newbienarrowboatowner

A lamp, and our wifi router is all that's been on today. Everything else is 12 volt!

I don't think any of the relevant switches are off, but we're also having trouble with the bilge pump so now we're wondering whether it could all be connected to the battery? The heating is definitely our most urgent issue, it may be another night crowded around the stove! We're leaving the engine to run for a few more hours and we've switched the energy source from inverter to generator as we were told that has a higher capacity. Is that right?

... woops! Yes this green light is on when the engine is running. The two you've circled do light up when ignition is turned on, and turn off when the engine is running.

Thank you for this! We're going to try and find one around Long Buckby, which is where we're currently close to. If anyone has any recommendations, we'd be very grateful. This is where the green light is, with all of the engine controls. It has a small lightning bolt underneath it, and we were told that when that's green, the batteries are charging. Apologies for our ignorance with this, if that's not the case! When the volt meter is switched to 'domestic' and the engine is running, the number is now around 14V.

Apologies, yes the belts on the engine are turning the alternator, and there are no warning lights lit on whilst the engine's running. Just the green one to say it's charging.

Thanks everyone! We actually only moved onto the boat at the weekend, with very limited experience on narrowboats prior to this. Definitely looks like there might be an issue with the battery unfortunately from the looks of things, and yes I definitely confused smoke and steam (I'm blaming limited sleep after a very cold night ). Looks like we may be looking at getting an electrician to come and have a look at our system and see if we need new batteries. We have however learned a lot just from this thread, so thank you so much everyone!

We do have an auxiliary pump, which should circulate the heat for the radiators. It's been turned on, but isn't making any noise when we switch it on. I'm pretty sure the smoke was coming from the stove.

We were told to read the charge here, it usually goes up to around 12.6V: (Sorry for our ignorance, it's a steep learning curve!)

Hello, thanks for the welcome! I wish it was under less stressful circumstances 😅 It's a corner Bubble diesel stove, and the batteries do still have some charge, they just aren't charging when the engine is on. We've been charging them through running the engine for around 2-4 hours a day, plus we have a solar panel. I can't really smell the smoke, I can just see it throughout the boat.

Hello! My partner and I are new to the narrowboat world, and have had an absolute delight of a morning. Firstly, it proved very difficult to get the diesel stove going last night, and ultimately didn't manage it. This morning, we did manage to light it but none of the radiators are heating up at all. Our batteries also went down, so we turned on the engine to charge them, and after an hour the smoke detectors started going crazy. The boat is now full of smoke, but is thankfully abating with all the doors and windows open. We've turned off the stove and the engine. Have we missed a switch somewhere, or something along those lines? We've had no problem with the radiators in the last few days, or with the battery levels/charging. Any advice is very much appreciated.