IanD

June 19

9 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

But as you know perfectly well, and are trying to wriggle out of, that is not what you said is it ?

You said

No where in the post was there any mention of a lock.

You always say you admit when you make a mistake - so admit now that what you actually wrote was not what you intended

What I said was exactly what I meant -- it doesn't use any steam when the engine is not running.

Most non-pedantic people would have understood this to mean in a lock, compared to a diesel engine which does run in a lock, since fuel consumption comparison with diesels is in fact the subject of the thread.

Since people including you complain about my posts being too long, I decided that rather than spelling out every detail I would to leave this to the intelligence of the reader -- obviously this doesn't always work... 😉

June 19

1 hour ago, GUMPY said:

Just watch the SIM holder in the NR5103E it's worse than rubbish.

Make sure whoever supplies it will take returns as otherwise you will be left with a brick.

I haven't gone for 5g away from home yet since most places after tweaking I am seeing 60Mbps using 4g it's really not worth the expense.

When I do it will probably be a Huawei H112-370 modified with 8 external antenna ports and two 4x4 MIMO antennas. I don't do things by halves.

Agree with the first two points, which I've also said several times... 🙂

From my experience 5G nowadays gives considerably higher data rates in places where it's supported, mainly towns/cities but it's becoming more common in smaller villages now.

I'm not convinced that the Huawei has any advantages (apart from the less dodgy SIM slot!) over the Zyxel, plus it costs more than double by the time you've modified it and needs 2 4x4 MIMO antennas on the roof/pole. If you're going to spend that much you might as well get the Teltonika which only needs one antenna and has dual SIM slots -- and like the Zyxel has a USB port which you can use for streaming audio/video (I use it for my music library).

June 19

44 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I think the amount of diesel consumed by an engine that is not running is miniscule.

But diesel engines do run in locks, as you know perfectly well.

Beta 43 consumption with 18" x 12" prop: max power at 2800rpm, 9l/hr. Cruising at 1400rpm, 1.5l/hr. Passing moored boats at 1000rpm, 0.9l/hr. Idle speed in locks, 0.8l/hr.

June 19

28 minutes ago, Jonny P said:

I wasn’t excluding anybody on account of how they boat or their motivation for being on a boat. I was merely referring to anybody that pays for a licence and adheres to the Ts&Cs to which they agreed but probably wouldn’t have done so had they had to factor in mooring costs.

There’s simply lots of boaters out there doing lots of different things. They don’t fit neatly in the boxes you seem to want to put them in, all neatly labelled by their percentage contribution to CRT.

I don’t see compliant boaters of any licence status as a problem.

Neither do most people -- assuming that by "compliant" you mean following the CC rules, not overstaying for days/weeks/months on short-term/visitor moorings and so on, I agree that it doesn't matter what their boating motivation is.

However "doing lots of different things" also seems to include "bending/breaking the rules" for an increasing number of CCers, which is one thing CART need to address.

The other problem is extracting more income from boaters to pay for the canals, which is undoubtedly going to mean increased license fees in future and very probably more differentiation between boaters, including increased CC/widebeam surcharges.

I've no doubt that this will lead to cries of "Unfair" from CCers and widebeam owners, completely ignoring the equally valid point of view that the system as it stands is unfair to HMers and narrowboaters who pay more and/or get less -- and who outnumber CCers/widebeams by about 4:1, which means any such changes will make 4x as many boaters happy as they make unhappy.

The greater good and all that... 😉

June 19

2 hours ago, MtB said:

Also, a steam engine stops rotating when the steerer wants the prop to stop. No mucking about with a gearbox with a "neutral" setting. So no idling while waiting in locks, lock queues etc. Mind you, the boiler still needs stoking up!

True, but it also doesn't use any steam when the engine's not running -- so total fuel consumption depends on average output power, like an electric boat -- but rather less efficient... 😉

IIRC Firefly (Keith Jones steam narrowboat-for-hire) got through something like 200kg of LPG a week for 3shp flat-out... 😞

June 19

32 minutes ago, agew said:

So....this has all got very technically interesting, but digging back to find a recommended simple real world combo of antenna and router is a) very difficult and b) has some now quite aged recommendations? Or maybe its just me?

