Roger Gunkel

No problem at all Les , although I will shortly be out until the early hours of Sunday. Roger

Just a thought, but it is quite possible that the level of the fuel in the tank is above the pump level and although the fuel take off is probably low in the tank. At the moment, the tank may well be gravity feeding through the pump, but as the level in the tank drops, the fuel will not get through and your heater will stop, probably when the temperature outside is -10 and the repairers have shut down for a long Christmas break. I'd check it before the cold weather arrives! Roger

I had a similar quote from a DG company before we decided to do it ourselves with secondary DG. The link in one of the above posts has details and pictures of the process and the difference on the boat comfort has been amazing. Our hoppers were easily removed and the opening glass is self supporting in the angled frame without the hopper stops in place, for occasional opening. The magnetic tape stays on the frames during the Summer so the DG can just be placed in position when the weather cools down. just takes a few seconds. I really can't emphasise enough how much difference double glazing on a boat can make, to heat loss reduction, eliminating or considerable reducing draughts and cold areas and hugely reducing the annoyance of condensation. Naturally a boat with portholes only will have far less loss through the glass than one such as ours with large windows, but I am surprised that many people don't seem to realise the differrence that DG can make. How many people would consider buying a new house without DG, but often dismiss it for a boat which quite possibly has a far greater percentage of glass area than a house does. Having a far smaller internal volume than a house, a boat will also have a much greater build up of absorbed moisture to condense out onto cold single glazed glass areas. Roger

I had a similar problem after changing a fuel filter, because the take off end of the fuel piipe in the tank, was lower than the filter, so when I disconnected it, all the fuel in the pipe drained back into the tank as I had forgotten to close the valve at the tank. When I reconnected the pipe to the filter, the pump was sucking air. I cured it by sucking fuel back up the pipe after first attaching a piece of clear plastic tube over the disconnected end, so I could avoid getting it in my mouth. Once the fuel was back in the pipe, I closed the shut off valve to stop it draining back again, then reattached the pipe to the first filter. The system primed via the manual lever on the lift pump, bleeding at each bleed screw from the filter to the injectors. Many modern engines though have self bleeding pumps, so once the pipe before the filter is full, you will hear a gurgling noise from the pump when the key is turned to the pre starter position. This will stop when the air has been bled, or with a non self bleeding system it's back to the individual bleed screws and manual pumping. Roger

Interesting that post #17 has suddenly been edited to have information added to it following my semi technical post. The information is exactly what I would expect from a DG company attempting to use the forum to promote their business. Thank you Theo for your removal of the advertising Roger

Were you on a minesweeper? Roger

I did notice that, but couldn't be bothered to mention it as he failed to actually post anything, and his name 'windowsmiltonkeynes' was so blatant that I thought it was rather pathetic. There was also no link to anything so I couldn't be arsed Roger

If you want to get into Cambridge by boat, Ely is far closer than Huntingdon or St Ives, both of which will take you the best part of a day to reach Cambridge. Ely is also only 20 mins from Newmarket by road and has a direct rail link to Cambridge with moorings about five minutes walk from Ely station. Roger

Yes it is Dave, it was extremely easy to fit, instantly removeable and doesn't suffer from expansion or contraction problems. The double glazed sealed units that I have occasionally seen fitted in boats, didn't seem to have a thermal break in the frames, which were aluminium. That would mean a transfer of cold/heat through the frame and heavy condensation build up on the inner frames. I'm not suggesting that all sealed double glazing units for boats are like that, but I would look very carefully if you are thinking of making a considerable investment in that sort of DG. Personally, I would go for secondary DG even if I was having another new build, cost being a major consideration and I would be very doubtful of the efficiency of sealed over secondary unless you were having upvc or hardwood frames with sealed units in. All the sealed units on boats also seem to have a very small air gap compared with house units, the optimal space for thermal efficiency being about 18mm if I recall correctly. Roger

Note that this thread is 5 years old!!! Much has been discussed and learned on the forum about double glazing your boat windows over the intervening 5 years. My own widebeam with eight 42"x 21" windows was double glazed with 4mm acrylic for less than £250. The difference in comfort is considerable, just as it is in a house. Roger

How about both at the same time Roger

If you read the original post again, you will see that he is connected to a mains hookup Roger

