dmr

hope your wrong, suspect your right. Really sad as we really like visiting Castlefield. ..............Dave

I suspect that cycling the voltage really is a good think so am surprised that other charger/controller manufacturers do not do the same. However its a bit complicated to do and its probably only liveaboard boaters who really benefit. Nick and others have a good theory that the lower charging voltage is good, but Trojan etc suggest some high voltage charging is desirable so a simple cycling is probably a good compromise. Surprised that nobody makes a mains charger to properly do the Trojan suggested curve, it could easily be a software option in a Vicron or whatever. This is of course is very different to pulse charging and the like which probably is electric snake oil. ...............Dave Yes, in that they don't realise how quickly hard charging will remove all of the water. ..............Dave

Some people use it as a derogatory term for any alternator controllers but a lot do apply it to the Sterling unit in particular. For a time Beta made their own version and I believe that was a bit of a disaster. .......................Dave

I have thought some more about this and got quite positive for a moment but its all gone wrong. Initially I realised that with just a wee bit of soldering I would be able to data log the whole charge cycle (amps, volts and engine speed). I then realised (or rather a measurement jogged my memory) that I have too much resistance in my charging cables/connections and rely on the Adverc to compensate for this. But the real blow is that my Iskra alternator only charges at about 14 volts and so a non Adverc assisted charge would not be very meaningful. This has clarified my thinking a little. Because the Adverc cycles one could say that I am sort of charging at your suggested 14.4v (from the Adverc) with periodic "tickles" at 14.8 volts. I suspect that either by luck or judgement Adverc have hit on a quite a good charging strategy. Its not perfect but as their box contains no processor and does not measure current its probably about as good as it can get. The Adverc cycle is 15 mins at the higher voltage and 5 mins at the lower voltage, (maybe this would be better the other way about???l) and then a "rest" at the lower voltage. On the other hand the Sterling device will (I assume) just charge at 14.8 volts till it goes into float. Maybe this is why it's sometimes called a battery boiler ...............Dave

I've just had a look inside my spare Adverc and there are an awful lot of bits inside it, I had forgotten just how many. I suspect that most of the chips (which have had their numbers removed) are logic to generate the timing cycle but even so there an awful lot of resistors and transistors etc. I will have another go at talking to Adverc to see if they will disclose any hints about switching off the cycling, but I am not optimistic. ................Dave

I will think seriously about this. Its actually not quite as simple as you make it sound. Because I have so many lovely Trojans we don't get much below 80% state of charge most days and I suspect the Smartgage is not at its most accurate here. I could go two days without an engine run but that means going to bed in a very cold back cabin. I would also need to do the two runs at roughly similar temperatures. And I usually join the starter alternator during the bulk phase though this only contributes about 15 amps so I could dispense with that , and during bulk the actual charging current will depend upon the domestic current draw. I think I would need a data logger to do this properly. Even worse, if some of the ideas about about the higher charge voltage are correct it might be the case that a single non Adverc charge might not be too bad, but after a few the Sulphation would begin so the Adverc advantage might actual be a slightly longer term thing. Anyway this will have to wait a couple of weeks, we are putting the boat into a marina for a week to go on a little holiday and before then there's a bit of cruising to be done and obviously your test requires non moving battery charging. I hardly ever get anywhere near to 1% tail current in the winter, might get to 2.5%. and another thing the tail currents would have to be equal at the same charging voltage... but that should be ok as I think the "lower" Adverc voltage is similar to the alternators own voltage. And yet another thing the soft regulator curve might also be a major factor and is this experiment not aimed at quantifying the effect of charge voltage rather than alternator regulator characteristic?. Now...if you are doing the BCN challenge we could meet up and I could give you a couple of old Trojans and you could do some real scientific experiments with your clever charger. .............Dave .

Could it just possibly be red antifreeze with some rust.? Get an antifreeze tester to find its concentration, they don't cost much. However even if it is antifreeze, if its rusty it needs replacing soonish. ...............Dave

From what I remember the box is not sealed, the water goes in and then when it gets to a certain level a float switch turns the pump on and empties the box. When that float switch fails to operate(due to all the hair in the shower) the water all goes into the bilge. Hope I remember right, it was ten years ago that we got our boat and this was amongst the first things that I threw away (well actually my mate sold it for me at a salty boat jumble, so if you ever hear of a sailing boat sinking........) ..............Dave

