MoominPapa

When running the alternator geared up like this, consider adding a switch to disable the field during cold starts. A cold low-revving diesel will quite possibly fail to accelerate at all if it's a loaded by an alternator producing that best part of a kilowatt at normal idle speed. Starting without load avoids that and allows the oil to circulate before adding load. On my FR2 with a 70A A127 and belt around the flywheel I always start from cold with the field off. It's not necessary with a hot engine. MP.

There are towpath moorings in the village opposite the boatyard and a bit further North. MP.

I have suggested, to R. Parry himself, that all Elsan points should have a shelf or storage place suitable for caps, to reduce the incidence of blockages due them being lost. Our Thetford cassettes have doors over the dump hole which have become pretty loose with long wear. You have to be careful not to lose the door when tipping the cassette up. MP.

Emptying the land based bins is no better when they are (inevitably) over-full. I have. MP.

My suggestion for rubbish facilities was hoppers, located on the offside and only accessible by boat. Something similar works in Northwich, where the bins are in a pontoon next to the CRT yard. To do the same thing where the location is not accessible for emptying, you'd need to arrange to remove the rubbish by water, probably by replacing a full hopper with an empty one and taking the full one to somewhere where it could be discharged. MP

That's a scary prospect as well. I wonder did something like that happen to the chap who fell asleep on the M62 and dumped his Landrover into the path a a train on the East Coast Mainline? Probably, and they could have gone after the uninsured owner of the sunken boat, in turn. It didn't seem wise or fair to go after a fellow moorer who had already lost a lot for our small losses, if it risked coming from him rather than his or our insurer. MP.

The road traffic act(s) contain clauses that prohibit insurers from denying _third_party_ liabilities if the policy holder breaks the insurance contract. If you drive down the A1 pissed and crash into another car, the insurance company will refuse to pay for your car, but they can't refuse to pay for the one you hit. The waterways acts have the same clauses, word-for-word, requiring insurance, but not the stuff about third parties. I found this out when a boat sank in our marina and the insurance wouldn't pay up because the sinking was caused by corrosion and lack of maintenance. They insurance wouldn't pay for damage to the blacking on many boats caused by leaking diesel from the wreck either. So, negligence in a boat can land you with a liability of millions that's not covered by your third party insurance in a way which is not possible with a car, at least under UK law. MP.

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2012-11-01/narrow-boat-sinks MP.

Sounds like a plan. The only problem will be finding out if you've succeeded. I can tell cause the light in the (240v) fridge takes a few seconds to come on if the compressor is not working, or the angle grinder takes a couple of seconds to start after you press the trigger (which is bloody dangerous, BTW, I do not recommend this.) MP.

On ours your can activate it just using the power switch, but it's not obvious. You switch on, wait for the display to say "Powersave off", switch off, and then switch on again. Now it'll say "powersave on". Beware that there's a small time window somewhere in the startup sequence during which, if you switch off and on again it gets mighty confused and then cycles between powersave off and powersave on forever without starting up properly. If you get to this state you can recover just by cutting the incoming 12v with the isolator for a few seconds. The jumper/dipswitch changes the default state at power up, so you don't have to go through this malarkey every time you switch on. I can't remember the details and I can't get into mine to look without undoing all the connections and mounting nuts. As far as I can remember, I never found anything online about it, so it must have been fairly obvious from the markings on the PCB which jumper for switch does this. If I were you, I'd try the on-off-on technique first, to test that the powersave mode works ok with your gear, and if it does, isolate everything, remove the cover and look for a set of jumpers or dipswitches one of which is marked in some unambiguous way. HTH MP. ETA. Page 10 in here https://www.donrowe.com/v/vspfiles/pdf/prosine_1000_1800_owners_guide.pdf

The only time I've used our Danforth "in anger" was waiting for the tide to turn during a passage across The Wash. (We didn't beach, which is most common tactic, but stayed floating the whole time.) We had no problem. A shorter NB in the flotilla which had a collapsible grapnel anchor suffered dragging, and had to run their engine in ahead the whole time to hold station. MP. ETA. When we first started narrowboating, I would have retrieved the anchor from storage and set it up with chain and warp connected on any river; the Soar, Nene, Gt Ouse, Severn etc. These days I only have it ready under all circumstances on the Trent, Severn below Upper Lode, and the Salter's Lode to Denver tidal crossing. Summer river boating on canalised rivers, I wouldn;t bother.

