Tony1

I drilled and tapped for my panel mounts. I'd tried tapping previously when I mounted the number plate on the hull side, but it was a thinner tap, and it snapped off in the hole, which I think was partly because I'd forgotten you are meant to twist it backwards a bit when you're part way through, in order to break off any metal shards. So I was pretty anxious about whether it would all go ok on the roof, but I got away with it. If I were doing it again I'd think about using rivnuts, as it seems less risky if you're rubbish at DIY like me.

I do think its a very good point about being able to fix your own electrics if at all possible. I've installed 80% of the stuff I've now got, but the really key parts were done by electricians, and if those bits fail, I might be struggling, I must admit. On the thing about 6 amps being ok, yes it would be if I was getting that for 24 hours, but unfortunately I have a high hedge to my south at the moment, and its spoiling the solar, so I'm only getting the 6 amps between about 10am and 3pm, if that- so maybe 30 Ah total. But I have no land line, as I'm CCing. Once I move to a more open mooring I'll probably double the solar yield to 60Ah, and especially if my side faces south (and its then worth tilting the panels). But there's no getting away from the fact that the hours of sunlight are becoming fewer, and at this time of year my 1.4kw of panels will deliver less charge in a day than your 6 amps landline will. That's exactly why I also upgraded the engine charging system, so I can charge my batteries at up to 100 amps if I want to, and thus get all the charge I need in about an hour per day. I created an absolute Frankenstein's monster of a charging system, with six different charging units potentially available. It lives, and it works, but if it goes rogue I may need a crowd of villagers with pitchforks to get my monster back under control....

Just a thought, but I would allow a tad more length- the mounts for my panels extend out beyond the panels, and even with the mounts butted up together, there is still a significant gap between the panels. Not sure if this is an issue or not, but if the panels weigh about 20kg each say, and there are 10 of them, you'll have 2000kg pressing down on one side of the roof, so you might need some ballast on the other side of the roof? Another quick thought- if you can make some of the panels dismountable without too much effort, you could remove some of them when you want to go cruising, allowing access to the centre line, parts of the roof, etc. I'm impressed that you can get 4kw on a roof though. My boat is only 50ft, and I had to leave the roof area around the centre line clear of panels, plus some space at the back for me to climb onto the roof, and a bit of space for the chimney. I've ended up with 1.4kw and it would be difficult to squeeze more in as I'm a CCer and the boat need to be fully navigate-able, but one thought I did have was that I could mount more panels- hung vertically on the walls of the boat. In your case, being largely static, you could maybe mount an extra few panels on the south side of the superstructure?

If I may make a suggestion, it would be to go back and edit the 'naysayers' line out of your first post. There are many people who would normally be willing to contribute to a discussion that might kick around some ideas and maybe find a practical way of making a heat pump work on a narrowboat, for example. But part of that process will be several negative posts. That line above can easily be taken as saying: 'I only want people to reply who are positive about these ideas'. I know bugger all about boats and energy systems, but I already have 1.4kw of solar panels, and even I can tell you straight out of the gate that in Winter, the solar panels that can fit on a boat (even on a widebeam) will not gather enough energy to do all the things you want. Self sufficiency is an admirable goal, as most would recognise, but the various constraints of a narrowboat are simply too great to achieve complete self sufficiency (at the moment), and you will find that the best you can do is develop a set of compromise solutions- especially in the winter, where solar and heat pumps are much less useful. The particular circumstances will have an effect on the solutions- for example, you can fit more solar on the roof if you are permanently moored, or you dont need to walk along the roof in locks etc. Also, if you have use of land alongside the mooring, you could install many extra solar panels. But the problem is that solar power diminishes by a huge factor in the winter. My panels were at times giving me 60 amps in the summer, but in early November, and on my current mooring, they sometimes struggle to deliver 6 amps. To compensate for this tenfold winter reduction I would have to install well over 10kw of panels, which is obviously not possible on a boat. One of the compromise solutions, for example, might be to install a very efficient diesel genny as Peter, Nick and others have done, to get the most electricity out of the diesel that you do burn. To keep the discussions manageable and for you gather in any info more efficiently, my advice would be to start a different thread for each type of system, e.g. starting off with the heat pump topic. And don't tell people to bugger off at the start! Yes, you will get a lot of chaff, but in amongst that chaff there will be some wheat, and amongst the objections there will be genuine red flags that make you pause, and maybe save you a lot of wasted time and money going down blind alleys.