I can see that its a real bummer if you have been having a great life style for many years by bending the rules and CaRT then starts enforcing those rules. Its not limited to living on the canals either. What bothers me is that so many of the reasons given for not obeying the rules are spurious, pathetic or just silly. I have also yet to meet a boater who can put their hand on their heart and say "I am genuinely continuous cruising within the spirit of the rules and CaRT have come and got me". I would like to see an approach where boaters go to CaRT and say "the canals really benefit from having younger people living here and bringing up children on the cut, and moving is much better than a mooring, so what sort of constructive compromise can we come to to make this work for everyone?". Sadly things have got so polarised with so many legal challenges and arguments about finer points of the law its hard to see how this can now be done. .................Dave

After ten years of hard use the Adverc and the Whale Gulper are about the only things that have been 100% reliable. (I fear I am going to regret saying this). The PRM260 comes close but after 15000 hours its got a very slight oil leak. An Adverc failure will usually result in the alternators own regulator simply taking over, and the Adverc has a basic diagnosis light too. However if my suspicions about the advantage of the Adverc Cycle are correct these are only available if the regulated voltage of the alternator is suitably low, otherwise its best to disable the internal regulator. ..................Dave

Ta, I will read thru that thread a bit later. I did use to enjoy some of the Gibbo spats. The Trojan (and US?) charging spec actually suggests INCREASING the charging voltage towards the end of charging, right up to 16volts I think. This may well be to do extra gassing to stir up the electrolyte, or to do a mini equalise. I don't dispute your theory that a lower voltage charges faster due to absence of bubbles (cus NickNorman said so too) but how do I resolve this with my repeated observations that my batteries charge better at 14,.8 rather than 14.4 or 14.6? Also most Trojan owners appear to charge successfully at 14.8. Trojan themselves even suggested 15volts. Maybe it is the final high voltage "tickle" that does the business and the higher voltage earlier on is counter productive but I am not yet convinced of this. When we run the engine we don't always know for how long it will be for so can't really do a final tickle (even if we had a charger that could do that) so again maybe the Adverc cycle is the best compromise. I am effectively cycling my charging between 14.4 and 14.8 volts. Another thought, not all cells are equal so maybe the "higher than gassing" charge voltage actually prevents some of cells from getting a less charge than they might like at the expense of more gassing in the others, again a sort of mini equalise on every charge, and this outweighs any loss from charging at the higher voltage?. My Iskra has a very soft regulator so the Adverc substantially increases the current during the bulk phase as well as raising the absorption voltage. I will be retiring the two oldest two Trojans soon and would love to do some charging experiments but I'm a full time cc'ing liveaboard and don't really think battery experiments in our limited living space is a good idea. ...............Dave

Go to the products/Adverc Systems section and download the installation instructions. There is also some stuff in the technical library section. Adverc have a new website and sadly it suffers a bit from the Axiom syndrome of wildly exaggerated claims, I wonder if this is because the main technical man has retired?. ................Dave

I suspect that Peel would happily sell the Bridgewater to CaRT for more than its worth but without any of the associated property and land so its hard to see how it could happen. Remember there was a big breach a while ago and Peel proposed to close the canal. It was only the work of a pressure group who actually raised some of the funding for the repair that kept it open. The public had to donate money to the mega rich Peel empire!! ................Dave

Adverc are usually very helpful on the phone but they are a very small company so don't always answer the phone. The main boss man (Brian) who I think designed the controller has retired, or at least semi-retired, so the level of expertise is not quite what it was. I do suspect that Adverc are now just making the old stuff rather than coming up with new ideas, but the old stuff is still good. There is a voltage adjustment inside the Adverc and my mod is simply to move this to be accessible from outside the box. Adverc know I have done this (and provided information) but I suspect they would not recommend this on a unit still in warantee. It works well for equalisation, the only drawback is that the Adverc cycles between two voltages which can make equalisation rather slow, especially as the Adverc goes into a long low voltage period after a few cycles. I have a half baked plan to find a way to switch this cycling off but this will involve reverse engineering the circuit board. I have a spare Adverc here if you know anybody who has the patience to trace out the circuit. ................Dave

I did think the the Sterling might be the slightly better device, despite its excess of flashing lights. However recent threads, especially from NickNorman, have proposed that a lower voltage actually charges faster, whilst my experience is that the higher voltage is essential to getting a fully charged battery. The Adverc cycles between two voltages and whilst I initially thought this was a bit gimmicky I am now wondering if it actually works very well. The Adverc would look very at home next to a Kelvin. .............Dave

Do you have any evidence that controllers are not required and only part the gullible from their money? I have first hand experience that they make a huge improvement. Some car alternators charge at 14.6, but even so at these low temperatures a controller will probably charge at 15v, that's a huge difference. There is a lot of very good stuff on the smartgage web site but I don't think we should believe all of it. Remember that Gibbo did not make an alternator controller but did make SmartBank, and although this is a totally different device he did market it as a competitor to alternator controllers, he is therefore hardly likely to recommend alternator controllers. ............Dave