Are you living in a time warp, I'm watching the marathon at this very moment, and there is more to come later today Roger

Chris has hit the nail on the head, your fridge is the biggest drain and your solar panel will not give enough to maintain a full charge. Your fridge is most likely accounting for 40-50 amps per day, which means that you would need to put back up to 60 amps on the basis that you need to replace more than you take out. If you are also using laptop, lights, pumps etc, then even with an 80 amps per day requirement, your panel will not give you enough. A 135 watt panel will give you a maximum of about 10amps output under perfect conditions, probably a couple of hours either side of mid day. Over a whole day you will get a maximum of perhaps 70 amps, but over 3 days for example, you may well have clouds for some of the day, or mist in the morning, so your average for 3 days may be only 100-150 amps. Your consumption though would be pretty consistent, so your batteries are never getting up to full charge, and starting from a lower point each day until eventually they are showing low voltage. As has been said, you need to fully recharge your batteries from your mains hookup at least once per week. The cost in electricity of doing that, will be far less than replacing your batteries because of their shortened lifespan. Roger

So is Bedazzled Roger

I think the figure of 44% of narrowboats having VHF is wildly off the mark. There are about 100 boats in the marina here and there are maybe 10 that have VHF. These are all larger grp cruisers whose owners tend to use them for occasional coastal trip, whereas if you discount those, there are no narrowboats or widebeams with VHF at all. I think that the idea of an easily accessible VHF set that can communicate with inland watterways boaters facilities and other boats is a very good one. What concerns me more though is that as long as potential users have to go through the rigmarole of going on a training course and learning correct radio and emergency procedures just to check if the next marina has a spare mooring, it will always be a non starter. Most inland boat owners can't even be bothered to learn the childishly simple sound signals let alone get involved in VHF licensing and procedures. Great idea that it may be, I think that only those boaters who have a serious need for marine VHF will actually bother, unless the current rules are relaxed, which would then open it to abuse in the same way that CB has been. Roger

I just took delivery of my first LEDs, to replace bulbs which sound the same as yours, two base contacts and opposite pin bayonet connector. The connector type is BA15D. I bought a spotlight replacement and two ceiling dome light replacements, which are the flat round leds with the connector on a cable. I bought them from Bedazzled Link and had quick delivery and a good price. Coincidentally, I rang them and had a great conversation with the owner who is a liveaboard so fully understands boat requirements. I am delighted with the lights which give a very even pleasant soft white light, good spread and slightly brighter than the ones they replaced Roger

Another vote for the UKmap app Roger

Hi Julian, Firstly regarding surplus power, that is a tricky one to answer, as we have 200w of solar at present but our residential mooring has a 240v hookup. We are on our mooring for most of the time as our business is run from the boat, but we use the solar to supplement the 25per Kw cost of our hookup. We tend to switch to battery power during the day until the batteries reach 65-70%, then back to 240v. The solar always brings the batteries back to 100% on the SOC meter, so in the duller or Winter times, we simply switch back to 240v earlier than on the brighter days. We haven't used a mains charger for nearly 3 years. Coming back to your own situation, I agree that the 27" element will be the most effective, but the problem with surplus output utilisation is that it will vary depending on the varying load on the batteries from other devices, time of day, clouds etc, so it would be very unpredictable as far as I can see. Your 700ah bank sounds good for normal use, but again it depends on how you intend to use it. So if you intend to run down to no lower than 50%, then you will have 350ah available if you expect a possible 3 days use to allow for dull days, then that would only give you around 90amps per day allowing for losses in the system and replacing more than you take out. To that you would add the output from your solar, so adding an average of 160 amps per day on the best days, would give you 250w, which is more than enough during the good Summer days. If you intend to preserve battery life by not discharging so far on a regular basis, then you will considerably further reduce the available power. I feel that any surplus power is best used to keep your batteries as high as possible. Of course when you start taking out your power, the picture is again very variable. Our fridge freezer is A+ rated, and when I tested the consumption at the unit over 7 days, it averaged about 48amps per day, but to that I would have to add at least 10% loss from the inverter, plus putting back lets say 25% more than used. That would take us into the region of 70 amps per day just for the fridge. If you are also using the occasional other high power appliances, the you will quickly use up the daily quota. During the days that the solar ouput is very low, it is easy to see how the balance swings backwards and forwards. You also mention items such as a twin tub etc, so be aware that the fridge and other motor driven and sensitive 240v electrical equipment will need a pure sine wave inverter and of course the cost of these escalates rapidly with the output requirement. You should allow at least 5 times the wattage of any motor driven appliance for startup loads. So coming back to the water heater element, I really think that it is pointless, and if you really want to use surplus power, look at ways of driving your fridge from the load output of the controller rather than just from your batteries, as that will help to keep your batteries at as high a charge level as possible. Roger