I'm assuming you mean Swanley Bridge- oddly enough I moored there around this time last year, and only left at the end of March. The staff there were really nice and very helpful, I must say. The token system for the washing machines was a pain, as it was during lockdown and the office was on limited opening hours, so you couldn't always get the tokens when you wanted them. But Nantwich marina is very close by as you'll know, and that has a great launderette as well, that takes actual money- so you need to get out of the habit of using the card for everything, and carry some notes when you go into Nantwich, and either buy things with notes, or just ask the shopkeepers if they can swap a note for as many pounds coins and 50p coins as they can spare. Either way, its worth accumulating a good collection of coins. I sort of assumed the fuel boat wouldn't be allowed into the marina (as they sell coal and wouldnt want the competition), but if you can get your coal and gas from the fuel boat, so much the better. I remember getting the odd bag from Nantwich marina, and my impression was their coal price was a tad steep, but I don't recall Swanley Bridge being too bad, although I'm certain it would have been more than the fuel boat charged. I would make sure you have a spare gas bottle stowed away in the appropriate place (and that its full), and also that you have a gas spanner somewhere to hand- it took me ages to find mine. As you'll know, they have electrical hookup which is much cheaper than running the engine, so you'll need a hookup cable if you haven't got one already). If you reverse into the mooring you'll only need a short cable, but if you go in head first, it'll have to be as long as the boat. It might be worth figuring out how the shoreline connection works- i.e. does it charge your batteries, or does it bypass them and go direct to the boat electrics? Or is it switchable? My boat had a three way switch that seemed to offer the option of bypassing the batteries, but I'm not sure it actually did, and I wasn't clued up enough to know what was going on. It became more of a real question after I got lithium batteries installed, because you dont want those to be kept near to 100% SoC a lot of the time, which is what a shoreline connection might do. If you have a car then its a doddle- any supplies you need you can get from Nantwich in 5 minutes, or Crewe in 15 minutes- including coal and gas. There's a screwfix branch there which is handy if you need a tool at short notice, and there is one ebay and a few amazon collection points you can use, for when B+Q just don't have what you need (e.g. things like 50mm sq battery cable are not that easy to get hold of in normal shops, so I relied on Amazon an awful lot for all the weird/obscure boaty tools and items I found I needed. Just a thought- it was a few hundred yards from the car park or the office to my mooring, so I got a trolley to lug the coal and gas. You might have been able to do some nice cruises this winter down to Ellesmere and beyond, but a quick look seems to show a number of closures that will make the Llangollen a bit tricky this winter. But Swanley is a lovely place to spend the winter, I must say.

Like you, I find that their presentation style is not to my own personal taste. Its not crudity that puts me off, but rather the forced feeling of the humour that they try to inject every few minutes. To be fair to him, the main presenter has found a consistent and clear style to deliver his thoughts and feelings, and there is also some interesting historical background about some of the locations- and in general he is pretty good at it. But when he attempts puns or banter it just doesn't work, at least for me. But of course, humour is a very personal thing- and to be fair to them, there are clearly lots of folks who enjoy their vlogs. I say good luck to them for finding an audience. I think a financial model has developed for many youtubers (not just boaty ones) whereby the free videos are a sort of 'loss leader' product; and what makes more money for them is when they set up a patreon account, gather together a sort of community, and they have people stepping forward to make financial contributions. And I'm not knocking the people who do that - they put in a lot of work to create their videos, and if people are willing to support them, then who are we to criticise that model?

Thanks Howard, I usually plan and execute a critical boat move like Rommel in the Western Desert. I do a thorough recce, wait until the enemy are at their lowest ebb, and strike fast. For the recce phase, I have an amazing electric bike (although I dont really like to talk about it as a rule). There seem to be very few boats moving around here at the moment. so fingers crossed I'll find a spot at Christleton. My suspicion is that 48 hour moorings are going to be a bit more tricky, as people are starting to assume they can stay for 14 days.

My dear Haggises, I am very disappointed to have not passed you again before you finished your cruise. I cant remember what slowed me down this time -almost certainly it was sheer laziness, as usual- but I only passed Tattenhall this afternoon on my way to Chester, so I missed you by more than a week. I must say, I was not previously aware of the existence of that ridiculously long and most unwelcome line of moored boats after Tattenhall. It must have been a mile long at least. In fact, I think there comes a point when you might be justified in getting up to say 2 or 2.5mph when passing so many moored boats (despite the dire warnings that they put up on boards as you approach). With all the weed on the towpath side, I wouldnt have liked to have had lots of boats coming the other way, but as it was I only passed two moving boats after I left the Shady Oak moorings (at which, I have to say, there were a few boats already moored when I arrived, and those same boats were very much still moored, when I left after the permitted 48 hours). So it was a very quiet cruise, which I guess is one of the advantages of winter CCing. But to business; to business... I have a question, if I may trouble you once again on this issue: I'm near Waverton, but I'm thinking about moving up close to the winding hole at Christleton, just so that I'm closer to Chester town centre. My only slight concern is about whether you might get the local youth hanging about the towpaths in Christleton? I dont want to go further than that spot, as it'll mean doing about 8 locks to get to the next winding hole, and as a single hander, 8-lock flights are my nemesis 😁 (I even have a cunning plan to turn the boat around there, and then to reverse it, or just physically drag it backwards, to the water point that is shortly after the winding hole, if I should run low on water.)