I have ordered the very recently recommended Poynting antenna as this is clearly next generation from them.

However, what router to match that too has me confuddled I'm afraid. That is certainly just me - a tech numpty.

Could one of you bright folk summarise the latest generation recommended router please? Compatible with the Poynting antenna ovs... Cheers, A

For a 5G 4x4 MIMO that works with a 4x4 MIMO external antenna I still don't think there's anything better for the price than the NR5103E -- but not V2.

Anything similar from the likes of Teltonika (e.g. RUTX50) is 3x as expensive and doesn't offer any big advantages, apart from being smaller and not needing SMA-TS9 adaptors (and a less dodgy SIM slot -- actually two of them so it can use one as backup).

If you think those advantages are worth the added cost, the RUTX50 is probably your best option... 🙂

June 19

Just now, agew said:

So....this has all got very technically interesting, but digging back to find a recommended simple real world combo of antenna and router is a) very difficult and b) has some now quite aged recommendations? Or maybe its just me?

I have ordered the very recently recommended Poynting antenna as this is clearly next generation from them.

However, what router to match that too has me confuddled I'm afraid. That is certainly just me - a tech numpty.

Could one of you bright folk summarise the latest generation recommended router please? Compatible with the Poynting antenna ovs... Cheers, A

Which Poynting antenna?

June 19

1 hour ago, Jonny P said:

You’re adding requirements that aren’t part of the law, hence why CRT and BWB before them haven’t been bothered.

While it may be that the sequence of movement could be forced more toward ‘A,B,C… …X,Y,Z’ rather than ‘A,B,C,B,A,B,C,B,A, repeat and take a short break to D in summer’, there is no doubt that the former is unequivocally in accordance with the law, and probably so irrespective of distance. I think it’d also be very hard to argue it’s not a cruise in terms of plain English.

The need to be on some form of extended cruise may or may not have been the intended purpose of the legislation - at least in the minds of those that lobbied for it - but it’s not what it says.

The “continuous cruiser” terminology only exists with CRT and it’s plainly obvious that moving to a new place at least once every 14 days is what constitutes continuous cruising in their eyes. Personally I hate the term.

You also fall into the use of derogatory language toward other boaters. The requirement to not have to pay for a home mooring is an enabler for many to be on the canal. To me that’s a good thing if they comply with their licence commitments. Why wouldn’t it be?

There are also many boaters without a home mooring who make use of a series of paid moorings during their licence period and they are now penalised by having to pay the licence surcharge despite being on what qualifies as a home mooring by legal definition but apparently is not under the new licensing regime. They are far from “mooring-dodgers”’

I'd love to see numbers for your "many" claim, because it doesn't stack up -- about 20% of boaters are CCers (so 80% are HMers), and I'd bet you a pound to a penny that only a small number of CCers ever do what you claim, the vast majority (90%?) move around precisely so they *don't* have to pay for moorings -- especially since short-term moorings are expensive.

Ignoring the arguments about whether CCers are a drain on the system or a benefit, it's easy to justify the CC surcharge because HMers contribute more towards (inadequate!) CART funds either by the 9% slice on (almost all) marina fees, or paying CART more than this for a farm/EOG mooring, or paying much more directly to CART for an online mooring. The 25% CC surcharge goes part-way to correcting this, but to make average CC and HM contribution to CART the same -- because everyone gets to use the canals the same way, if they want to -- it should be significantly bigger, so CCers are getting off lightly... 😉

The whole problem with the CC/no HM exemption is that what it was targeted at (and the law describes) is very different from what it is being used for today. It was brought in because the proposal to make everyone have (and pay for!) a home mooring was seen as unfair on those plucky few who didn't have/need one because they spent their time cruising round the system -- and there were only a relatively small number anyway. In the last 15 years in particular there has been an huge rise in numbers of people who claim to CC but clearly don't, certainly according to the spirit of the law and often according to the letter, because they're looking for a cheap place to live in places like London -- backed by the NBTA and friends.