Together with the recent heavy handed enforcement and navigation charges it does look like Peel are trying to convey some sort of message to us boaters. There is quite a bit of info on the www suggesting that Peel are a company who like to get their own way, there is a rumour that they have a whole section dedicated to overturning planning refusals. I suspect here they are just reminding us boaters that they are the boss. It is also said that Peel have almost zero interest in navigation, their interest in the Bridgewater is the property development opportunities that it provides. Rather than taking over the Thames it would be much better if CaRT took over the Bridgwater. ................Dave

I would agree. We have met a few boaters who have "boasted" about the huge lifetime of their batteries and I have concluded that this must be because they had massive over-capacity to start with, or have even slowly adjusted their lifestyle to cope with the falling capacity. We did moor next to a boat who appeared to do engine runs morning, mid-day and evening. I suspect now he runs his engine all day and lights a candle at night. ...............Dave This is why the alternator controller was invented. The Adverc is nicely made but not very flexible (though can be modified). The Sterling has lots and lots of flashing lights and might be slightly cheaper. ...............Dave

A proper battery is considered to be finished when its down to 80% of specified capacity, so yours were probably "dead" after about 6 years. 6 years from £2000 batteries on a leisure boat is really nothing special. Two of my original Trojans have now done 5 years on a full time liveaboard/off grid boat and they cost exactly £100 each, but to be fair they might also be below 80% by now. ..................Dave

And this is why the spiral staircase on a narrowboat is always clockwise going down. I did visit a castle in Scotland where the staircase went the other way and this was because the original owner was left handed. The stove should always go on the left to best locate the chimney, could this be a factor?. Not sure about the engine services theory. Very few boats have proper engine rooms, and on working boats the engine room was not walk through anyway. It somehow feels right that the bathroom should go waterside rather than bankside ? ...............Dave

Standard forum advice is to learn with cheapo leisures then get Trojans (or just possibly 2 volt tractions) but maybe this should be questioned. At present a set of Trojans should be available for £110 each whilst it won't be easy to get cheapos for less than £70 each so the difference is not that huge. I also suspect (with no real evidence) that even if abused the Trojans will probably last twice as long as the cheapos, and if (when) they get sulphated will probably handle a hard equalisation rather better, so maybe going straight in with the Trojans is not such a bad idea. This has the advantage that you are learning on the real thing. Its a bit sad to kill nice batteries but then you do get a bit more when you weight them in. There is also the "mtb variation" of learning on "cheapo Trojans" which is probably even better. ...............Dave

I'm with mtb on this one, your boat is slowly sinking. Its not that the water has risen in the weedhatch, its the boat has got lower in the water! Have a look at the outside of the boat (as per FadetoScarlet), does it look obviously lower in the water than it used to? You need to act urgently as at some point some vents might just go below the waterline, and once the weedhatch is right under that might leak too. You may well have more than one bilge. The bit at the back (engine area on most boats) is likely separate from the main cabin area. Make an access hole inside the boat towards the rear of the boat and have a look. I suggest that you don't move the boat but put all your efforts into removing the water. And please let us know what you find. ..............Dave and just gently rock the boat to confirm that a gunnel or something has not got wedged under something sticking out on from the bank. ................Dave

Polystyrene balls are bad news. Many years ago older child unzipped beanbag and tempted his younger sister to jump onto beanbag. Balls everywhere, Older child realised he was in big trouble so quietly fetched the hoover. I was alerted by much commotion and crying. Found older child frantically hoovering but statically charged balls running away from hoover. Distressed child assumed he was subject to divine intervention and punishment. ...............Dave

or maybe a digital storage scope like something from the Hantek range would be a good way to go. These cost £300-500 and are on eBay. They have a USB connection so you can get the recorded data into a PC, but the supplied Chinese software is not pleasurable to use. ............Dave

My stuff is expensive because I use it for serious work projects, but there are cheaper options. Probably best we do the details by PM. As you are doing mains stuff a clamp on current probe would be a whole lot safer than using a shunt. I used something similar to this at about £200: http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/current-probes-clamps/3155204/ You need to "sample" quite quickly to capture the transient. You could get by with a digital storage 'scope but a PC and USB data capture system might be better. Something like this might just about be good enough:......... https://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/201986 However if you are only measuring AC mains you could possibly get by with a USB sound card and a bit of ingenuity. I could probably help with the software side of things. If you are setting up a long term capability rather than a one off job then there is better stuff available but it rapidly goes well over £1000. ................Dave