Bob18

CPC Be careful when ordering low value stuff from CPC, their P&P can be quite expensive, so read their Ts&Cs before hitting the order button. If you are near an RS trade counter that can be very much cheaper as you can pay with your card then walk in and pick it up with no additional cost. RS online

May one ask "Why?" Yes it is possible, and how depends on what sort of fan you are considering, and how much you are prepared to spend...

Blowing the ***p out with the prop doesn't work very well on some bits of the Shropie :-(

All batteries self discharge with time, so keeping them float charged will overcome this, particularly if you are only going to use them every couple of weeks or more during the winter. The self discharge rate depends on lots of things, but is higher than many people realise (one quoted range is 2-20% per month), - and it can get faster the more the battery is discharged. Also not everything turns off "properly", things like pumps, fridges, TVs, radios and so on may all just "go to sleep", but are actually drawing some power from the battery. Temperature compensation is very useful on batteries that are being float charged, this allows the battery to be kept at exactly the correct voltage for its temperature (generally slightly lower in winter and high summer than spring and autumn). Normally this is done with one sensor attached somewhere on the outside of the battery - fancier set-ups will have multiple sensors, but that tends to be at much higher currents and prices than we see on narrowboats)

At that age the PSU will be "getting a bit sleepy", indeed it may have had a nasty jolt and be dead or dying after the fry-up of your motherboard :-( Most of the smaller computer shops do "sensible deals" so you can keep your old (well, nearly new) hard disk and just buy a new PC to go round it. If you want to go to a larger place I can suggest a couple, Scan up in Horwich, or OverClockers down in Stoke, both do various packages that can be tailored to suit your needs and both are somewhat cheaper than the PCWorld's of this world... (Usual disclaimer - satisfied customer of both stores)

Usual set of questions when approaching a battery that might be dead/dying: Do you have a volt meter? Have you checked the electrolyte levels Do the batteries feel hot if you touch the cases? Is there a strange smell around the batteries? Can you hear a fizzing coming from the batteries? You've done one of the quickest tests going! Oh Poo Sticks, that smell of rotten eggs - you did the right thing and stopped charging. Simple test - If possible check the electrolyte level in each battery. You may be assailed by a repeat attack of the eggs from one of more cells in which case you know which battery has handed its notice in and wishes to depart NOW. Compare the electrolyte level between cells in each battery - they should be more or less the same, and all be above the plates. Now for a harder set of tests You need to have a volt meter for this, even the cheapest digital one will work. Disconnect all three batteries then measure the voltage on each battery - are they all about the same, and all over 12V? A dead cell will reduce the battery voltage by about 2V, so its quite easy to find out which battery has retired... What is the voltage of each battery? After a few hours of rest it should be somewhere around 12.5V, but given you've probably got a dead battery it may not be there just now because the dead one will probably have pulled the others down in sympathy. Give the apparently good batteries a short charge - say 20-30 minutes, and keep a close eye and nose on them - I'd do this one battery at a time so you aren't mislead quickly measure its voltage and have a feel of the case, let it stand for a bit (say 20-30 minutes while you test charge another battery) and remeasure its voltage. I fear it probable if you find that one of the domestic batteries is dead the other one will follow it fairly rapidly. Just seen your comment about the three batteries needing "about a litre of water" between them - that's getting towards the top limit of what I would expect to put into a healthy battery - did you note if most of it went into one battery or cell (probably not as you weren't looking so don't worry)

Nothing like a bit of camouflage - result, it didn't look good enough to be exchanged for beer tokens

Not so sure about H&S, but structural welding on buildings is probably covered by the building regs. Local Authority's Building Control would be a good place to start for advice and guidance.

A few years ago BW published their interpretation of the rules surrounding "end of garden" moorings BW thinking Its worth reading this before acting, it may save you some headaches later - you will at least know where BW are coming from rather than just guessing where they are coming from.

If you banned blue tomorrow (which I think is a good idea) there would still be a period of time during which the water treatment plant would be at risk from the blue that is currently sitting around not being used. And knowing how responsive the utilities are to change that would probably be ten years, by which time they'd have thought of another excuse...

Will the average tea-leaf know the difference between a "good" Honda and a "poor" other brand, or will said person just see "generator" to either supplement beer token supply or replace broken generator?

It all depends on the local treatment works, some with very large throughputs will be able to stand the relatively small amounts of bug killers from a boat tank, while those with a very limited throughput would be struggling. The thing with disposing at an approved location is that the waste is properly managed, and not just chucked into the environment in an unmanaged, uncontrolled manner. I still think giving the "gent" from the OP's first post a tooth brush and a drinking straw to clean up the mess he's made is an appropriate punishment.

Parts of it almost look like a white form of a staghorn fungus. What has it consumed to get to this size? I'd guess damp timber How much more of it is lurking under the floor and behind the side panels? Again a guess - Lots.

