Richard10002
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Posts posted by Richard10002
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I would be committed for 6 months for a total of around £1200
How long did it take you to find a suitable marina? Are you living aboard too? How did you research them, lots of phone calls, visits, or did you just cruise around on the boat till you found somewhere ?
Thanks
We didn't need a residential mooring, but looked at a few boats where their residential mooring was available with the boat, (subject to the owners permission etc. ). We also looked at a variety of marinas all about 30 miles from home. We would have made do with one of these if our ideal mooring hadn't come up immediately.
Our ideal was at our cruising club at Stretford, a mile from home, and it just so happened that a couple of moorings came available at the same time as we bought the boat.
AFAIK most BW marinas have some dedicated residential moorings.
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And while the experts are about:
I have 110Ah wets which i top up and maintain that have lasted well because they are treated well.... For much the same price i could have 125Ah but sealed.
I am torn, lured by the extra capacity and little maintenance but in my heart feeling a good set of wets and the fact i can maintain them winning out so far.
Thoughts?
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Fundamentally my question revolves around "how rare are residential moorings".
I am investigating a live-aboard, trying to collate as much information as I can. Ideally I would want to moor inside a marina as I will need a base in order to travel to work. However, I have found an online mooring in the area where I want to base myself. If this is very rare, then presumably I should snap it up. If its not so rare and finding a mooring will not be a problem, then I can proceed as I am gradually pulling it all together.
I plan to visit as many local marinas as I can to see if I can find somewhere. I have read that its best to turn up in person rather than call.
Thanks for any advice.
I've only been doing this for 8 months, but it seems to me that moorings exactly where you want them, at a reasonable price, are rare, particularly residential.
How long would you be committed for, in the unlikely event that you didn't buy a boat, or found a better mooring? And what would be the cost?
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It seems that Whilton are a bit like PC World..... You wouldn't be wise to ask for, or take, their advice, but if they've got the boat you want, it would be crazy not to deal with them.
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On the Chinese meters and shunts, two of the wires read the voltage across the shunt, and the other two wires provide the power to the meter.
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You have an 'intelligent' charger and it is doing 'adaptive' charging and according to Gibbo adaptive charging does not work.
I don't think float necessarily means full.
In your case, as with many others, you are correct.
So..... In some cases float does mean full, (or as good as full). What kind of charger is it when float means as good as full?
My understanding is that whatever the charging regime, we probably need to float for a couple of days to be sure our batteries are full...... Hence the current popularity of "small" solar panels in the absence of a permanent mains supply.
Alternatively, we can turn everything off, let the batteries rest for several hours, (6+ ?), then, if the voltage is above say 12.7V, they are full.
Or we can measure specific gravity.
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Yes it means full.
EDIT: see post #5.
Is that:
"Yes it means full" EDIT "No it doesn't mean full" ?
After an hour of absorption, when it reverts to float, I can turn my charger off and on, and it will always do another minimum hour of absorption, (i.e. fixed max voltage). I can do this a few times before the Amps drawn by the batteries get down to 7A, whic is about 2% of my 330Ah bank.
I don't think float necessarily means full.
Happy to stand corrected, but the above is how it seems to me?
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New one on me.
I suppose you could connect them to a three stage charger and get them to 'float', that way you would know they are fully charged when fitted and any monitoring equipment could be set.
Does float mean full? Or does it mean that particular chargers absorption phase programme has completed?
On my Sterling, absorption is 10 times the bulk period, with a 1 hour minimum, and a 4 hour maximum.
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Anything nearer to Manchester, 50 miles or so?
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Don't need one now - I hope! Sterling have sent the bits to fix my Combi.
I'd reached the point where I would probably have gone for a Victron Phoenix Multipass Combi 12/1200/50 for about £900,
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Seems to be working OK. Did a few runs with the batteries pretty well charged. Started at around 40A and then dwindled down until it switched to float voltage. Then I let the batteries discharge to around 12.2V after a few hours rest. Started it up this morning, and it ran at about 70A for about 30 second in the bulk phase, before switching to absorption for an hour, then onto float.
