Bobbybass

Going back to my last post. Energy saving bulbs...TV etc... A hair dryer...is a short 'hit'...so not a great power discharge. The main use of this immense battery bank and charging regime seems to be the washing machine ?. Huge amounts of engine running ( maybe half a gallon ? ).. solar ..filling the water tank..and discharging plastic particles into our canals. Is this really worth it ?. This is a general question rather than criticism. PS... I get plenty of run time for fridge...lights...and TV out of two 110 amp batteries..and they don't drop below 12.2 volts.

We had a Travelpower on our last boat...for washing machine..hair dryer etc...plus running the battery charger from it. We still gave up on the washing machine on most occasions...and used a laundry.

I recently bought an old D5W that was from a BT van. I hacked the wiring and fitted a couple of fuses ..one for the switch and one for the heater. Stuck the water inlet and outlet hoses into a bucket and a short length of fuel hose into a jam jar of diesel. It fires up just fine.. doesn't need any pressure on the fuel line. Once the switch is activated..it goes into the correct start up...water pump..air fan...and finally the tick tick fuel pump. Conversely..it does the correct shut down. I'll fit that in the coming months.

I like my diesel.. I like the sound of it..the smell of it...the sheer mechanics of it..and by the time it all goes tits up..I would have given up boating anyway..

I was always told that the electrolyte should only be 1/4 inch above the plates ?. My previous batteries were great and lasted 5 years.

MSC gauges don't like overloading. It usually blows the chip. If I recall ...they use a standard Op-amp.. possibly LM741 ?.. you can buy 5 on eBay for a quid. I fitted a 8 pin holder on the board so I could easily replace. The water gauge suffers the same problem. When on the Thames I used their hose which was a tight fit. The water pressure blew the chip.

My mates who have this on their cars...have all disabled it. As for cats...I cut the end off mine.. stripped it out..and welded it back together. Gained me lots of horsepower and still passed the MOT.

Just spoke to Beta. It should be ONLY ....ATF Dextron 2 or 3. Service interval is up to you..but as it only holds 0.3 litre..it may as well be done every year. Thanks everyone..

Heck...now I'm confused.. Engine oil....ATF...now a Hypoid ??. Plus...I still don't know the change intervals.. The plot thickens.. ( the oil does anyway ?)

That being the case .... With my previous larger PRM gearbox that took engine oil..I changed it at about 500 hours. As this is ATF does that mean less changes ?. After all...you very rarely change ATF fluid on a car...

Hi.. just gave my engine its first service. Was going to pump out the PRM 120 and fill with the same oil as the engine. Removing the gearbox dip stick I found it full of a red fluid..rather like auto gearbox fluid ,?. Is that correct..?. Thanks.

The copper sheet was not expensive.. it was thin..so thin I could cut it with scissors.

I'll dig it out of the garage and look... I'm going to whack it on eBay at some point anyway..

They used to have them in Poundland and the Bargain shops. Loads on eBay. They're really sold for house use around washing machines etc.

I have three CO detectors....one at head height in the lounge/kitchen where the cooker and fire are. One at sleeping head height in the lounge and one at sleeping head height in the rear bedroom. Three fire angels...which I like. Once again... lounge near cooker/fire. One in corridor. One above the electrical switches/fuse panel rear which is inside a wardrobe. I also fitted lots of cheap £1 flood alarms in various spots...under the bed with hidden pipes...under the kitchen sink...etc.. I put one in the engine compartment....put the sensor wires into a choc block connector and on the other side inserted two lengths of brass rod which go down into the bilge...so if it starts to fill at a pre-set point it sets the alarm off. Saved my last boat as some bad gates on the Wigan flight were flooding over the back deck and the scuppers couldn't cope... I hadn't realised,

As you can see.....I soldered copper 'tags' to the copper pipe..and these were then bolted firmly to the aluminium plate...so maximum heat was passed into the pipe. I sprayed it with matt black thermal paint (Halfords) ....then enclosed it in a box with glass on one side ( the non pipe side )..and roof insulation on the other with a layer of tin foil between the roof insulation and the pipe side..so sun heated the aluminium plate on the matt black painted side...and any that passed through the plate was reflected back. It worked a treat. I've since sold this boat and removed the 12 volt controller. Its in my garage..languishing.. It has two thermal sensors...one on the tank and one on the roof collector...the unit has a differential controller to stop it pumping your hot water up to the roof should the plate outside be colder.

I made this collector.....10mm pipe. Couldn't believe how well it worked. Burnt my fingers while bleeding it on an overcast day !

Some of the ground-source heat pump engineers around me...say they are removing more than they are installing as they just don't suit the UK.

He wasn't from.one of those. He was on the other side..set about 50 feet back from the canal. Apparently bought a canal side house..but doesn't want the boats...so I was told in the pub

I recently moored on the K&A at Bathampton. They had cable tied.."quiet zone" notices to their mooring rings. I stopped at 6pm..and let the engine run for 5 minutes while we microwaved tea. Knock knock knock on the side of the boat...and some obnoxious **** telling me it was a quiet zone ..in a very unpleasant way. !. I told him where to get off. We moved on then..A few weeks later ...a fellow boater in a pub told me the same story...and he had so told the obnoxious **** to go away ? Apparently his house isn't one if the houses we were immediately outside..it was some way away. As I understood it ..CART quiet requirements are 8pm to 8am...but are these homemade looking signs enforceable ?

Do they know what you do with a windlass..? None of them used one on tonights program...then they retreated to the pub and said they were exhausted...! They even called the windlass a SPANNER !!!!!

Did you read my section above...about our use of blue freezer-bag blocks?. Even in the hot with door opening ..it was rare the compressor ran for any period.

We have 6 of those blue freezer.blocks. When cruising we put them in the ice section so that they freeze without consuming battery power. After we moor up..we move three into the regular fridge. They act as a buffer when the door is opened. Before going to bed we take the warm blocks out completely and put the still frozen blocks from the ice tray into the regular fridge. They buffer the fridge during the night. Once we start the engine next day...all blocks go back into the ice tray.

12 volts.... parallel...nothing to do with converting 24 to 12 volts ? Thank you all...subject closed.

I am installing two 100w panels with a 20amp controller. The controller is inside just above my back steps. Under those steps is my 1500w inverter connected to the batteries with 70mm cables. My question is : rather than run a set of cables an extra couple of meters to the batteries, is there any reason why I could not connect the solar controller into the inverter terminals ?. The solar output would then run back to the batteries via much thicker cables. Thank you !.