We're planning to head from Bunbury towards Beeston today so I looked up the Shady Oak's website to see when we could go for a meal. They closed on last night until sometime in the spring. I can't say I'm enjoying the Sunlit Uplands of Brexit very much. MP.

The indian is good. Don't over-order, the portions are generous. MP.

Since the piece cites vandalism is of buildings as a problem, I suggest making more Elsan points of the outdoor variety. They are by far the most pleasant to use anyway, since they're so well ventilated. MP.

It's crazy that there's no elsan facilty in Middlewich. With the loss of Hurleston, a boat coming from the Bridgewater or the Weaver onto the Llann doesn't pass anything between Anderton and the top of Grindley Brook unless they direct to Calverley or Nantwich. MP. ETA. Also, It's a pain that the only Elsan in Chester is the one below the Staircase. There's a disused Elsan by one locks on the way in (maybe Chemistry?) but ideally something in Christleton would be best.

The water and elsan at the top of Tyrley flight on the shroppie has been out of use for at least a couple of years. I don't know if it's been formally abandoned. MP.

You're maybe thinking about the rubbish point and tap at Barbridge Junction? The Shroppie around there is pretty good for facilities: it's not far between Nantwich and Calverley. I think the tap at the junction was nominally replaced with on above the first lock on the branch. MP.

This is useful info for me, as my maximum charge rate is about 70A and maximum sustained discharge rate is lower than that. Looks like I'm in the sweet spot. ETA, I think for new LFePO4 systems, there's a strong argument for 24V or even 48V. MP. MP.

Some of the drift is down to measurement errors, but a lot is down to unknown and variable charge efficiency. LA batteries need to be regularly charged to 100% and as they approach 100%, the proportion of the electrical energy used in turning lead sulphate into lead oxide decreases, and the amount used in turning water into hydrogen and oxygen increases. The H2 and O2 are lost from the system. so any energy that goes that way is not stored in the battery, and the actual stored energy is lower than that determined by measuring what goes in. Since the proportion of the water splitting side reaction and therefore charge efficiency depends quite strongly on the state of charge and physical state of the battery, how much it has aged and deteriorated, it's very difficult to compensate for this in the AH counter. Apart from the energy loss, and some water loss which is easily replaced, these side reactions don't damage the LA cells, and they do some good: the bubbling fixes stratification and the because most-charged cells start to gas first, this allows cell balancing without any external balancing system. On the other hand, the equivalent side reactions in Lithium cells are bad news, and must not be allowed to happen. Hence sophisticated BMS system with charge termination and external cell balancers. So, because side reactions are avoided in Lithium cells, the charge efficiency is higher and more predictable, so a major source of error in Ah counting doesn't exist. MP.

There are lots of possible explanations, but the most likely is just systematic error in the current measurement hardware, especially as it's Hall-effect based, which are known for small biases due to residual magnetism after heavy current flow. MP.

At some point, I can't remember exactly when, but certainly over a year ago, I added code to my BMS to keep a running total of charge and discharge. It's currently at ~30000Ah, so assuming average battery voltage of 13v, that's 0.39MWh. I think these batteries are going to last a long time. Interestingly, either there's a small zero offset, or I've invented a perpetual motion machine, the exact figures are charge: 29947.02Ah and discharge: 30934.53Ah. MP.

No problem with the BDS-A in my system, at least so far. It was new, and not second hand. One thing to check: there is a preferred current direction through the contacts. This doesn't help much when both charge and discharge go through the contactor, but if yours just does charging, make sure it's connected the correct way around. The direction ensures that the magnetic field helps to extinguish the arc (though from your tear down, excessive arcing is not your problem.) MP.

Really? In cars, the slower charging uses a mains-fed charger in the vehicle, to minimise the cost the fixed infrastructure, but fast charging is DC. The fixed infrastructure for fast charging is more expensive, but the stuff in the vehicle is reduced to a socket, some contactors, and the cabling between them. All the power electronics are external to the vehicle. I've always thought that the idea for boats is fast charging whilst at water points, etc. Just because it's much easier to get power there than to the sort of places where boats tend to overnight. To control costs, the exact same infrastructure as is use in cars needs to be employed, as that furnishes a huge market and wins economies of scale. MP.

Nothing much to add. The Moominbats are still going great guns. No noticeable degradation at all. They really are the dog's bollocks. MP.

No Moomins, unfortunately. We were planning to drive down, but our daughter has come down with Covid, and that's messed up the plans, for complicated reasons. MP.