The percentage of boats I've seen with wind turbine things is very low, which makes me pretty sceptical. But that said, the percentage of boats with lithium batteries is also pretty low, and I think lithium batteries are the dog's cojones. So you know..... 😀 There might be a practical issue to give some thought to, which is storage. You'll be CCing, so will need to cruise at least one day per week, plus trips to elsan and water points etc. And if your roof is already full of solar panels, where will you stow the wind turbines when you dismount them to cruise? They're going to want to be mounted high (ie on quite long poles) in order to catch maximum wind, and I'm guessing the blades wont be small, so if you get two of them, somewhere needs to be found for them- either lashed to a solar panel, or maybe stored lengthwise in the cabin- when you are preparing to move. You dont want them blocking the passageway(s), so it could be a tight fit depending on the boat length.

Most whistling kettles seem to be designed for gas hobs, and most have the protruding lip underneath, and for their expected use its not a problem. I can see a few kettles designed for induction/electric hobs on Amazon for about 30 quid, so I could take a punt on one of those. I need one smaller than the normal 2.5 litres though. It might take a bit of digging to get what I need, and at the moment my heart's not really in it. I have about 5 or 6 brews per day, using about 4Ah per brew, which means I'm using maybe 20Ah daily for the kettle. Its not a trivial amount, for sure- it probably takes about 15 minutes of engine running to generate that charge, so maybe its costing me 20p of diesel..? Plus the wear and tear on the batteries..? So its not ideal, but it certainly is quick, which is what you want when you're after a brew. For research purposes I've just used the stove to try to boil a mug of water in a saucepan. After 20 mins the water had reached about 70 degrees, and its not going to get much hotter because the stove top itself is only at about 120 degrees at the moment. Its not that cold outside so the stove is not on full blast. But the idea of waiting 20 minutes for a brew is just not going to work for me personally.

I tried cooking and boiling on the stove last winter and it seemed to take quite a while- which is ok for cooking, but a pain if you're waiting for the kettle. My electric kettle is done in 3 mins, which first thing in the morning is very much appreciated. The stove at that time of day is not at its hottest, so it would take a good while to boil. Later on it would be no problem. One of the things is that the gas kettle has a vertical lip around the bottom edge which means the lower flat surface is not in direct contact with the stove, and it really slows down the boiling process. But you do have a point- now that the solar 'party' is largely over for this year, and I'm going to have to pay for the electricity used by the kettle, I might as well use the stove to heat up the water in a pan, once its properly fired up, and then finish the boil on the hob. It seems a faff though, to be honest- not sure if I'll be arsed to do that most of the time.

As well as having free energy available anyway from the solar, there is another issue involved- which I discovered on the hot days this summer. When the boat interior is already at 26-29 degrees, the last thing you need is to fire up a gas ring for 6 or 7 minutes to make a brew. It seems to add a couple of degrees to the kitchen and saloon temperature, making things even more uncomfortable inside. On the other hand, using the gas kettle is a great way of helping things to warm up a bit faster when you get up on a chilly late Autumn morning, and its one of those days when its going to warm up and its not worth lighting the stove. But the stove's now been lit, and it may stay on all the time for a few days or even weeks, so the saloon is warm enough in the mornings anyway, and so I've all but stopped using the whistling kettle. I reckon that boiling water for drinks probably accounted for about a third of my total gas use, so the gas bottles will now last a few weeks longer than before. For the last year I've been fairly consistent in using a gas bottle every 2 months or so, so its not a huge saving, but in the heat of the summer it'll be great not having to use the gas kettle.

Ah yes, I ought to have added that my batteries are lithium, like Richard's.