So far so good for £160 and no real hassle.
The question now is.... Do I throw the old module away, or find and fit a couple of caps, or leave it lying around until I decide it's not worth keeping.
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Nonsense.
I could get a leisure battery for the price of that book and it should last me at least 3 years.
A great book for boaters. Almost the boaters bible. Worth it's weight in gold, as they say. I think I paid about £40 for mine in 2006.
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You need the panel/s, the wire that often comes with the panels, a controller, and a bit more wire to connect the controller to the batteries, and some fuses. Then you need to mount the system.
I bought this for about £186 in an auction:
Haven't fitted it yet - still considering mounting options.
The wires from my controller will be attached the the terminals of my charger inverter, so will be quite short.
If you want a bigger bank, it seems that an expensive MPPT controller may be more appropriate.
We don't live aboard. I wanted something that would finish off the last 10% to 20% of charging while we aren't on board. 2 or 3 amps for a few hours a day for 3 or 4 days can mount up to push in 30-40Ah while we're not there.
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I don't live aboard my boat, but I spend a few nights on board each week. In general, when I get on board, the batteries are fully charged showing around 12.7v+. By the time I get up next day, they usually show about 12.3v +/-. This suggests I use about 40% of a 330Ah bank in an evening and a night aboard. Fridge, TV, Speakers, Laptop, iPhone, iPad, 3MiFi. About 130Ah.
About 3 or 4 hours with a generator powering a 70A 3 stage charger seems to get them to the point where they are charging at about 6A, i.e. as good as full.
I'll soon have a 100W solar panel to maintain them while I'm not on board.
If I lived aboard, I'd probably like a bigger bank, so I could go longer between charges, even if I had to charge for longer when the time came.
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Written to Sterling quoting Sale of Goods Act 1979..... Fitness for purpose, and last for a reasonable time. We'll see what happens.
RESULT!! I think
Got a call at 9am Tues after emailing the letter at about 11pm Mon. Sterling offered to sell me the "module" for £159.60 inc. VAT and postage. I agreed, even though I could have pushed things further, and it arrived today. Pretty sure I've got a 2 year guarantee on the module.
Fitted it to the unit this evening, and will fit the unit to the boat tomorrow.... Fingers crossed.
A few differences between the original unit and the new one - I wonder if these are improvements?
A difference i can describe is: The capacitors on the original were Jamicon 15000uf 50v. The capacitors on the replacement are RIFA 22000uF 25v. They look soldered on both units.
Another difference is a yellow box type thing replaced by a Song Chuan 30A relay.
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Narrowboating From Stretford!!
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It was a refurbished unit with only a 7 day warranty. Sale of Goods Act requires me to prove it was faulty when purchased if it fails after 6 months. I don't fancy my day in court on that one, and im definitely not frightened of a day in court. In this instant i'm leaning towards just letting it leave a sour taste. Having said that, if I can make the time, I might fire off a letter and see how he responds.
I was hoping they would make the honourable offer, but so far they haven't.
Written to Sterling quoting Sale of Goods Act 1979..... Fitness for purpose, and last for a reasonable time. We'll see what happens.
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The Victron Centaur has a 3 stage charging profile which seems to have a fixed 4 hour absorption charging time, whereas the Sterling Pro Charge Ultra seems to have a variable absorption charging time.
The variable seems to be preferable as Victron have it in their more expensive Phoenix models.
I've been a Sterling fan for a while, but Victron seems to be a higher quality brand, and I've just had a bad experience with a refurbished Sterling product. New products have a 2 year warranty, so I am leaning towards the Sterling.
Given that I can buy a Centaur 60A or a Pro Charge Ultra 60A for about the same price, £425, is Victron quality preferable to the better charging profile?
I can't justify £600+ for Mastervolt, or for the Victron Phoenix.