You aren't in float charge at that sort of voltage and current - you are still in the long tail of the absorption phase. It does sound as if your charger is a bit "hit and miss" in its settings. Thought - some Stirling chargers only have a timed absorption phase, if yours is one of those set the time to the most that the box will let you. (The "best" chargers do some clever tricks during the absorption phase, the simplest to understand is the time-slice, they charge for say twenty five minutes then spend five minutes doing a measurement cycle, then charge again using the voltage figures from the measurement cycle to help them work out what voltage to apply, and repeat this charge/measure cycle until the required voltage and stability is reached. You should leave it in float for about as long as it took to get there (so for five hours of "normal" charging, five hours of "float"). These first few hours do a lot of work improving the condition of the battery, not a lot of charging. However that's probably more than a little impractical given you are on a generator, but is worth doing on a regular basis to give the batteries a bit of TLC... Depending on the exact battery I would expect the float charge setting to be a little higher, nearer the 13.8V than 13.6V (some say as high as 14v, but that needs a lot of care and really needs temperature monitoring on each cell for safety - rare on portable systems...). A small increase in the float charge voltage can have a big impact on how well the battery takes and holds the charge. (Is your charger a "remote sense" one - does it have third wire coming out to measure the terminal voltage, or is it only have two wires?)

Barring from the system - OK, but only after he has cleared up all his mess with a tooth brush and a drinking straw.

I don't pretend to know how a Smatgauge works out the state of charge of a battery, but they do appear to have volt meters on their front panels. A couple simple questions what type of battery do you have, and what voltage is your battery at when you stop charging, and a few minutes later? (Ignore messages about "state of charge", "percent charge" for now)

Bitz of both

Nothing quite like the gentle tingle when making contact with the "top" of a 4cx50.... edit - **** fingers - I do of course mean a CX450 power triode....

No, charge current is NOT a good indicator of the health of a battery during charging. It is however a good indicator of the amount of power you are drawing from the battery. Relying on charging current to tell you the state of charge of a battery will result in you consistently under charging that battery. Don't wait until the batteries are down to 55/60%, recharge them as often a possible, and if at all possible keep them on a good voltage controlled float charge. Stopping at 80-90% charge will increase the deterioration rate of the battery by a fair amount.

Alan, its quite simple - the TV needs a certain amount of POWER to operate, internally there will be several different voltages in use for different parts. Yes it is a "clever" regulator, well actually several "clever" power supplies for the different voltages used internally. These supplies are now getting very cheap to design and build and unlike the monsters of old that I grew up (trying to get that old TV from the dump working again...) which were dominated by the massive input transformer, modern ones have virtually no "iron" or "copper" components, just a few small inductors, the rest is mostly done with semi-conductors.

The TV will probably be a fixed power load, not a fixed resistance load. Now Watts = Volts x Amps. Lets say the TV draws 36watts. At 12 volts this is 3 amps but at 10 volts we are up to 3.6A. Which is a twenty percent increase in current, and that results in about a fifty percent increase in voltage drop... Why the drop off in such a short time? It certainly sounds as if something is getting warm somewhere. The human nose can be very good at sniffing out hidden hot electrical bits so have a sniff around. First place I'd look is the power connector - those "fag lighter" types can be really naff...

Yes and no. Batteries do not charge in a linear manner. They start by taking a large current until they reach a certain amount of charge, this is called the "bulk" or "surface" phase. They then reduce the rate they are capable of accepting charge, so the next phase takes a lot longer, this is called the "absorption" phase - because the charge is now being moved from the surface of the plates into the body of the plates. Finally we get to the float, or maintenance phase, which takes a very long time. How long each of these phases takes, and how much charge is put into the battery is governed by the charger and the battery, some combinations are much faster than others, some chargers are faster than others, and some batteries will accept charging faster than others. In your situation I would leave the charger on as long as possible before you set off to make sure you had as much power in the battery as possible. Run the generator as much as possible keeping an eye on the battery voltage before and after each run cycle as this will tell you if you are drawing more power from the battery than you are putting back. (The next bit may sound a bit anal) Keep a record of the things you turn on, and for how long, this way you can see what is really drinking too much. I know its hard to track how often the fridge comes on, but the best thing to do is to keep it as full as possible, and turned down as low as possible. Finally (for now....) Don't forget that if you are cruising you should be getting some charging "for nothing" from the engine mounted alternator(s) - which you didn't mention...

Three hundred and ninety litres of human exhaust to pump out in one go - remind me not to be behind you in the pump out queue... Don't forget that that is a change of approximately 390kg in ballast between full and empty...

First is voltage drop along the cables. How big the voltage drop is depends on the current being drawn (see here) as well as the length of the cable. Second is the TV will probably be a "constant power" device, this means it will always try to have the same number of watts going in,regardless of the voltage (within reason). Now since Watts equals Volts multiplied by Amps we find as the voltage decreases more current is drawn, and as more current is drawn, the more the voltage drops... There are others - like poor connections in the long front to back cable. Why does this not happen when the engine is running? - well it probably does, but you just don't notice it as the voltage at the TV is high enough for it not to demand silly amounts of current. The above assumes the battery is in good nick, in a good state of charge, and with good connections to it. All bets are off if those two conditions aren't met.

Phil, a sensible question. To supply your 30A charger you need something like 450watts, which is about 2amps at 230V. Assuming you use a fairly ordinary "13Amp" extension lead, which is about 1.5sqmm and 10metres long. The voltage drop is about 0.65V - which is about a quarter of a percent of 230V, not a lot. So, as I said, a sensible question, and I hope you find the answer to be a comfort.