IanD
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Posts posted by IanD
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15 minutes ago, Stroudwater1 said:
It’s a two week moderately leisurely trip from Autherley to Llangollen and the Shropshire Union is lovely so I suspect that Napton hire from Autherley could be your best bet.
As Ian D has illustrated a 6 berth with wide beds is tricky on narrowboats that are 6’10 wide (less internally) Much more than 4’6 wide is a squeeze without drop down beds, which are a bit of a pain making up.
Even 4’6 or more is often achieved with clever pulling out bits under the bed.
There aren’t too many hire companies on Northern waterways too, a few are there with quite small fleets but I’m not sure on bed sizes.
Like many narrowboats I've got a lengthwise bed which is 4'/120cm wide but pulls out to 4'6"/135cm -- since it's a reverse layout it stays pulled out all the time, you can easily get past it but wouldn't want to do this all the time on a primary through route with bedroom(s) between the steerer and saloon/galley. I've seen boats which claim to have beds which pull out to 5' but unless they have unusually thin frames/linings/insulation this would make it difficult to even shuffle past it -- my boat is 6'1"/185cm wide below the gunwales, but this doesn't mean a usable 50cm walkway when you allow for gunwale/tumblehome and a quilt hanging over the edge of the bed...
I didn't find the drop-down beds (as built by Napton) a pain to make up at all, the mattress plus fitted sheets is in two halves, one of which flips up next to the cabin wall -- time to put up or down and lay the quilt out, less than ten seconds. Comfortable too -- the only downside was through access first thing in the morning or last thing at night, you basically have to go to bed/get up in sequence, furthest away first.
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1 hour ago, blackrose said:
Update:
I've just fitted a nice new alternator and I think the issue is resolved.
The highest buffer battery voltage I now see with no load on the battery is now about 14.47v measured on the multimeter which I think is ok. The Orion B2B charger only gives voltage to 1 decimal place on the Victron app and that says 14.4v max.
That maximum voltage is observed when engine revs are lowest at idling which would make sense wouldn't it, because current from the alternator is lowest?
Looks good 🙂
BTW here's a link from today describing cell balancing strategy for the Victron NG batteries (which is very similar to what my REC-BMS does at 54V and 57.3V for Winston cells):
https://community.victronenergy.com/t/bms-ng-not-charging-to-100-soc/35420/3?u=iand
"The BMS controls the multiplus charge voltage.
The BMS asks for either 14.0V (absorption) or 13.7V (float). 13.7V keeps the batteries just below 100% and avoids overcharging which is good. 14.0V is required for balancing so you need some time in absorption. The manual says 2 hrs per month for lightly cycled and 8 hrs per month for heavily cycled.
The BMS has 2 settings, SOC threshold, default 70% and repeat absorption interval 30 days. You change these to suit your use. Basically, the BMS stays on float all the time unless the SOC drops below 70% or 30 days goes by since the last absorption.
You could set a daily absorption or a 90% limit. If you have more frequent absorption then you need to reduce the absorption time from 2 hrs to 15 min for daily absorption.
Personally I am happy with the way NG works, I think it is much better if you are not cycling a lot to stay just below 100% rather than overcharge them."
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8 minutes ago, magnetman said:
Also the middle of winter would likely be the wrong time to become ill from a bug in the water.
I my experience living aboard the freezing thing is not a problem at all but if these filters are outside due to space constraints indoors it could potentially be a bit dodgy.
Liveaboards who keep the boat warm all year won't have any problems with freezing, the issue is non-liveaboards like me who leave the boat for extended periods.
Overall this could be an attractive solution to the water problem for liveaboards who also may not want to move very often, if you're willing to pay the costs and maintain it properly. For cruisers or non-liveaboards who pass water points more often and leave the boat empty more, it doesn't look so good, a conventional SS water tank is fine... 😉
6 minutes ago, magnetman said:I do not use showers as have become self-cleaning but I wonder if a frozen filter could pass nasties through to washing water leading to a risk even if only a very small amount is allowed into the mouth
That would be nasty.
