Col_T

@DShK I don’t seem to get anything vaguely resembling a sensible reading on the multimeter and yes, I did the check the voltage of the battery in the meter!! However, there being more than one way to skin a cat, I plugged my phone into its 12v charging adapter and got a solid green symbol indicating that it was charging. I plugged in its 240v charger and the green charging symbol was flashing. The immediate (false?) conclusion is that the inverter is doing something strange - perhaps outputting some kind of half wave. I suspect that is possible if it has failed in some particular way, but happily admit that I have no real idea how inverters work or whether one could fail in such a way. Still, my finger is now pointing more firmly in the direction of the inverter as the culprit!!

Charts on t’internet suggest 12.6v correlates to 80%, which looks about right.

I’ve had the solar panels switched off and not run the engine in an attempt to gauge the capacity remaining in the batteries. 13.0, 0Ah used when I isolated the MPPT at 19:30 on the 24th 12.6, 87Ah used when I turned on the MPPT at 15:30 today 26th I still reckon that we’re light users, 12v fridge or not!!

@Ex Brummie Sorry for the delay replying. Running the engine didn’t occur to me to be honest! I looked at the battery voltage, how little capacity had been used overnight, and just assumed there would be sufficient ‘oomph’. I’ll give it a go later today - I guess that if it all works with the engine running then that points to the batteries being ‘past their best’.

@Jen-in-Wellies It’s a 1500W Sterling Pro Combi Q - sorry, would have mentioned earlier it but some folk are likely to read Sterling and immediately point to that! We’ve had the washing machine onboard for about five years now and while the spin-dry function is useless - it doesn’t dry - we’ve never had this kind of behaviour from it before!

We have 4 x 110Ah sealed lead acid batteries onboard, which were fitted in July 22, and we are light users of electricity e.g. 12v fridge, inverter only goes on to power a camping washing machine - one of those that ‘washes’ by rotating for a few seconds in one direction, pausing for a few seconds and then rotating in the other - and then do the ironing! The inverter is a quasi sine wave thing that was on the boat when we bought it in July 2015. The conundrum is that, this morning, my lady wife loaded up the washing machine, switched on the inverter, switched on the washing machine and nothing happened other than a regular ‘thunk’ noise. By way of investigation, we emptied the machine and it kind of worked (the drum rotating in one direction but not the other). We put water in and it did the same, but the addition of actual clothing reduced it to ‘thunking’ again. As it happens, I also have a couple of 240v electric sanders onboard, so we tried those. The cheap one, which is not variable speed, ‘thunks’ a couple of times and then works while the slightly more expensive one, which does have variable control, doesn’t run at all on about half power but does manage to get going on full power. I had set the Ah counter on the battery monitor to zero early yesterday evening, when the BM-1 showed batteries at 13.0v. As I type this, nearly a day later, the BM-1 reckons the batteries are at 12.8v and that we have used 38Ah since I last zeroed the monitor. My lady did some ironing after the debacle with the washing machine, and the BM-1 showed that the iron draws about 70A will heating the sole plate, and virtually nothing until it needs to heat up again. This got battery voltage down to 12.2 - 12.4 while heating up. I think this is telling me that the batteries are goosed, but the way the variable speed sander needed to be set on full power while the washing machine only kind of worked with a light (electrical) load makes me wonder whether the inverter is on the way out. The inverter sat there quietly the whole time, no alarms, nothing. Anyone got any suggestions?

@Ciara H - Just a random thought: is the wheelhouse collapsible at all??

River and Canal License gives you access to all C&RT waterways. A Gold license adds Environment Agency rivers to the River & Canal License. Note that not all navigable inland waterways are controlled by C&RT and EA; the River Wey, for instance, is controlled by the National Trust.

Kate Boats renewed our ‘duck hatch’ doors and put windows in. Really very well done.

