mattcyp

I use about 250L/week and have found that by fitting a water meter to the shower I've been able to save a lot of water. I've got one of these and can't recomend them enough: https://www.amphiro.com/en/

Hi Dan, Yeah, I was replacing the immersion heater, there is a brazed on disc at the other end which the light is shining off, and up in the piture is up in the boat (there is a bit of a pool of water in the bottom, I think). on 1) yep, not what I was expecting when I opened it! on 2) - Yeah, the top one sort of sags and sits on the lower one. I can't remember what the lower one was supported on though, I'm afraid. It'll be interesting to hear how solar hot water comes on.

Hi Dan, This is a (slightly blurry) photo of the inside of my horizontal surecal calorifier. The coils are just slightly flexible pipe which is slightly finned and makes two "u" shaped looped between the connection points. Hope it's of some help!

Thanks to all the info on this thread (and sorry for the slow reply). After about half a dozen cycles and 3 or 4 equalisation charges the batteries perked up significantly and are now working well.

In reply to the oringial post, I've got a similar setup, I think (1.1kw of solar and a a heft charge controller). I have one of these mounted in the engine room with an LDR mounted on the roof next to one of the solar pannels (so on 10m of wire). The output of the little 12v device I linked to then switches a solid state AC relay which turns on or off a 500w 230v immersion heater. It works pretty well - as the sun goes in and out it turns it on and off, and will turn it off each evening when it gets dimmer. The immersin heater uses about 45a, leaving a good 15a to go to the batteries. My only concerns are that I don't feel relaxed about leaving this sort of device on when I'm not on the boat (its all a bit homemade), and it can be tricky if some pannels get shaded but the LDR isn't. However, all in all it does a great job and it's never accidently drained my battereis by more than 10ah or so (at 12v). Ask away if you've any other questions - I'm quite happy to post some pictures too. Matt edited for spelling

That's a nice way to do it. Sadly I've got an electric fridge which stops the voltages settling too much. Solar is always very satisfying too! Incidentally, how long would you recomend for a good equalisation charge? It owuld be done with a sterling pro combi connected either to shoreline (if the current ice melts) or perhaps a generator.

CT, thanks ofr this input. What are you using to measure the capacity?

Thanks for this input. Your comments on T105's being slow to get in to their stride is consoling. I'll give them a good charge (equalisation) and see if that improves things. After a bit of a fight the supplier has since confirmed that the entire batch showed low pds (12.2v) and are being returned to the importer for testing so perhaps there is something wrong with them.

Thanks for the suggestions. They were manufactured in april 2014. Doing an equalisation charge sounds like a good idea, though the disparity between the stated capacity and what I'm getting seems too large for that to have the major effect required? I haven't checked the specific gravity when charged - only when 330 ah had been drawn out.

As a long time lurker I've finally not been able to find an answer here so thought i'd start my own thread. I recently purchased 6 trojan 27tmxs (an alteration to the battery boxes to take the recomended t105s just isn't possible at the moment) for a leisure bank and was a little suprised when they arrived with a teminal pd of 12.2v. Given a good charge (sterling combi) up to 14.7v until the current tailed off to ~5 amps all seemed well and I then set about letting them discharge through their first cycle. After 330ah had been taken off over a couple of days (measured with a vectron bmv 600 - the bank is just over 600ah stated capacity) the terminal pds were looking poor so I let them stand for 4 hours to check them out further. To my dismay they showed a rested pd of 11.8v and a specific gravity of just over 1.12, which I interpreted as them being pretty much flat. So, to the expertise of the forumn - If I draw off 300ah from a quality (trojan) 600ah battery bank, I should only see the soc dropping to around 50%, not the near 0% I saw? Secondly, is it bad for batteries to stand for months (in the warehouse, I assume) at such a low state of charge as was indicated by the voltage I measured when they were delivered? Thanks in advance for any ideas on this!