Where housing is indeed a huge problem but it's not CARTs job to solve this and they couldn't anyway, the canals can only provide a fraction of a percent of the cheap housing need -- the demand is bottomless, which is why the number of CCers goes up every year.

And the resultant overcrowding/mooring overstaying in popular areas together with the fact that CCers pay less to CART than HMers understandably leads to resentment among a large number of boaters, who see them as "taking the p*ss" -- which of course not all are, but then the ones behaving nicely don't get noticed and the ones behaving selfishly do. It also seems that some HMers have decided that they might as well join the CC club and save money in the knowledge that enforcement is weak, why should I pay more when they don't? -- almost certainly another reason for the drop in HMers in recent years, losing CART even more money.

So the whole CC situation is a disaster for CART -- it's costing them a lot of money which they don't have enough of anyway, leading to overcrowding where CMers want to live, and p*ssing off a lot of other boaters -- but there's little they can do about it with the law as it stands, the T&C are unclear and effectively unenforceable, policing the CC rules is well-nigh impossible, and enforcement against infringers is far too lengthy and expensive to be useful.

Which hopefully the commission will be able to do something about -- undoubtedly to howls of protest from the NBTA since by definition it's likely to make the lives of their members more difficult or expensive or both... 😞

June 19

52 minutes ago, Gybe Ho said:

Money bothers many people. A continuous cruiser intending to move enough to be comfortably over CRT minimum requirements might plan to move 3 to 4 miles a week. Call that 150 to 200 miles a year or 105 hours a year. or £180 diesel. Measuring from both MPG and engine hours puts bounds on the budgeting.

But the OP was asking so he could compare diesel boat fuel consumption -- for example, in mpg -- with steam boat fuel consumption. Nothing to do with engine running hours... 😉

June 18

5 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Same with the Bukh (54ft), but somewhat dependent on canal depth, any flow, and speed.

Absolutely -- speed on a shallow/narrow canal is a lot lower at the same power/rpm, or you need a lot more power/fuel to keep the same speed (it it's possible at all) -- and going upstream against a flow has a huge impact, and going fast is *really* expensive on fuel.

Which is what I said earlier, and why you can't really make a comparison except under exactly the same conditions -- or you look at the average over a long time, but this is still affected a lot by how heavy-handed the steerer is, I've seen ones who seem to be digital with only full power ahead or astern, nothing in between... 😞

June 18

12 minutes ago, Chris John said:

No because boats running time tends to be hours not distance covered.
Mines about 2 litres an hour

Surely the two are linked?

Taking the Beta 43 with a standard 18" x 12" prop as an example, cruising at 1400rpm (3mph?) is about 1.5l/hr (2miles/l), passing moored boats (2mph?) is about 1l/hr (2miles/l), idling in locks is about 0.75l/hr (0 miles/l).

If you assume an 8 hour day with 4 hours cruising, 2 hours passing boats, and 2 hours in locks, a day is 16 miles in 8 hours (2mph average -- exactly what I logged) on 9.5l of fuel (1.2l/hour, as I said).

I wouldn't expect other boats with modern engines to be significantly different. If you use 2l/hr (I assume this means while cruising?) either you have an older less efficient engine or you travel a bit faster... 😉

June 18

8 minutes ago, 5239 said:

I’d say my BMC 1.8 is a bit closer to the 1L than yours,

after a run last year over 10 long days with a good mix of locking and tearing it up at top speed I reckoned it to be a little over a litre,

maybe 1.2L an hour

In past holidays with a similar mix (lots of Beta 43/38 but also other similar engines) I usually reckoned on about 1.2l/hr average, and it usually came out pretty close to that when the boat was refilled on return.

June 18

As Alan says, it's *very* speed specific (cube law for power, square law for energy per mile) -- so do you measure it at a fixed speed (what? how deep water?), and how about allowing for slowing past moored boats and locks (how many)?