If you find a cordless model that boils in 3-4 mins do let us know. I recently bought a 1000 watt 0.5 litre corded model, and its not ideal having to unplug it and then have the very short lead dragging the plug around the worktop, through occasional patches of water, etc. My solution was to leave the electric kettle in situ, and to use my gas kettle to fill it. I was thinking about making the cable two feet longer so that it will reach the sink, but I'm very hesitant as there is usually a good reason for the sizing of cables. I'm sure you'll have considered this, but just in case- if your batteries have run down below 50% overnight the voltage might be around say 13v (depending on whether you have much stuff running in the mornings). What happens with me is that the sudden pull of 80 amps for the kettle drags down the battery voltage to 12.8 or 12.9v. If your SoC is lower still, you might risk tripping your low voltage disconnect. I got round this potential issue by using the BMV712 to set a 5 minute delay on the low voltage disconnect (the kettle boils in 3 mins), but not sure if the battery protect allows a delay.

This might be a bit too left field, but I wonder if you could install one of those cheap chinese diesel blow air heaters, and run it from a small tank? It might be just the thing for the cool Spring mornings when the little mite is at her coolest. There's probably a boat safety issue involved (there always seems to be!), but its at least worth a mention. I think they use a litre of fuel every couple of hours, so not too greedy either. I'm not sure, but maybe you can set a timed start (e.g. 4am to take the chill out of the saloon on Autumn mornings)? Using diesel for heat also means cheap/easy/convenient access to the fuel, and you can run the heater any time of day or night if needed to revive the little dear. If you used a genny, you'd have to traipse off to find a petrol station every couple of days (in addition to the general traipsing that CCers have to do anyway). The other thing to remember is that after running the engine for say an hour to generate some charge, you have a lot of hot water available as a 'free' by-product, so to speak- and as some have said, it should be possible to use that heat in some way. Clearly some of the upgrade funds are going to have to be spent on systems to provide the heat that is needed. Diesel CH would be great, but mine is pretty noisy, and if my stern is within 20 yards of another boat, I hesitate to use the CH on some cool Autumn mornings (say if I'm not sleeping well, and I get up at say 6am). That said, if some idiot moors within three feet of me, when there's three hundred yards of armco available either side, I will make a point of using the CH late at night and early in the morning 😈

Hi Andrew, I would urge you not to write off the idea just yet, as daunting as it initially appears. A few people have raised the possibility of not using the vivarium all the time, for example, or perhaps lowering its running temp a bit. I've no idea personally, but it seems maybe the creatures can survive very well in normal domestic temperatures, and live long lives. In winter your stove will do the job- its the spring and autumn months where the challenge is- the weeks when your stove is not running, but there are still some cool, and even chilly mornings. Diesel CH is a possibility, if you have it, set on a timer- although it can be noisy, and having diesel CH kick in at 3am wont make you popular. I would start asking about how well she can survive without the vivarium, as people have suggested. Maybe you could try this out now, at home?

As a relatively new boater myself, I came across the issue of alternator charging power, and it seems like it'll be a key factor in your decision. I would check the engine documentation and also have a look at the alternator(s), and see if the power stated on it is what it should be (my engine starter alternator was supposed to be 70 amp model, but it was in fact a 50 amp unit when I looked at it). In this way you can find out what the maximum charging current is, and unless you have a Bosch (or similar good quality alternator), you can probably count on getting about 60% of the rated current (on a continuous basis). It looks as if you might need around 180-200 amp hours per day for the tortoise, plus at least 100Ah for the normal liveaboard requirements- so at least 300Ah in total. If you have an alternator that can safely put out 100 amps (and those are not too common), you could in theory generate your required 300Ah of charge in 3 hours - but what I found with my lead acid batteries was that the charge current dropped over time, and after a couple of hours it might only be half what it was at the start- so the theoretical 3 hours could easily be 5 or 6 hours. If you tried that, it would mean a lot more engine running hours and fuel used, and of course more frequent servicing etc. If you spent your time in a marina on hookup power it would be much cheaper, but as soon as you got out cruising the challenge would arise again. There will be people who understand these things properly and can explain more clearly what the issues are, but I can say that generating 300Ah each day is a significant task. If you invested a couple of thousand quid into an upgrade to a battery and charging system like that of Nick Norman above (with lithium batteries), it would be feasible but would still take up time and fuel. Also, as Nick said above, that means you need at least 600Ah of battery capacity, because on a day to day basis you dont want to let your lead acid batteries go below 50% state of charge. The day to day hassle could be significant as well. What if you got back late to the boat for some reason, and you felt that you had to run your engine at 8pm or later to keep the tortoise safe? I think in Winter you'll have your coal stove going most of the time, so that during the day the saloon will be very warm anyway and the vivarium wont draw much power, so that factor could reduce the real-life needs by maybe 50%- so maybe you would be needing only 200Ah each day, not 300. The problem is its very hard to say with any real confidence. Hopefully the experts here will give you enough information to make an informed decision, but initially it does seem a tall order.

