dmr

14.8 is good. A lot depends upon the details of how you charge the batteries but you will almost certainly need to equalise them once in a while (an over charge at 15.5v) and will also need to top up the water. Water loss increases with age but very roughly once every three months might be expected if you are full time liveaboard and cycling the batteries every day. You should probably check more often (and record your observations) till you have got a better idea of how much water "your" batteries are using. As access is difficult it might be worth slightly over filling when they need topping up. When access is really bad Trojan type batteries are perhaps not the best choice, or possibly you could consider a remote watering system. ................Dave

Go to a car accessory shop, or even Halfords, and get an antifreeze tester, only costs a couple of quid. Its like a tiny turkey baster with little coloured balls inside. As long as your engine is reasonably topped up you should be able to suck a bit of the water out. You will obviously see what colour it is and the balls will tell you how concentrated it is by selectively sinking and floating. A complete drain down and refill can be a little tricky (due to clearing air locks etc) but is a DIY job, but if you are not experienced and mechanical it might be worth finding someone to help. Antifreeze should be replaced every two or three years (blue) or five or six years (red) as the anti-rust additive wears out. ...............Dave

Yes I think that's how it works, that's why you should top up the batteries very slowly and carefully to avoid displacing the electrons, and also why you should never leave a battery with the caps off. I think this is also why we use distilled water, ordinary water contains small metal particles called irons and these react with the free electrons to form rust that falls to the bottom of the cells are can short the plates out. The lost capacity that you mention comes back after a few days when new electrons escape from the lead plates ............Dave

This is potentially a very serious problem. All of the electronics from the exposed part of the plates will have dislodged into the battery and floated about on top of the acid. When you then over filled the batteries these electrons will have been forced out of the top of the battery, if you were paying attention you might have noticed them spilling out and falling towards the baseplate of the boat (lead electrons are obviously heavier than air). Electrons are very reactive and will eat right through the baseplate in a matter of hours. I would put you most treasured possessions into you pockets and head directly towards the nearest pub and have a good boxing day drink. ............Dave

I wonder if the stray potentials that cause pitting could be easily measured by dropping a probe into the water a little way from the boat and measuring any small voltages (AC and DC) between the water and the boat?. A suitable device, including some data logging, could be quite easy to produce and would be a good tool for boaters who keep a boat in a marina with a long term shore connection. ...............Dave

Never heard of a magnetic corrosion mechanism, I really should be doing some boaty jobs today but now I have something else to Google. ..............Dave

Yes, when strange things happen they can be very strange and its best not to discard them just because they don't make logical sense, but it would also be dangerous for the op to conclude that he has found the source of the problem and so not to consider other options. We almost never connect to shore mains but if we did I would likely replace our GI with a transformer. Our only regular mains connection is on our annual 2 week visit to Liverpool and that's full of boats and salty water. The anodes do fizz a bit but I really hope we don't get too much pitting in just two weeks. ..............Dave

I think lead shielding is all about blocking radio waves so is not really significant here. Your aluminium lining is an interesting point. Its very thin so even if there were any stray hull currents they would predominately flow through the steel hull rather than your aluminium. However where the aluminium touches the steel then there will be the potential (!!!!) for dissimilar metal corrosion, especially if there is any condensation. I think its unlikely to be a problem and if it is it will be the aluminium that goes. .............Dave

I have no expertise in this subject but do know a bit about electricity and am struggling to understand this. The boat has very low electrical resistance as its made from thick steel, so even 7 amps flowing through the steel is only going to cause a minute voltage (Ohms law) so I don't see how this caused your pitting. And... the current path will be between the exhaust and the connection to the battery and so quite localised to the rear of the boat, but you had pitting all along the sides of the boat, well away from this current path. I still think there must have been a potential difference between your boat and something else in the water (like another boat) to have caused your pitting. I am concerned here as we have a rigidly mounted engine so it is inevitable that some alternator current is flowing through the hull. Just done a dry docking this summer, wish I had had a better look at the baseplate now. .................Dave

Yes indeed, but surely that applies equally to the entire inland waterway system?. ..............Dave

Do sort this out urgently and never rely on the oil pressure warning alarm to save the day. You might not hear it immediately if you are revving the engine hard etc and it is not a low oil level warning, its a NO pressure warning. You might have only a few seconds to avoid severe engine damage. As said, clean everything up then run the engine and have a good look with a torch. Was the dipstick firmly in position??? Its too late to check now of course! ................Dave

You can set your connection to be a "metered connection" and win10 should not do updates. You can then go to the pub to do the updates. This works fairly well though I strongly suspect that a few "secret" updates still get through, especially update updates that are done to undo the mess made by a previous update. These don't even appear on the update list but I know they have happened. .................Dave

Thanks, I sort of know this stuff, though not in great detail, but why does it kick in so suddenly even though the weather fluctuates so much from day to day??? It does have wet days and slightly damp days but once its started there are very few days when there is no water at all. The only fixed factor is therefore water temperature. I do half remember that it happened a lot less when we used to have a mooring and that was on ta river. I intended to keep a log of water and baseplate temperature this winter but failed, maybe next winter??? And sort of related, this summer I experienced my first "fog" in Harecastle tunnel and it was very frightening indeed, I lost all forward visibility and my headlight reflected right back at me, I briefly thought that a ghost boat was going to ram me. ................Dave

4 inches is a lot, is this really every other day or more like once per week or whatever? Its easy to ,oose track of time when you live on a boat. We have the same issue but only a mm or so each morning. Think the issue is that we sleep in the back cabin and let the back of the boat get quite cold at night, and there is lots of bare steel under the floor and at the back, round the weedhatch etc etc for the condensation to form. I don't see an easy fix for this except for insulating all the bare steel which would not be easy. Dunno what goes on under the floorboards on most boats, if there is cold bare steel its hard to see how to avoid condensation. Thing that interests me is that it kicks in very quickly over a period of just a few days, sometime in November, and stops almost as quickly in the spring. Must relate to water temperature but there is a very obvious threshold effect. ....................Dave