I think it is arguable that people may be tempted to fit the filters outdoors because of space constraints inside.
If that did happen then the risk of freezing is much higher.
That would be a dumb thing to do -- and I assume is warned against by the manufacturers?
Mind you, people do some pretty dumb things...
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4 minutes ago, Wafi said:
The risk with the filters is a bit different. You're not worried that something's going to crack/split and cause a leak; the issue is that ice crystals will damage the interior structure of the filter media. If this happens (and from what I understand it's very likely to happen) the filter won't start spraying water everywhere, it'll just become less effective as a filter and start passing through some of the stuff it's supposed to catch. It's tempting to imagine the filter elements looking like oil filters for water; some probably do, but others can be quite sophisticated and quite fragile.
I understand the fragility of the filters, but my point was that if freezing happens in the water system you're likely to be screwed either way (burst pipes/popped joints or perforated filters). It's also possible that the filters are less susceptible to freezing than pipes because they're much fatter so have a much lower surface area/volume ratio than pipes, meaning they'll take longer to freeze.
Assuming they work as described when fitted, I still think the biggest risk with these filters is people failing to maintain them properly, either through complacency or trying to save money by replacing them less often (or not at all!), and not realising the water is contaminated because they don't do any testing.
But I do understand the convenience of not having to find water points regularly, especially for liveaboards.
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2 hours ago, dmr said:
It's often said on this forum that the manufacturers data is king and must be followed, so its good that you differ. I have some knowledge of some of the arguments that go on between the engineers and the marketing men about what goes into the manual, and the marketing men always win.
I have provided quite a lot of data about cell balance measurements for my setup in several posts now -- certainly more than anyone else has, including Nick! -- so I can only assume he didn't bother looking at it... 😉
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17 hours ago, cuthound said:
Or take Thermos flasks with you and make your coffee the night before?
Fine if you like warm stale coffee, I prefer a nice fresh piping hot cup of tea in the morning. With a dark chocolate digestive, thank you very much. Oh, and a Grauniad if you can arrange delivery like at home... 😉
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16 hours ago, NB Saturn said:
That’s put the kiss of death on this winter - better start getting spares together now…
Yeah I know, it's like saying "I've never had a speeding ticket" and then getting one the next day... 😞
Either way, I don't think having those filters increases the chances of freezing being a problem over and above existing piping. The only absolutely safe option is to drain down your entire hot/cold water system every autumn and refill it in the spring, assuming you're not on the boat over winter.
OTOH if heating stops the pipes*** freezing when you're on the boat, it's reasonable to assume that it'll do the same if the heating is left on in frost protection mode (4.5C in my case) when you're away from it, and so far this has worked even in the relatively long subzero periods last winter. Touch wood...
*** fresh water tanks are sitting on the baseplate at 4C so are unlikely to freeze even without heating
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16 minutes ago, magnetman said:
well if a fresh water pipe bursts you get water in the bilge. If a filter casing cracks you could end up drinking wafer with several little cryptos in it and end up throwing up your own pelvis bone during uncontrolled projectile vomiting episodes.
I know which I would prefer.
Water in the cabin bilge is a big no no in my book but the other is somewhat less than ideal.
I'd have said that if something is going to freeze I'd much rather have a small change of bugs in the water than a much bigger chance of hundreds of liters of water inside the boat.
Which is why I have the heating on in frost protect mode in the winter, so hopefully neither happens... 🙂
(worked for two winters so far...)
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18 minutes ago, magnetman said:
Its a joke about you ignoring Nick.
Disagreeing is not a problem. Sometimes people agree sometimes they don't and yes occasionally people do personal.
I agree that going personal is infra dig but it happens from time to time and I don't think in this case it was particularly bad.
If Nick had called you a [word removed]ing [word removed] it would have been reportable but I didn't see that.