To take an example (since I have the data to hand for my hybrid), on my last trip we *averaged* 2mph and 2.8kW, which is 1.4kWh/mile -- including moored boats and locks. Allowing for solar, about 2kW (1kWh/mile) came from the generator, which means about 0.75l/h average fuel consumption at 2mph average, which is about 12mpg average... 🙂

N.B. All these numbers are for propulsion only, after all power and fuel used for domestic loads and hot water and heating has been allowed for...

June 17

1 hour ago, Antonio13 said:

Great post, very informative, structured and detailed.

When I worked from home during the pandemic, I used to use a 3-metre pole for the antenna. Most of the time there was a huge difference in comparison with when the antenna was placed at the roof level.

Thanks for the post.

Antonio

If you're willing to use a tall pole, antenna height does make a big difference to signal strength.

Also be aware that the typical pole-mount flat omnidirectional antennas (which most boats use!) are not designed to be placed close to a nice big metal reflector like a narrowboat roof, which can lead to all sorts of nasty dips in the frequency response and reduce the antenna gain in some bands (poor reception) -- they really should be at least 1m above the roof, more is better (also higher means more signal!). It's not that they won't work if mounted closer, you just won't get the data-sheet dBi gain across all the 4G/5G bands, which means lower data rates in poor signal areas.

A better solution (higher and more consistent gain) is the vehicle-type antennas designed for mounting on a metal roof, like these:

https://www.3grouterstore.co.uk/product-category/5g-antennas/vehicle-5g-antennas/

June 16

2 hours ago, LadyG said:

Poor hygiene covers handling and storage, I used to be a Food Hygeine Officer, I have the T shirt.

Rice being contaminated with Bacillus Cereus spores is not due to poor hygiene/cleanliness by the restaurant or anyone else in the food chain, it's because it exists in the environment and the spores can be present in the rice when harvested -- and can then grow and multiply if it's not kept at a safe temperature after cooking, even in sterile conditions.

https://www.virtual-college.co.uk/resources/what-is-the-difference-between-food-hygiene-and-food-safety#:~:text=Food hygiene refers to specific,aspect of food safety practices.

But I agree 100% that the blame lies with the restaurant, who should know full well that cooked rice shouldn't be stored like this -- piping hot or freezing cold are fine, warm/room temperature are not.

And let's face it, if you're ever unfortunate enough to get hit by this you're unlikely to pedantically care whether food hygiene or food safety lapses -- or the phase of the moon, or anything else -- are responsible for what's coming out of both ends, you have much bigger worries... 😞

June 16

18 minutes ago, LadyG said:

When I was in LA, I went to a conference where a .lecture was given, with illustrations, of a Chinese Take out place that had had three official cases. Its always very difficult fo verify as the consumers may have taken the stuff home, consumed the evidence, and often have had too much alcohol.

The place was notorious for poor hygiene but they did not care. I think they eventually got closed down by HMRC.

There was a similar vomiting outbreak, at a local conference centre. Within two hours of consuming some specialist raw milk cheese, the factities were overwhelmed!

It's nothing to do with poor hygiene, if the rice has the (invisible) bacterial spores in it and is not either kept hot or chilled after cooking, they multiply rapidly especially at warm room temperatures, with predictably awful results... 😞

June 16

Mine are the other way round -- steel doors with windows on the outside (lined with oak internally) with wooden shutters inside.

Not as secure as solid steel, but means you can have the outers closed to keep the rain out and still have light inside the boat -- with solid steel doors outside and glass/perspex ones inside it's very difficult (maybe impossible?) to make the inners water/rain-tight with the outer doors open.

June 12

18 minutes ago, Gybe Ho said:

Does this include the neural-cerebral BMS I plan to implement?

Wrong kind of cells, methinks... 🙂

June 12

18 hours ago, MtB said:

The tank will definitely heat up quicker if the rads are not heating at the same time.

Turn them OFF!