Arthur, your post is really factless waffling, and while I appreciate that you want to give useful advice, you give absolutely no information to back up your assertions. You state that 'drriving ALL of your solar output into a 1kw immersion element for a couple of hours WiLL make a difference to your hot water levels' . OK I'll agree with that, BUT, based on your own experience of solar and maths, how much difference will it actually make? I degree increase, 10 degrees, 50 degrees? How often will the conditions be right to give any increase in water temperature at all? If you are offering advice, it needs to be based on facts, and the facts are that if the OP has fully charged batteries and can output his entire solar array to an immersion heater, has no other drain whatsoever, and has continuous optimum sunshine to drive the panels at their maximum, then useable results will likely be obtained. HOWEVER, anyone living on a boat and having a solar array of that size, is likely to have a fairly high continuous power requirement, so the chance of all the parameters being right on a regular basis to make any significant difference is slim to say the least. The wiring, cost and effort involved to produce minimal difference for the odd day in the Summer makes it a pointless excersise in my opinion. Immersion heaters are only of real use when you have access to grid electricity, or want to run a generator with a high enough output to power other devices and run an immersion at the same time. A costly way to heat water though. Roger

I understand your logic regarding the solar, but Lewis the original OP, did say he thought about using one of his 230w panels, which is way below the average of 20ah that you mention I am also surprised that a 1kw immersion heater was able to get 60 litres of water to a hot showering temperature in 20 minutes, but I will take your word on that as I don't have an immersion. I am certainly not an electrician, but I would have thought that putting the best part of 100a continuous load on your battery bank for a least 20 minutes on top of any other power that you may be using is quite a load. The question about what to do with surplus power is also an interesting one, as I would have expected that if you need 500w of solar in the first place, as I do, that you presumably have a reasonably high daily load expectation. I certainly wouldn't want to put energy into heating water in the height of Summer if I could store it in my batteries instead. If you assume an average of 20-25 amps per hour from 500w solar for 8 hours, then you are expecting 160-200 amps into your batteries over one day. I would consider that a very optimistic figure averaged over several days and the reality is likely to be considerably lower. Even if we take that figure, by the time you allow for putting back 50% more than you use, to take into consideration inefficiencies in the batteries, inverter etc, you are still only getting 110-130 useable amps back in. I wouldn't want to waste 30amps of that for a shower, and if you are running a fridge, you will already be taking 40-50 amps out. When you take into consideration the fact that a couple of cloudy or rainy days will drastically reduce the solar output, then solar PV water heating in my opinion becomes a wasteful use of hard gained energy. If anyone can honestly say that they have been able to get useful hot water on a regular basis whilst running the boat on solar Pv, then I would love to hear how they have set it up. If you really want to heat water from solar energy, then rather than using solar PV, which is about 15% efficient, then why not look at evacuated tube panels which convert solar energy to heat at an efficiency of over 80%. You will also get useable water temperature all year round and not just for a few scorching days in mid Summer. If the pv water heating theory worked, I would be the first to use it, but I think it is sadly a non starter. Roger

The cling film type DG that Wilkinsons and others sell can be very effective if you are on a very tight budget, but the acrylic DG is similar to perspex, looks much better and can be used every year. Here is a link to where we got ours a few years back. ACRYLIC We used 4mm thick acrylic, fixed to the window frames with self adhesive magnetic strip so that the sheets can be removed for storage or cleaning. Our wide beam has eight 42"x21" windows and the cost when we did it including magnetic strip and cutting to size was about £230, although I'm sure it would have gone up since then. Roger

That's a good idea Pete, although I will be keeping the starter battery charged with a 100w solar panel that I already have. Could be useful for others though Roger