Yeah well, I'm not finding this very funny... 😞
That's because he's very careful to sneak in personal insults which aren't obscene or likely to result in sanctions, usually casting doubt on the mental state or truthfulness of whoever he's arguing with, especially when they present data that shows he's wrong. Which of course is impossible in his mind...
He's done it half a dozen times now on various subjects, and every time I think that maybe he'll discuss things more sensibly this time and unblock him he does it again, usually within a day or so of me posting. I just can't be arsed to read what he posts or argue with him any more, because it's pointless and painful -- like banging your head against a brick wall... 😞
I have absolutely no problem with people disagreeing with me, after all this is a *discussion* forum, and I've learned a lot from it. It's a shame that some people can't discuss things in a grown-up manner without trying out all the usual false argument tactics (straw man, ad hominem, diversion...) to try and hide the fact that their argument doesn't stand up... 😞
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22 minutes ago, Wafi said:
One other thing to watch out for with almost any filtration system (including backpacking filters, under-sink carbon filters and probably even water jugs with built-in filters) is that they really don't like being frozen. Not an issue if they're kept in a centrally-heated house or within the heated part of a liveaboard boat, but if you leave it on an unheated boat over the winter, or in an unheated locker on a liveaboard, you should remove the filter elements and store them somewhere they won't freeze.
I'd have thought they were no different to all the other water piping on a boat, if you don't have some kind of frost protection there's a risk of freezing -- but nothing special.
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7 minutes ago, magnetman said:
Handbags at dawn.
Pathetic. Either go and read up on this yourself so you can contribute something useful or butt out... 😞
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Having just seen the quoted post from @nicknorman -- OK, here's some data sources for you, go and look at them.
Victron's requirements for LFP absorption/charging to 100% SoC can be found in the manuals (available online), as can those for BYD, as can those for REC-BMS, as can those for various EV manufacturers -- which can also be found in exotic places like YouTube videos, if you can degrade yourself by watching them. The limits for Victron Quattro/Multiplus when acting as charge controllers can be seen when you're setting up the unit using VEConfig -- if you've got one you can do the same, if you haven't you can't. There's also lots of information in places like the Victron community forum.
No I'm not going to spend time digging all these out again and snapshotting them and providing them for you, go and spend your own time doing that like I did -- just be warned, it'll take some time, especially if you don't read a couple of hundred pages per hour.
Every single one of them recommends regular charging to 100% SoC -- typically every couple of weeks -- to make sure the cells stay balanced, and to reset SoC counters to 100%.
Nobody -- including me -- is saying that all cells go out of balance and disaster will strike if you don't do this, because it won't be *needed* in all systems. But it's universally recommended because some systems *will* need it to keep the cells balanced, given production variations in cell performance. Nothing to do with bad design or manufacture or not being "decent", it's just how LFP cells/batteries work.
I've also sent my logged data and spoken to Ricky at Finesse about this (since he uses VRM in fleet mode to remotely monitor the LFP banks on all the boats Finesse has ever built) and he says that in his experience cells needing balancing after multiple charge/discharge cycles over a couple of weeks is not unusual, some boats need it more than others (all built using the same Winston cells and REC-BMS) but the BMS just deals with it when a "charge to 100%" cycle comes round -- as I found. That's based on perhaps 20 hybrid boats built using the same components, as opposed to your one.
Since you've monitored your cells over some time and found that they don't need balancing, you don't need to do it if you don't want to -- unless they change as they age. That would also apply to others *if* they've also done regular balancing cycles/charge to 100% and confirmed that there is no imbalance -- but this does mean going up to 100% SoC to be certain of this, sitting below 95% is useless. You got lucky in not needing balancing, and so might they -- or not...
But you saying that this can be general advice to all boaters "with decent LFP batteries" is *not* safe, which is why all the suppliers recommend regular charging to 100% SoC.
If you disagree, it's up to *you* to provide references to show this (i.e. from reputable suppliers who say that this isn't needed) -- which doesn't mean quoting them word for word, links to reputable sources is enough. I keep saying "reputable" because there's an awful lot of misinformation out there -- as a rule of thumb, if getting it wrong would cost them a lot of money because they've got a lot of real products out there, they're probably reputable -- like the sources I referred to.
