.30am today and I was surprised to see a deer swim past my boat straight down the middle of the river! Whether it had fallen in trying to get a drink or had gone in to cool off I've no idea, but it was an unusual sight and I've never seen that before, head and small antlers sticking out of the water. 🫎 Unfortunately I was too slow to grab my phone so didn't get a picture. I think it must have fallen in as it seemed unsure what it was doing. It swam about 25 yards past my boat and started making for the bank with the moorings before changing it's mind and scrambling through some reeds on the other side, up the bank and then it jumped over the farmer's wire fence into the fields.

When I've had these accidents I've obviously felt pretty stupid afterwards, so it's interesting to know I'm not alone in making these mistakes. In fact after I blew up a battery recently through a combination of not removing the transit bung & potentially high voltage from my alternator, a friend of mine who's a well-respected in the boat maintenance trade, admitted to me that he'd forgotten to take one out of a new battery too, and after hearing of my saga quickly removed it. Fortunately he'd only run his engine for a very short time since installing the battery, but the battery still hissed when he took the bung out as the pressure was released. He was just fortunate that I blew mine up and told him about it before he did. So it's not only DIY idiots like me who make these mistakes.

Ok in that case it's fine because that's what they were destined for, I thought you were talking about bollards, many of which aren't set into the ground that deeply and shouldn't be used to stop heavy boats.

Yes, well perhaps they shouldn't be.

Well if it's going dead snow then that's probably fine but I find there's no need to step off the boat and stop it with the centre rope around a bollard if you have an engine that can stop the boat. It may be common practice but then so is ramming lock gates, leaving windlasses attached to raised paddle spindles and a number of other bad practices. Common practice doesn't necessarily make it correct practice and I've seen enough bollards pulled out of the ground to attest to that. My boat weighs 29 tonnes so I've learned I stop my boat with the engine and then step off. It's much more controlled and less likely to lead to accidents like flying fairleads or bollards that suddenly come adrift, but as you say, each to their own.

The way I read it they'll still be pumping litres into fuel tanks but then they'll be converting the litre amounts into Kg using the conversion factors given in the first post.

This happened to me about 25 years ago when I was moored on a short pound in Apsley on the GU. I woke up at 3am with the boat over at an angle and starting to hang from the ropes. My neighbours' boats were in the same predicament but not being light sleepers they hadn't awoken. For the benefit of the OP, if this ever happens to you again the first thing to do is walk down to the next downhill lock windlass in hand and check that all the gates and paddles are closed. In my case I think some kids had opened all 4 gate paddles draining the pound. Once you've closed everything walk the other way to the uphill lock and as long as there's plenty of water in that pound drain some into your pound to raise the water level. It helps if the uphill pound is long and the one you're moored on is shorter. For the same reason, in general avoid mooring in very short pounds because they are quicky drained. When I mentioned to my neighbours later that day that I'd saved all our boats in the middle of the night they just laughed and didn't believe me.

Ok got it, thanks for your help. 👍 This is what I've got now. I'm still not sure about the bulk time limit, re-bulk offset voltage, absorption time and whether it should be adaptive? On the engine shutdown it seems like the delayed start voltage has at be above the shutdown voltage which I guess makes sense.

The battery is standard sealed lead acid - I think it might be a calcium type I'm not asking about the voltages so much whether I can use any of the Victron presets? I'm not sure which of their preset options is sealed LA? If I've got to put user settings in them I'll use 13.4v float - 14.4v absorption, but it's mainly the bulk and absorption times I'm unsure about and whether I use adaptive absorption. 13v being the shutdown voltage? This is what I've set. But I don't understand what the delayed shutdown voltage is? I wish Victron would explain these things. Also, why wouldn't I just use this function instead of engine shutdown detection?

Thanks, so any recommendations for settings for a sealed lead-acid battery? Thanks, I don't think I need to enable engine shutdown detection as I'm trying to charge my start/BT batteries from my lithium domestics. I will disable engine shutdown detection so that it's always on.