Arthur Brown

Quite a lot of the items you plug into 12v nominal power will get unhappy at 15v, any attempt to charge past 15v will start to put the rest of the installation at risk of death by over voltage. If you need to do an equalising charge first disconnect everything that's connected as load, then do the equalise as the makers suggest. Repeated equalising will create a need for topping up the cells with pure water (distilled or deionised or RO ).

Only the long term rested voltage is comparable with the voltage tables available, BUT if you always rest your batteries for the same time then your set of readings will have a coherent validity with themselves if not with other people's but 30 minutes rest is my opinion of the minimum. If you turn everything off overnight then a reading at 0600 to 0800 will do fine. If you can't turn off overnight then a set of readings taken after a 30 min or after a 60 minute off period will do fine.

The most useful measurement for batteries is the rested terminal voltage, with no current having flowed in or out for at least an hour. Probably this is best recorded in the early morning before you switch anything on. If you record the 6AM battery volts each day you will see the state of charge readily and pick up changes easily.

Is there an inverter in the system?

Batteries in permanent float as in a data centre UPS battery room sit at a permanent charge to a precisely specified (maybe to three decimal places ) voltage given by the maker around 13.2v but this is when they are held on true float. They usually get a reliable life of 10 years so they must be doing something right! (or three full discharges!) . At other than float a higher voltage is used to increase the charge rate, BUT this then becomes a cyclic charge regime with the attendant need for regular electrolyte level check and top up. Long periods at 14+ volts is no good for a fully charged battery.

If you use a current measuring shunt then the charge current should usually pass through the shunt so that the indicators know what current and time has flowed into the battery as well as out of the battery. Yes the solar needs to be a fused wire directly to the battery

The issue with old cranes is that most are now totally out of test and may no longer be safe to use, and the owner should be aware of this and forbid your use of them if they are now purely decorative. Useful cranes would be in regular use at at least the required load and probably cost much money. Going to a boatyard with crane is a good plan.

The important bit is the HULL for which we can offer no provenance nor even age. and it's the hull that keeps the saloon dry! Go in with a silly low bid but be prepared for underwater surprises. Also be aware that newer boats will cost more BUT be better insulated so cost less to heat in winter.

Alternatively. A litre of fuel oil contains about 10KWhrs. so in theory your heater should use a litre for every 10 kilo watt hours of heat that you get. From this you need to determine the rating of your heater then you can see the litres used per hour of running time.

Those screwfix boards are rated (from the manufacturer's site) "Temp. resistance:-30 to +70 °C" Which is nowhere near adequate for a fire stove. the stove could well reach 600C but any falling embers could be much more than that.

Washing machines dislike everything but good hard mains. If a generator slows and the volts sag when the heater comes on - they don't like it If the sine wave isn't clean enough from genset or inverter -they don't like it If the earth referenced neutral isn't there some don't work well -they dump interference down the earth wire. This forum could compile a list of washing machines that do work from on board power, but as inverters go off market and washers do would it have long validity.

The hull could have very different origins from the top, maybe the hull is older than the top. Who and why would you fit a top for a 40ft boat on a 51ft hull? If you don't need the dog space than what are you going to do with that space from now til April? It's a lot of space to lose for six months of the year, You'd still need to cover it to keep water out of the engine hole. Are you aware whether it's an iron hull or steel hull?

Just assume that the washing machine is the fussiest item that you have aboard with regards to power input, Many washers simply don't run off anything but real mains -even if the rated power is said to be adequate.

Wasn't Edgbaston the initial port of call.

VLC codec (free download) will play anything that you can put on a hard drive onto a computer monitor. Blu-ray discs are better protected and may not copy to hard drive.

Get the alternator repaired or replaced while the days are still light! You will need every charge amp that you can get in the winter. Most alternators NEED the "ign" light for them to start to generate. Make certain that the alternator circuit is as the manufacturer intended, including clean contacts everywhere,

You could send one over Her Majesty's Submarine base on the Clyde and get caught, but you wouldn't be the first.

Some ebers most definitely DO lock out with too many false starts. You will I presume have downloaded, read and understood the operating instructions for your particular eber, Sometimes doing the right things the right way makes things work. Good clean fuel and a healthy battery are a good start when working on a reluctant eber. Is it correctly installed, as the instruction book? -it matters.

To make a loom someone has to know what cable to put in what places and what lengths and connectors will be needed. If you are making a lot of looms than you assemble a frame with pegs in all the right places and reels of the right wire already in place, then cable gets pulled round the pegs and terminated. For ONE loom this whole process is a waste of time and space, pull the right cable in the finished place and terminate as needed. There are plenty of Youtube vids on how to make a cable loom. You need to plan how to get the loom through all the tight spaces that there are on a boat. You cannot loom mains cables with battery cables.

Eber also suggest running a diesel heater for five minutes every month regardless of the weather, just to keep the fuel in the feed pipe fresh. Clearly this hasn't happened. There is an awfull chance that the fuel in the pipe to the eber has lost some of the volatiles and started to thicken and perhaps gum up. Ebers work well when used regularly but when called on to work immediately after months of no use then they usually misbehave. If you rely on an eber for heat then you NEED to be competent to maintain it and have a suitable set of tools and spares.

Picking your lift points by presence of on site crane will be cheaper than picking a site where you also have to hire a crane.

You can only make a loom correctly when you know every cable, and every appliance to be fitted, it's current consumption and duty cycle and it's exact place and exact cable route.. A loom precludes any subsequent refitting or added items. Looms are used after lots of design work for large production runs -like cars. where 100hours of design (CAD) time is justified over 100K production models. IMO a loom is of negative value because the layout of the boat may change in it's lifetime and electrical items may well get swapped out over the years. If you can, please install two trunking systems one for 12/24v and one for mains(any 230v inc inverter). When you think you have finished putting all the wires in each then run a loop of string down each so that you can pull more cores in as wanted without losing the string for the next job. Cable ratings depend on the thermal properties of the system (Trunks or looms hold heat) and on the volts dropped along the cable by peak and steady running currents. If you think that Devon and Cornwall can't offer boaty services think what all the fishing boats do for repairs.

An older Eber will want to draw in the order of 25A when starting up when cold, This will tax poor or flat batteries or poor installations.

Most dogs that you can love will settle with you in your home, I would NOT like a "pocket dog" wherever, I'd be wary of the illegal breed (fighting dogs) but one of the rest -and that's lots of choice- could well live aboard. Some swim naturally some never will -just like people. Some dogs will be overworked at a mile of walk daily others will feel hard done to if they only get a ten mile run -what can you keep up with. I know a Bernese Mountain dog -It would take a big share of any boat,