But having seen your continued name-calling in the quotes, I'm now going to carry on ignoring you until you decide you can discuss things in a grown-up insult-free manner. Which could mean a long wait given the history of "discussions" between us... 😞
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7 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:
So its not on time , like 12 months then How long do under sink water filters last? | The Water People
Because if you're in a house using water every day, 12 months is when the filter is likely to need replacing.
When they stop filtering effectively is linked to how much water has gone through and how much contaminant is in it.
Suppliers who are less concerned about trying to sell replacement filters make this clear... 😉
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2 minutes ago, Lady M said:
I'm not keen on this layout - how do the occupants of the middle cabin get out of the boat if there is a fire when the beds are blocking the corridor?
I would guess by climbing over one of the other beds, but it's hardly something I'd obsess about. I'm pretty sure Napton would have thought of this, they wouldn't be hiring boats which didn't meet the fire regulations... 😉
P.S. If you're not keen, hire a different boat -- that's the beauty of hiring... 🙂
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7 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:
Is that time expire of volume for when you need to change the element
Given the number of weeks per year we spend on board, I expect this will be several years yet. A liveaboard would need to change it a lot more often.
The vast majority of the water in the tank doesn't go through the galley tap anyway, it's used by the shower or toilet or washing machine... 😉
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11 minutes ago, BoatingLifeUpNorth2 said:
Do they? I don’t, my other half doesn’t and from what I’ve seen most boaters are happy drinking CaRT water from their stainless steel tanks. Maybe it depends on the boats. Do people with older integral water tanks not feel confident drinking the water and may buy bottled to drink and boaters with newer stainless steel tanks are confident in drinking out of them?
I've drunk water*** straight from the boat tank in many boats over the last 40+ years with no worries, most of those would have had integral tanks. Now I have a stainless steel tank (and the galley tap also has a water filter under the sink, because that's what was fitted when it was built) and I worry even less. In my experience you're far more likely to get internal problems from dodgy food or other contamination than water anyway...
*** well, mostly as tea or coffee TBH -- beer is preferable as a cold drink... 😉
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1 hour ago, David Mack said:
So surely the answer is tea/coffee making facilities in every bedroom, hotel style.
Great idea -- but trust me, those bedrooms are pretty small, only just big enough to swing a very small cat. I suppose you could put a kettle on a shelf over the head of the bed, can't think what could possibly go wrong with that... 😉
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1 hour ago, magnetman said:
It is mildly interesting that Sterling say
Recommended Charge and float V: 14.6V Charge, Float V=13.8V
Whereas Fogstar say
Recommended charge voltage:14.4V
It still seems to me that by advertising a recommended charge voltage at the point of sale and no mention of float if someone set their MPPT to 14.4V and it wrecked the battery it would be hard for Fogstar to refuse a warranty claim.
Is the charge and float written on the battery itself? Maybe it is.
It's in the battery manual, takes no time to find. Not everything gets printed on the outside of an item...
If you don't read a manual for something and don't follow its recommendations, you're unlikely to win a warranty claim against the manufacturer. It doesn't say on the outside of the battery "do not throw off a ten-story building", but this is also unlikely to lead to a successful claim... 😉
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6 minutes ago, Wafi said:
That's exactly the point; people are very vague with their definition of "dodgy". If you're worried about catching a nasty bug from bacteria/viruses/parasites in the water, chlorine will most likely do the job. A lot of people forget (or never realised) that you can also be poisoned by something that doesn't give you a disease. If you try to drink seawater that you've "purified" with filters and chlorine you're not going to come to any serious harm, but that's only because you'll taste the salt and stop drinking it. If you carried on drinking it regardless, it would kill you. Replace the salt with another toxin that you can't taste, and you have a problem.