That might be true if the heater can either throttle down or cycle on and off, usually a calorifier coil on its own doesn't absorb heat fast enough to keep the heater running. If the heater doesn't like continuous cycling on and off, turning all the rads off might not be a good idea... 😞

June 12

29 minutes ago, Gybe Ho said:

Active Balancing is a common BMS feature on BMS's over £100, so no longer an exotic feature. In the enthusiast battery build community arguments ebb and flow about the value of active balancing over passive balancing.

Passive balancing isn't good for big battery banks (like in electric boats) because you need relatively high balancing currents and the resistors get hot, proper active balancing circuits are like mini-SMPS and are much more efficient.

For smaller cheaper batteries (especially drop-in) passive balancing is fine, and cheaper.

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

These voltage sensors with 3 decimal places are quite impressive. What sort of error tolerance to they have or are they entirely accurate?

What matters isn't so much the absolute accuracy, it's the accuracy of the voltage differences.

Within a given BMS there's usually only one ADC with an analogue MUX in front of it, so any ADC errors might affect the absolute reading (e.g. 3.38V instead on 3.39V) but doesn't affect the difference (two channels at the same voltage will both read the same (e.g. 3.380V/3.380V or 3.390V/3.390V). Most BMS have no problem making readings with 1mV resolution, 1mV accuracy is another thing entirely.

So within one BMS/drop-in battery you can rely on the voltage differences. But if there are multiple BMS (e.g. one inside each drop-in battery) the differences between batteries are less reliable, it's down to the quality of the BMS design/calibration -- 1mV accuracy is 0.03%, which is not easy and certainly wouldn't be expected from low-cost batteries/BMS, it's better than most affordable DMMs.

That's why the best solution is a single BMS for all the cells... 🙂

June 12

2 hours ago, blackrose said:

This is one of my batteries at about 80% SOC.

As Gordo once famously said "I agree with Nick".

Actually I don't have enough knowledge to know who's right in this debate, but I've decided I'm not going to worry too much about "top balancing".

And given your measurements at 99%/100% SoC (14.2V), like Nick you don't have to worry about it -- as I said... 🙂

Voltage difference at 80% SoC is literally meaningless as far as cell balance is concerned; going from there to 100% SoC can make cells swap over, and turn a negligible difference into a much larger one if there is imbalance -- as my measurements show, and Nick agrees with.

As far as other LFP users worried about balancing is concerned (and who -- unlike you and Nick -- haven't confirmed that their cells don't need it by repeatedly checking cell balance at 100% SoC) all I will do is repeat what Victron say in their NG manual -- and as a company supplying large quantities of BMS/LFP batteries with an expert design team whose job it is to provide good advice, I'm happy to follow this.

But nobody is forcing anyone else to do this if they don't want to and they're confident they don't need to -- and hopefully are knowlegeable enough to understand why, not just say "my cells are balanced at 80% SoC so I don't need to balance them"... 😉

For those interested, here are quotes from the relevant manual sections, and also the warranty policy -- which says that if you don't treat the battery as recommended (which includes regular charging to 100% SoC) and can't prove it, the warranty doesn't apply. Other big LFP suppliers like BYD (2nd biggest in the world?) have similar recommendations/warranty rules.

5.4. Battery care
Once the battery is in operation, it is important to take proper care of the battery to maximise its lifetime.
These are the basic guidelines:
[snip]
4. The BMS ensures that the batteries spend sufficient time in absorption at least once in a month to ensure sufficient time in
balancing mode. Do not interrupt the charging process until the balancer status shows "Balanced" for each individual battery
in the system.

6.1.2. Causes for cell imbalance or a variation in cell voltages
1. The battery has not spent enough time in the absorption charge stage.
This can, for example, happen in a system where there is not enough solar power to fully charge the battery, or in systems
where the generator is not running long or often enough. During normal operation of a lithium battery, small differences
between cell voltages occur all the time. These are caused by slight differences between the internal resistance and
self-discharge rates of each cell. The absorption charge stage fixes these small differences. We recommend a minimum
absorption time of 2 hours per month for lightly cycled systems, such as backup or UPS applications and 4 to 8 hours per
month for more heavily cycled (off-grid or ESS) systems. This allows the balancer enough time to properly balance the cells.

