Woodfern

Thanks so much for this Tom. When there's no sun and the pump is off, what's to stop you drawing cold water from the calorifier's cold feed through the solar when you turn on the hot tap? Also, is there a risk of losing hot water as a result of it siphoning up into the panel and dissipating?

Hi Tom, If you're still active on here, I have a few questions!: How did you plumb yours direct? Does it feed into the calorifier or bypass it? Do you have problems with boiling in summer? Is it less effective outside of the summer months than one that uses a coil would be?

So you can rely on solar for (non-hot water related) power from say Feb to Nov? That does sound appealing. Could then just use the diesel heater to do hot water when the solar's not able to and only need to run the engine when stationary from around Dec-Jan

That's interesting tony thanks! The big benefit with your method I suppose is you also have all that solar power to rely on for charging early/late in the year? I don't have an immersion heater and only have 660W of solar (which is the max my MPPT can handle), so I think upgrading the PV and buying a new calorifier with immersion (or immersion element if my calorifier does have a boss for one) might bear the same cost as thermal... Something to think about though

Thanks both for the advice! Sounds as if options 1 and 2 might be dangerous to DIY as well as less effective... Tbh, I had been thinking of upgrading the calorifier at some point anyway as I think there is space, and it doesn't really hold enough water for 2 people (especially if you shower as decadently as I do 😀) I fitted water filtration so I could use as much as I like, but now the limiting factor is how much hot you can store and for how long. I hadn't appreciated how much a new calorifier can be though. I will investigate to see if I have a boss for an immersion heater in the current one in the meantime. I know many use the excess PV in the summer for water heating, but as you say this seems so inefficient I can't see it working except for in the hottest months. I was also hoping to be able to use the solar to at least partially heat during cold but sunny weather, cutting down on diesel use and helping the diesel heater get its heat to the radiators quicker.

Thanks Jen. Do you find you miss having engine heating, for example in mild weather where you're not using the stove but can't get enough from the solar, and are running the engine to charge the batteries anyway?

I'm intrigued by what some of you clever people are doing with solar water heating . As a CCer with plenty of PVs, not having to run the engine or diesel heater in summer is appealing. The best way of doing it seems to be to have the solar collector heat a coil in the calorifier. However I don't have a spare coil and the price of a new triple coil is offputting. Has anyone done it in a different way? I'm thinking of the following options: (1) a solar pre-heater, where the collector directly heats potable water which is then either fed into the calorifier, or bypasses the calorifier, like this: (2) a direct set up where the collector is tee'd off the cold input and hot output of the calorifier. Like this, plus some shut-off valves, and potentially a small separate hot water storage tank on the return of the solar collector: I'd imagine the problem with both of these is you wouldn't get that much hot water except on the hottest of days because water is only passing through when you're drawing it. On houses people seem to get round this by having a storage tank about the collector, but obviously this isn't very practical on a boat! So option (3) gets around the lack of a spare coil by having an external heat exchanger (which could be a cheap small single coil calorifier instead so it stores some)?:

Pumped the bottom of the tank out with an oil extractor - there was about a litre of black gunge before it came out pink. The filter itself was pretty clogged with black gunge as well.

Sorry for the stupid question, but do you mean take the pipe off at the inlet of the primary filter and blow towards the tank? Realised that must be it - managed to blow it loose then sucked the diesel back through and it worked. Thank you! Now to try to get rid of the gunk in my tank...

Engine (Beta 43) started to need bleeding every now and again around September. Usually I just undo the bleed screw on the primary filter (Fuelguard FGD100) and loosen the nut holding the bowl on as per the manual and the fuel comes through. This time, nothing came out. The bowl isn't filling at all. I have tried pumping the lever on the pump on the side on the engine, which I usually only have to do for the secondary, for what felt like an epoch and still nothing is coming through. It has around a quarter tank or slightly more. A few months ago I ran out of diesel entirely and had to ferry jerry cans from the fuel station but was able to bleed it with less in the tank than I have now, and it's been OK ever since. I'm thinking maybe a blockage in the fuel line between the tank and the primary, possibly diesel bug or gunk from when I ran out of fuel?

Any recommendations of stove installers near to Uxbridge/Rickmansworth/Tring? Either boat yards or people who would install on the towpath

I replaced the old Trace inverter/charger which was going into float too early and generating all the buzzing with a new Victron one. I thought that, like my Victron MPPT, I would be able to set the tail current manually and turn off 'adaptive charging'. However, the only options are adaptive (which also seems to go into float ridiculously quickly) or 'fixed' which seems to be fixed time rather than fixed tail current. Could I put it in fixed and then just monitor the current periodically until it's low enough to turn off the engine? Or is there a rule of thumb for how long absorption could be?

