SaltyPipe

Hi All, The wife has been quoted £1,000+ by a guy to install an LPG cooker on our narrow boat. Does this sound even remotely reasonable in boating circles? There is an existing fully working cooker, we just want to swap it. Does anyone know of a suitably qualified LPG fitter in the Hemel Hempstead area? Thanks in advance. SaltyPipe

Thanks again @Tony Brooks (and @detling), will definitely look at fitting the VSR and shunted ammeter. SaltyPipe

Hopefully this is a Split Charge Diode... The very dirty red wire goes to the leisure bank (yay), the two brown wires go in the direction of the Alternator - not eyeballed directly but the alternator has a similar gauge/colour wire attached to it. Another similar wire goes up behind the main control board, hopefully to the regulator. Anyway, does this look like a split charge diode? My googling shows me similar gadgets that claim to be! Cheers, SaltyPipe

@Tony Brooks Starter battery measuring 12.79 volts this morning

Well having had a look at the rogue brown wire, it's brown with a yellow stripe. It connects to something very obvious that i cant name (pic 1), zoomed out (pic 4). Some other pictures of the alternator included for those interested... The loose brown/brown-yellow wire evident in all its glory. Engine is running, all LEDs flashing on the Sterling Power panel as mentioned yesterday (i was unable to run the engine yesterday due to other errands), started first time today and purring nicely, will run till 1pm (4 hours). Will check the starter battery rested voltage tomorrow morning. Thanks all again for the help and advice.

Will do

Tony, You are an absolute legend, it isn't possible to tell you how grateful I and the family are for your time and expertise today. It was a great learning experience, thank you so much. SaltyPipe Thank you Bod Thanks to you too Boater Sam for all your input, I will do my best to unpick everything over the next few days and see what connected where.

There was a cracked and broken Squirrel on board which we have bought a replacement for, nobody able to help fit it due to Xmas etc. The irony that I have two multi fuel stoves sat next to each other and niether working is not lost on me.

Nope. That was where the plastic cover for it clipped into place

Thank you for the in depth response. Static pictures sometimes can be misleading so some more info... If i pull the shoreline out of the commando socket, then i hear the inverter kick in and everything starts running on batteries, I can see the power draw ramp up on the DC Amps column on picture 1. (I only did this for 10-15 seconds earlier to see what was happening). When i plug the shoreline back in the inverter cuts out and i see the battery state in picture 1 goes to red, DC Volts goes to 14 or 14.5. after about a minute battery state goes amber and then to green and the Volts drop back to 13 and the Xantrex goes quiet. Am i right in saying the gizmo in picture 3 is only useful if the engine is running? Also I picked up a Rolson multimeter this afternoon, no idea what to do with it though lol. Edit: The other boat has no-one living aboard ATM so we should have 16amps to ourselves, had no trip outs in the last 2 weeks until this incident. Cheers, SaltyPipe

Thanks all for all the great replies. The pictures were taken at the same time. I have been out and bought a multimeter, heavy duty jump leads and a YAUSA 900cca battery. There is a possibility we ran out of diesel the night without power, but there was a good 5-6 inches in the tank when I dipped it. Just called Tony Brooks and took him up on his very generous offer and he will no doubt shed some light on things tomorrow. Thanks again everyone