We’ve been through Watford Locks a number of times in the last two years. The boater has to ‘register’ with CRT volunteers, so they know how many boats are waiting to go up / down and plan accordingly. My understanding is that they are all volunteers, no C&RT employees, and whilst the boater may be responding to instructions, I haven’t ever been instructed to collide with a gate - that said, I wasn’t instructed to collide with a lock entry wall, but it didn’t stop me!!!

Thanks for all the comments, but honestly, if I can’t even figure up the +ve and -ve connections for the hour counter what hope I could replace the display!! 😀

The boat has a BETA 1505 engine and the engine hours counter has stopped displaying. I’ve bought an electronic hours counter - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08GKLSNP7?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1 - which requires +ve and -ve connections, and I can’t work out which terminals on the ignition switch to connect it to. The ignition switch has terminals marked AC, 30, 17, 50 and what looks like 13 - apologies for no photo but the phone steadfastly refuses to connect to the tablet, damn them. It should be fairly basic, so it seems I’ve fallen at the first hurdle!!

Boat fails BSS, get fixes done. There is no requirement to use the original BSS tester, just as there is no requirement to use the same MOT test station once failed items have been fixed - you just don’t get the lower retest price.

To qualify for any cheaper retest fee the original tester has to do the test. If it isn’t the original tester, it isn’t a retest is it?!

Watford locks are a staircase, same as Foxton, but seem to attract far fewer gongoozlers. Lack of pubs and ice cream shop probably account for that. That would give you a run down to Norton Junction and then back up to which ever marina you choose. As far as Crick and internet is concerned , I understand that they have installed / upgraded the network there though I have no idea if it has improved things.

Doesn’t this depend on the calorifier orientation? Mine is horizontal and we’ve had to install vent points in both engine to calorifier and calorifier to engine pipes as we were getting airlocks that led to overheating. That said, I’m not too sure about the heights of the calorifier connections relative to the engine connections.

Many thanks for your help, Tony, very much appreciated. I’ll update when I get round to trying the expansion vessel, which may not be for a while yet!!

Ah, I’ll have to check that - I think the answer is yes but I don’t really know! I rather think that the expansion vessel will be close to the calorifier, which is under the bed! Will it hurt to delay investigation for a day or two? In any event, will Tracey’s method pressurise the expansion vessel the same as the accumulator?

Ooops! I tried to reset the pressure because of the change in behaviour, so after I noticed the pump starting later and running on longer.

Thanks for this, Tony. I’m afraid I don’t understand your comment as I thought that Tracey’s method of adjusting pump cut-in was putting the system under pressure. It’s a Jabsco 23240-2000, and the label states max working pressure 50psi, pre-charge tank pressure to 4.5psi. - does this supports your suggestion that it under pressure before, or does this suggest that the bladder has burst, or should I be pumping up the accumulator to, say, 30psi??? As it happens, we do have a horizontal calorifier but I don’t know about it’s orientation - I’m guessing that you mean the inlets and outlets should be as far up from the floor as possible? Also, would it be useful put the calorifier on a ‘tilt’ to encourage any air trapped up toward the connections?

The water pump is behaving strangely. Before Christmas, the pump would cut-in about 5 seconds after opening a tap and then cut-out (stop) about 5 seconds after the tap was closed. It has done this since we bought the boat in July 2015. The water-pump strange behaviour is that a tap will now run for nearly 20 seconds, delivering nearly 2 litres of water, before the pump cuts-in - doesn’t matter which tap - and the pump will then run for about 40 seconds after the tap is closed. I’ve tried the ‘Tracey method’ of adjusting pump cut-in pressure a couple of times which hasn’t changed anything. Before Christmas I think that the water system froze, certainly the thermostatic mixing bar for the shower started squirting water out of the temperature control end, which is why I think the system froze. I’ve fixed that problem. Does this suggest a failed accumulator, and if not, does anyone have any other ideas what the problem might be? The existing accumulator is a Jabsco 8 litre which was in the boat when we bought it, and may well be the original from when the boat was fitted-out on 2002.

Frankly, I’d work on persuading the misses before you start scoping the possibles!

And has to be pre-booked, I think.