Thanks all. It didn't seem right so thank you for confirming this needs rectifying ASAP. Have contacted a professional to move the stove and flue and will then build a proper surround before using it. May get this professionally done also, I will see How on earth they got away with this installation, and why the surveyor and multiple BSS inspectors didn't pick up on it, is lost on me

I wanted to replace my stove surround, which is steel, with tiles. Having looked into it on here and elsewhere I now also have some safety concerns The surround is just a sheet of metal glued to the t&g with no fire/heat resistant material. The stove is at a 45 degree angle with its top back corners about 1-2cm from the steel. There is also some dark discolouration on the gunwale above Is this safe? If I were to add fire resistant board to make it safe, would I need to move the stove and flue to make room? If I were to replace the steel with porcelain tiles (with or without fire resistant board) would I need to move the stove to create sufficient air gap at the corners and prevent the tiles from simply cracking?

Hi, hope you don't mind my resurrecting this thread The eberspacher on my new boat worked fine when I got it 3 months or so ago but gradually stopped working. It still makes all the right noises, but began heating the water less and less until now it doesn't heat up at all. I noticed that the header tank was completely empty of water/antifreeze so topped it up but that doesn't seem to have done anything! Any ideas?

Cheers @Tony Brooks, makes me feel a bit better! I think the battery charger may also be part of the problem. For something that bulk charges at some 25 amps, it only takes about an hour or so (maybe less) for absorption and then goes into float suspiciously quickly. Could it be that it's going into float too early and not fully charging the batteries?

I hope this isn't too much of a derailment of my thread, but on the topic of measuring SOC... Do you know of any threads on here or online articles explaining how to accurately measure SOC based on rested voltage as you suggested? I have found a few charts but have doubts as to their accuracy, and haven't been able to find a discharge curve for my particular batteries. The only detailed online guides I've found only seem to explain it in terms of a battery under a constant load. I've done a calculation based on the Ah drawn since the last 'full charge' (current down to 1% of the stated capacity) and the rested voltage in the early hours of the next morning. I had drawn -27.9Ah according to the smartshunt (actually more, but solar had made up for some). The voltage the next morning after about 3 hours resting was 24.5V. If the generic lead acid battery discharge curve I found is correct, then this makes SOC about 70%, making the actual capacity about 93Ah, rather than the stated 220. The batteries were new a few months ago. It seems I have myself to blame for this having over-discharged them while relying on the shunt's percentage readout and Ah over the voltage. The Solar controller records that on a few days over the last couple of weeks, the voltage under load at the battery has dropped as low as 15-16V overnight. I don't know for how long each time, just that it happened overnight as I woke up to the inverter's low voltage alarm a few times. I think the shunt was also being reset by the solar happening to produce the set 'charged voltage' and 'tail current' on cloudy days or in the shade. It would reset to 0Ah and the next time I checked it would be a healthy -15Ah or something. Not understanding what the voltage under load should look like if that were the case, I would carry on merrily using power and over-discharging the batteries. Then overnight presumably the fridge compressor would turn on and try to draw a large start-up current, the voltage would drop to some horrific level and I would wake up to the inverter's low voltage alarm. I've now set it so it does not automatically reset, and can only be manually reset to 100%/0Ah which I plan to do each day when I run the engine until I see the 1% tail current What do you reckon, another case of lack of proper monitoring = expensive new battery bill? Apologies mods if this should be a separate thread or has already been covered a million times

That would be ideal, but as TheBiscuits says there are 240v sockets throughout so no way of getting separation

Ah - thank you!

Thanks, will look into this on previous posts. I suppose the alternative (most simple) option would be an inverter charger, replacing like for like and no new wiring? Though I accept that as you say separates would be more dependable in case one fails

Thanks all for the helpful diagnosis and advice. I think I will probably end up replacing the inverter/charger with separates as the inverter part can't be turned off according to the manual. If I do this, would it still be possible for the inverter to be bypassed when the Travelpower is on?

Ha ok - duly noted. I will not be attempting this! Thanks for the advice Tony, I will start doing as you have advised

That makes sense Ok, will have a look to see if this is possible. Can you have 2 separate inverters running off the same source but to different outputs, just not 2 with their outputs to the same circuit?

Thanks - these are cheaper than I expected. I would probably need an inverter/charger in one though as that's what I currently have, unless it's easy to rewire to have separate inverter and charger

It's a Victron 'SmartShunt'. The tail current is set to 4% as default as you suspected. I will adjust this as you suggest and do a full charge, then try again Just tried this and you're exactly right. So it's a new inverter then. Nice and cheap fix... would it be possible to have a separate, small PSW inverter just for the hifi to save money? The old MSW one works fine for everything else and I'm loathe to mess around with something that works given my general ineptitude!