Hi All, I would be very grateful if someone (or multiple someones) can help me understand how my batteries/alternator/charging system works. Myself the wife and 3 semi freezing children moved aboard a definite project boat 3 weeks ago and things are not going well. The boatyard where she is moored (HLY Iver) have been very helpful whilst they have been having invoices paid but no-one is around now till next week. As far as other options for housing go, without the boat we're homeless, so any help will be very welcome. The current problem occurred after our shoreline tripped the fuse in the boatyard (we are currently sharing a 16 amp fuse with another boat). They have no space in the official moorings here for us. We were without AC power for just over 36 hours, all the 12v electrics were working and our inverter (Xantrex Freedom 25) was happily humming away powering a small amount of 240v electrics. Our heating with the shoreline had been a 2 Kw oil rad at the front of the boat, with a Mikuni MX60 with traditional radiators at the back of the boat. With the shoreline out we just ran the Mikuni. The Mikuni was set on a timer to come on and off every few hours just to keep some heat on the boat. After about 20 hours the Mikuni control panel went blank (no power?!) all other electrics were still working (DC and AC through inverter). I wondered if firing the engine up would help, Thornycroft BMC 1.8, fired up first time (as usual and after 5 minutes the Mikuni control panel was working and the heating fired up). fast forward to yesterday and had the same issue, Mikuni had died in the night. Tried to start the engine. Turned over normally but would not start, then started to turn over more slowly and I figure the starter battery was drained "Halfords HB110 (75AH, 680CCA)". After a few calls I managed to get someone from HLY to reset the shoreline. Things looked good on the Xantrex panel and I could see the DC AMPS ramp up with what i assumed to be a charging cycle starting on the leisure batteries "3 x 'Elite' 110Ahr". The Mikuni panel never came back on, and the engine wont turn over still (I was hoping the starter battery would get charged too?). I tried switching the ignition key to AUX as I read that we might have a battery to battery charging setup (or is this purely for when the engine is running??). Whether it was a coincidence or not after a few hours the Mikuni control panel, was back on, but as soon as i tried pressing any buttons to fire it up it died (blank panel again). Having eyeballed the batteries inspection window, over the past 24 hours the starter battery has gone from a bright green to a dim green. The leisure batteries have gone from bright/bright/dim to bright/dim/very dim. I traced what i think are the main power wires from the Mikuni to the leisure batteries, I just did some more digging before posting and think the CR2032 cell battery in the Mikuni control panel had died, have replaced it and the panel is working fine now. However no power light is coming on when I cycle through off - auto - on. Normally when set to 'on' the power light comes on and a click is heard from the Mikuni as the unit powers on. If the Mikuni gets power from the leisure batteries and other 12v electrics are working why does the Mikuni not try to start? The starter battery seems to have some charge, but engine wont even try to turn over anymore, how can i charge it fully from the shoreline? Do i have the required kit on-board? Sorry this is a very rambling post but I really will appreciate any help anyone can give. Regards, SaltyPipe

Haha, yes I know everyone means well, I do apreciate all of the help and advice

WOW. Well that opened a can of worms. I can’t reply to you all individually but thanks for all the feedback. Firstly, it would have been great to have stuck to answering the question I asked, all the presumptions have done nothing to help With all due respect I only need an answer to the question of whether there are companies that would help in the transition, once funds are ‘almost’ secured. Or other scenarios regarding the logistics. That was it. Thank you to Tumshie and Alan de Enfield your suggestions are useful and we are in fact looking at buying a static caravan on a residential site while we make a boat purchase, no need to rush. ETRR seem to be ‘gone’, no response as yet and a strange php error from their contact page. As for the other stuff, we are more than happy with our knowledge and research (at this point). No doubt more questions to come in the future. We home educate and we would be embracing the CC lifestyle and travelling as and when the mood takes us. Proximity to school is not a requirement. We know numerous families closely who live aboard and home educate and have had discussions with them AND our children about it. Not that i need to explain myself but we have a shortage of money following my fathers death from terminal lung cancer last year. I took time out from work to care for him. I will have plenty of cash once I sell my house, can semi-retire. I work in IT, mainly in London, I will still commute as and when required or work remotely. Mobile internet although patchy is sufficient. SaltyPipe

Hi All, The wife and I, plus four children (16, 10, 7 & 5) are about to embrace the narrowboat life. We are selling a 5 bedroom house and will likely be buying a 70 footer (possibly a butty too). Having moved from house to house before, this is normally done on the same day, however we wanted to transition more gradually to a boat. Not because of any worries to do with the change in lifestyle more the working out what we can take as oppossed to what we need to sell/store. We can't afford to buy a boat upfront, or even get a deposit or finance as i'm out of work. However we will be able to buy the boat completely on completion of the house sale. Once we have a sale agreed on the house, are there companies that offer bridging type loans for buying a boat? How can we have a boat purchase agreed for the day we vacate the house, and can we trasistion onto said boat in advance somehow? Sorry if the questions seem confussing, I am confusing myself the more i type lol.