NB variable absorbtion charging seems to be where the absorption phase is set at a multiple of the bulk phase, rather than a fixed period.
The answer could be "How long is a piece of string?", or "its the luck of the draw". Searches suggest that some favour one and some the other, and there don't seem to be repeated issues with either brand, but I'd appreciate some up to date thoughts.
Many Thanks
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Hello,
There is a company near to me who are to look and repair Mastervolt equipment for not silly money
Keith
Where are you, so we know where they are near to
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I have a Sterling Combi myself although its only just been installed in a new boat build so haven't had the opportunity to verify its functions. Having used other brands though I was fairly confident in stating that the inverter alone could be turned off.
Following on from your comments and having a vested interest, I phoned Sterling's & confirmed your findings - Whoops
you are quite correct the Off position does turn the whole unit off. Furthemore they confirmed the ridiculous situation that there are no means of turning off the inverter independently. Please accept my apologies for suggesting otherwise.They did mention the use of a latching relay set to cut the battery connection if volts dropped below a certain level, but this may add more problems than it solves.
Just noticed your last post which indicates they are looking to add the inverter off facility, but not soon.
My own installation includes a second dedicated three output charger so I would leave only that on with shore power if in a similar situation to yourself.
You will need your second dedicated charger when the caps on your Combi blow - mine was a refurbished unit with only a short guarantee, but I expected a Sterling product to last longer than 6 months before they try to sting me £600+ for parts.
Not Happy with Sterling, and not sure about Combis...
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Yes, me. Details are:-
Sellweb Ltd
Unit 11
Tame Valley Business Centre
Wilnecote
Tamworth
Staffs
B77 5BY
01827281976
Frank
Email sent.
Thanks
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Errrrr - If it was new(?) in November, and u/s in June . . . under the terms of the Sales of Goods Act I believe Sterling should repair, or replace, FOC
It was a refurbished unit with only a 7 day warranty. Sale of Goods Act requires me to prove it was faulty when purchased if it fails after 6 months. I don't fancy my day in court on that one, and im definitely not frightened of a day in court. In this instant i'm leaning towards just letting it leave a sour taste. Having said that, if I can make the time, I might fire off a letter and see how he responds.
I was hoping they would make the honourable offer, but so far they haven't.
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Too good to be true!
Asked Sterling to firm up the price of the module and "Tamara" tells me they usually charge £500+VAT plus £8 postage to Manchester... So that's no longer an option!
I'll have it to bits and see what the caps look like. I'd be surprised if they can't be sourced, but I'm not sure I'd recognise a bad connection unless it was obviously charred.
Not sure if that's my last dalliance with Sterling, but it's not been a particularly good experience, from purchase in November to failure in June.
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Opened it up yesterday and saw no evidence of charring, or burning. The caps are hidden behind some big heat sinks with a circuit board above them, so no way to get at them without further dismantling.
Connected it back up this morning and it started charging at 70A, then there was a pop, and smoke from the caps..... So that's the answer.
The caps are about 5cm high, and 2cm diameter, and seem to fit fairly flush to the board. They are black and Jamicon 50v 15000uF is written up the sides. Could they be snap in types, rather than soldered? Could something else have caused them to pop, or are they most likely to pop on their own?
My choice is to send Sterling the best part of £200, or see if ican sort out a repair...
Any suggestions welcomed.
Thanks for the help so far.
Richard
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That settles it. It's coming off tomorrow for opening up, and I'll fit the 25A charger that came with the boat. Given that it continued charging fine at 40A after the smoking, I'm hoping it will be something simple like the fan.
you are quite correct the Off position does turn the whole unit off. Furthemore they confirmed the ridiculous situation that there are no means of turning off the inverter independently. Please accept my apologies for suggesting otherwise.
Is this electrical cable suitable for my boat?
in Boat Building & Maintenance
Posted
Where can you buy it..... The link sends me off on a wild goose chase in the USA and Canada?