Thanks MTB, I get the idea now

I've previously misunderstood the way fuelling works on these narrowboat engines. My understanding was that the amount of fuel used depends entirely on the position of the throttle. So at idle, I had thought it always had the same amount of fuel to consume, regardless of what the alternator was trying to do. And if you push the throttle forward by a given amount, the amount of fuel consumed would always increase by a set amount. But you're saying here that the alternator itself can act in such a way that it causes more fuel to be consumed, regardless of the position of the throttle? My point in saying you might as well charge on the move was based on the idea that when cruising, you will use the throttle as required to drive and navigate the boat as per the route and the conditions. I.e. the position of the throttle at the different points in your journey is dictated by how you decide to complete the journey. And my understanding was that the fuel consumption during this journey was entirely controlled by the throttle positions during the cruise. But what you're saying is that the alternator can cause more fuel to be consumed at a given throttle position? I had no idea this was a thing that could happen, I must confess.

Yes this is my thinking. It would be quite difficult to set up a cell-level monitor and disconnect system, so I'm kind of stuck with doing these functions at battery level- in fact, on a routine basis, its monitored at the level of the entire bank. But given that the valences are capable of some degree of balancing, I feel the risks of one cell going seriously over-voltage are reduced, at least to some degree. And to further reduce any risk, my thinking would be to stay within a quite conservative SoC range of say 20-80%. As you say, a cell would have to be badly out of balance to end up at a dangerously high voltage given these fairly gentle parameters. Also, if one cell gets badly out of whack, there is an indicator light on the battery that changed from green to red, so I'll get some warning, and I can check them with the PC. There's always the chance one cell could go out of balance badly enough to get damaged by the charging process, but I will have done what I reasonably could to prevent it.

This is the way I'm thinking. If I can beef up my capacity to 550Ah with another battery, it'll be easier to stay within the 30-80% SoC range, and there'll be very little chance of an individual cell ever being pushed too high or too low. At the moment I think my knee phase starts at about 86-88%, and I'd rather avoid that if possible. More capacity means I can stock up on charge when the sun is shining (or I'm out cruising for say 5 hours), but without letting the SoC get above 80%.

Cheers Peter, thats good news. My problem is how to get hold of one, now that I've given back the car. I guess I could get an off-peak day return train to his top secret location, and the battery would fit into a haversack- can you transport them in the vertical position? I'll have a look at the tickets and prices, and if it looks worthwhile I'll give you a shout. I lost his number when I dropped my phone in the marina last November

I hear Batrium make some very good BMS kits, but I dont know if they have all those features- very probably not. I'm not actively researching them, since I'll struggle to find a battery that I can add to my existing bank seamlessly- perhaps it more of an aspiration. But if I were to find a compatible battery (or set of cells), and then I got seriously into BMS shopping, I would probably accept some compromises on that full set of features you've listed, if it meant I could save significant money and not run significant risks whilst doing so. The protection/disconnect features I already have- albeit only an overall level for the whole battery bank, which is why I try to be more conservative, and allow for individual cell variations but still give a decent level of protection. I've accepted the risk of basing the disconnects on an overall voltage level for the whole bank, rather than at cell level, so I'd probably be ok with continuing that approach with any new batteries, as long as the new batteries were very similar to the ones I have (which is not likely to be the case unfortunately). If I were starting again from scratch though, your list would be a great starting point.

As much as I'd love to add more capacity cheaply, my three current units are I think valence U27-12XP (rated at 138Ah), and the new bargain cells are 200Ah. I dont think you can just add a new 200Ah battery into that existing bank can you? For one thing, two different types of cell will probably charge at different rates, and the valences might reach 100% SoC long before the 200Ah unit does, etc. It just seems fraught with issues. I did see a used Valence recently identical to mine, but it was £500 and collection in person in North London, which effectively adds £100 transport cost to the price. If I do find a compatible battery that I can build and add in, ideally I'd like one of the high-end BMS kits, this is one of the suppliers: https://www.batrium.com/collections/kits/products/watchmoncore The essential protection is there already with my disconnect systems, but it would nice to have some balancing functions as well. This one is 4 years old but it seems to have a good set of features:

Even adding the price of s BMS and a battery case, its still a fantastic price. Nowadays I'm ok with the idea of building the battery myself, and adding an off the shelf BMS unit- there are some very good and configurable ones available these days. Thats a 200Ah lithium battery built for about £400. Wow