I think mtb was simply reminding the forum of a useful and interesting piece of information here, I do not see him expressing a dislike of (having a problem with) any particular type of boater here. Not every post should be taken as expressing hostility towards a boating faction. .................Davei

Mike, you say the email was slightly redacted. Ours had a little introductory blurb something like "you might have noticed that our canals are getting busier.....". Did you remove that or have CaRT themselves removed that bit? Its interesting how things change, although your bit is busy the long pound (central K&A) is surprisingly empty this year. There's a busy bit at Hornton but otherwise its quiet with spaces on all of the visitor moorings (Honeystreet, All Cannings and Devizes). Maybe everybody has moved East for the winter.

A fair few boats on the K&A do try to move to avoid checking day (Thursdays) but CaRT do check on other days just once in a while so its not a foolproof tactic. ................Dave

When we got our last "please continue your journey" email I really was pointing the wrong way. I had just come out of the wet dock and reversed down a lock to a VM to continue doing a bit of work on the portholes for a couple of days. My plan was then to reverse down the next lock to a winding hole and continue my journey in the direction I wasn't facing. Though the next bit of the plan was to visit a a pump out then wind again, returning to that some mooring for a night and then continue in the direction that I was originally facing. CCing is not always a simple unidirectional progressive journey. ................Dave

There are a fair few very big widebeams "continuously cruising" here on the K&A. I went past a couple yesterday, including that Huge hotel boat, so if the op really wants to do it then it can be done. I think the approach is to go into it with eyes open. Its a tolerant place here and you won't be hated by the locals but your boat (and possible you) might be seen as a bit irritating at times. A possibility would be to spend summer on the Thames then visit the K&A (or GU) in the winter when its much less busy, maybe even taking a winter mooring for a month, and showing consideration for others when moving and mooring. A mad end to end rush in the summer might not be fun. Not a fan of widebeams myself so just trying to provide impartial information. I suggest 12foot width should be the maximum, and I would also come down a foot or two from the 70 foot (we are a 71 foot narrow boat so know how tight some locks are). Obviously my own personal view but I would much rather see a boat like Brigantine here than yet another ugly fat narrowboat with a big tent on the back. (oops hope the boat moored opposite is not reading this ) There are some posh widebeams for hire on the K&A, why not do a fact finding visit before you buy your own? ...............Dave

Probably needs a whole lot of software changes but its not needed. If the successive visits where done in such a way as to have the boat facing the same direction each time and this was recorded then it would be even more damning for the poor boater. If we moor for a few days in a pretty spot and near a winding hole then we will sometimes wind on arrival and departure to optimise the view out of the window. CaRT would not know if we were coming or going. ................Dave

Do NOT seek to clarify "General Area" and the CC rules, it will be a waste of your time and energy, and a waste of CaRTs limited resources. Send an email explaining that you had moved between the sightings and then shrug it off. Keep the email short and firm but polite and do not include any unnecessary details. The boat sighting regime is very crude (and it does not record direction) and is designed to detect the really bad offenders who never move. It will always produce false positives for people like you (and me) who move often but sometimes pass through the same place several times. We had a similar email in the summer even though we had cruised almost 100 miles between the two sightings. A few weeks later I bumped into a "very senior" CaRT man and complained about this unfair email. He looked a bit exasperated as I imagine he hears this stuff all the time, then said something like "the boat checking is very simple but you wouldn't want us to spend any more of our money on boat sighting would you). He was right. ...................Dave

Have just had a look at the data sheet for these (Yuasa)..... http://www.bblbatteriesonline.co.uk/product-pdf/Pro-Spec-leaflet.pdf I suspect its wrong but it shows a cycle life (to 80% capacity) of only about 500 cycles with about 50% discharge, whilst Trojans and the like quote between about 1100 and 1600 cycles. I rather suspect their graph relates to a total different battery from their range, but if its true its not good. Trojans have got more expensive of late but £440 should still get a set of four. ...............Dave

Yup. Thats why (in my opinion) the core engine belt, which likely drives the water pump and a smallish alternator, should be left as standard. The big domestic alternator and possibly TravelPower should then have their own belting, and if you want to be really pedantic these two items could be on opposite sides of the engine so that the side forces on the crankshaft cancel out. I spoke to Beta a few years ago questioning their choice of pulley sizes on the starter alternator and asking their opinion on a bigger alternator and they told me not to make any changes for this very reason. ................Dave

Its not really a significant problem and the batteries don't get damaged. If they are "open" then they might loose just a little water which will need topping up from time to time. Obviously if you don't top them up then they will get very damaged. Sealed batteries are a bit more of a risk but these most likely have calcium in their plates which reduces water loss. Car batteries will also be calcium so don't loose water. So boats and cars don't really need a float mode on the alternator. Float mode is only needed on a mains battery charger that is left on indefinitely, and most chargers go into float to soon anyway which does more harm than good on a "cruising" boat (rather than one that lives in a marina). I guess that trucks that are in use for very very long hours might be a bit different, dunno if anybody builds a float capability into those. .................Dave

This sounds wrong to me. I thought there was a rule of thumb that current accepted by batteries is roughly equal to the amp-hours to be replaced? If so then you have 550 amp hours of battery so at 50% charge need to replace 275 amp hours so should be able to get 275 amps into the batteries. I doubt much changes after 2 minutes so suspect that something else is going on. How many amps when you start charging? Does the current settle at 40 amps or does it continue to decline? ...........Dave