6.1.6. Battery is close to end-of-cycle life or has been misused
As a battery ages, its capacity will reduce, and eventually, one or more battery cells will become faulty. Battery age is related to
how many charge/discharge cycles the battery has been through. A battery can also have a reduced capacity or faulty cells if it
has been misused, for example, if it has been discharged too deeply.
[snip]
8. What was the time since last full charge?
The battery needs to be fully charged at
least once a month

VICTRON ENERGY LIMITED WARRANTY POLICY R EV 03
Victron Energy warrants its products to be free from defects in workmanship and materials for a period of 5
years from the date of purchase by the end user, with a maximum of 66 months from the Victron Energy
invoice date. Exceptions on this are: lead acid batteries; 2 years from date of purchase by the end user, with a
maximum of 30 months from the Victron Energy invoice date, Lithium-ion batteries; 3 years from date of
purchase by the end user. In addition to this proof of correct battery usage is required when making a battery
warranty claim.

1 hour ago, GUMPY said:

Only seen the BMS protection come in once in 18 months and that was during a prolonged spell (4 hours) of alternator charging whilst driving home.

I've had one "cell imbalance " warning during ~2 months on the boat, this hit 70mV very briefly (only 1 reading, 1 minute resolution) when the generator kicked in and was fast-charging at 130A/54V (about 50% SoC).

June 11

4 hours ago, 1st ade said:

Much as it pains me to agree with Gybe Ho - I'd argue that going into a state where the system could Top Balance but doesn't, counts as Top Balancing?

Nick's repeatedly-stated position is that because his particular LFP cells don't need top balancing, it's not needed.

The position of multiple LFP battery/BMS suppliers is that top balancing is recommended (or required...) because there's no way of knowing whether a set of cells need it or not without trying it, and some (many? most?) do -- so the safe option is to do it. And if you don't, it's likely to invalidate any battery lifetime guarantee -- it definitely does in some cases e.g. BYD.

Given their experience with large numbers of LFP systems as opposed to one DIY setup, I prefer to follow their advice. Others are free to make their own minds up... 😉

June 11

2 hours ago, PeterScott said:

Guardian Online ??

I like reading the real thing... 🙂

3 hours ago, adam1uk said:

Surely tall people won’t want cross beds though. Yes they can be as wide as a king size, but they’re going to be short.

IIRC they were 6'3" long -- so yes, a problem if you're very tall and sleep stretched out. But then that's normal length on boats, and at least they're wide...

June 11

1 hour ago, booke23 said:

Almost......the spores of Bacillus cereus (a bacteria) survive cooking, germinate at room temperature and multiply. The terminology make it sound like a fungus but it isn't.

Yep, that's the one. Can seriously advise against getting it, the results are spectacularly awful... 😞

June 11

19 minutes ago, missingtheboat said:

I guess even if there isn't, presumably you could set it to something like 10% SOC and 14 days to get it to just do the balancing stuff every two weeks (assuming of course that you never go down as far as 10%).

Mine is set to something like that already. By "minimum time" I meant the shortest time it stays in Absorption/100% SoC mode (57.3V) before reverting to float mode (54V), IIRC that's 2 hours.

The disadvantage of a system like the REC-BMS is that although it can be observed via the Cerbo (voltages and currents, CVL and CCL, cell temperatures and imbalance), to change BMS settings or update the firmware you have to physically plug a PC (with adaptor) into the CANbus port after disconnecting it from the Cerbo, it can't be done remotely.

The advantage of using Victron NG batteries and the Lynx BMS (which includes a 500A or 1000A contactor) is that it's all integrated into the Victron ecosystem and VRM, including battery/BMS firmware updates and all settings. But none of this was available 2 years ago, and also Victron LFP batteries were stupidly expensive at the time -- though they're still a *lot* more expensive than Fogstar... 😉

(an all-Victron 48V 700Ah LFP NG+BMS setup from Bimble would cost about £18k today...)

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