If you drink water from a mountain stream, pathogens are the biggest risk; one mouthful of contaminated water is enough to give you amoebic dysentry. If the water's contaminated with arsenic (for instance if it comes from an old mine working) you'll probably get away with it because tomorrow's water will come from a different stream and the cumulative dose will be very small. In that scenario some combination of filter and aquatabs is a good choice because it'll deal with the pathogens, and you're not ingesting enough toxins to cause a problem. However, if you're drinking from the same water source every day, toxins such as arsenic can accumulate in your body and pose a much higher risk.
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9 minutes ago, booke23 said:
Wow.....even the chaise longue, must have been horrendous.
Funny, a chef once told me to NEVER trust cold rice at a buffet etc. It's a perfect breeding ground for bacteria.
Bed, carpets, sofa (not chaise longue!), hallway, bathroom -- big luxurious rooms aren't expensive in Chengdu. Or was it Shenzhen? I've tried to wipe the event from my memory... 😞
It's not bacteria that's the problem, it's a particular fungal spore which can be a problem unless the rice is kept hot or chilled right down. Didn't get back to hotel till 10pm, no local restaurants open, had curry and rice from hotel restaurant (all that was available) which had probably been there since lunchtime. Cue middle of the night exploding-both-ends disaster... 😞
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2 minutes ago, Champain said:
Yes we have just done that and received a near instant quote but there are pages and pages of T&cs which experience in life usually means its hidden and you have no valid claim if ever you need one because we never took a month out to read it
Like all insurance companies, then. You won't find one without all those T&Cs, so you'd better buckle down and read them... 😉
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6 minutes ago, Champain said:
Hi Rob and thanks for your reply. We both did our helmsman course last week but that made no difference to Assist who insist we should have a nominated helmsman for a year regardless. Nobody else seems to have heard of that rule as yet
We look forward to joining your community
As noted earlier, Craftinsure have no such requirement, and when I last looked were significantly cheaper then the competition as well as being much easier to deal with and get a quote from.
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3 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:
It's a good job you have the professionals at Thames Water testing yours then 😉
Like I said, still not 100% effective -- but personally speaking, I've never been able to attribute any internal malaise to tap water in the UK, thought there have been plenty of other culprits... 😉
(one of the worst ever was from boiled rice in China, that needed a deep clean of the entire hotel suite...)
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7 minutes ago, booke23 said:
Exactly. And this the crux of the problem with these systems.
They may well work very well, but what about 5 or 10 years down the line...an o ring might appear ok but has shrunk and gone hard and isn't quite sealing anymore, an internal pipe or connection has split or is weeping slightly. That's all it would take to let in a lot of nasties.
Which is exactly the same issue as with mains water, especially where any of it is recycled. The water companies can only spot contamination failures with regular testing, and even this isn't 100% effective so there are occasional outbreaks caused by things like bacterial contamination.
Any time you're going to start off with something nasty and rely on processing to turn it into something nice, you need monitoring to make sure the job is being done properly and avoid rare but unpleasant problems. That's the weak spot of these kinds of filtration systems... 😞
Or you just put up with the fact that sooner or later you might end up with a case of the galloping sh*ts from imperfectly filtered water. I suppose given all the other possible causes of such intestinal problems (beer? kebabs? shellfish?), many people might find that a perfectly acceptable risk... 😉
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Lucas A127
in Boat Equipment
Posted · Edited by IanD
That's why the settings -- DoD before a "Charge to 100%" kicks in, maximum interval, and time held at 100% -- are programmable, so you can choose them to suit your requirements. The defaults are presumably set to suit off-grid applications, which are by far the biggest market for Victron.
Mine (not Victron NG!) has never triggered on low SoC, and IIRC (the settings are hidden inside the REC-BMS) the maximum balancing interval is set to 14 days -- I don't know if there's a minimum time, going by the recent measurement data I posted (repeated below) it stops when the cell imbalance is <10mV at 100% SoC.
If I was using the Quattro to control charging instead of the REC-BMS, the maximum balancing-cycle interval it allows you to program in is 45 days.