nicknorman

Obviously that’s a bit of a mess and just goes to show that a “professional” is someone who gets paid to do a job. The term has no bearing on their competence! But personally I am not keen on integral batteries eg the Fogstar I have in the caravan, because a MOSFET based BMS is an obvious weak point and I think the failure of the BMS MOSFETs will turn out to be why they didn’t protect the ABC boat’s batteries from overcharging. If the MOSFET is already off because the battery is full, and then there is a millisecond long charging voltage transient caused eg by a lightning strike somewhere nearby, that can break down the mosfet and leave it conducting, exposing the battery to overcharging. This is one of the reasons why I went for an external BMS with a contactor to emergency-isolate the battery, even though it was more expensive than a MOSFET solution. There is no point in having a last ditch emergency protection device that is fragile and fails unsafe.

However so far they only have your side and your word. We can tell from your posting style that you will have laid it on with a trowel! Once TS and CA have been in touch with the tradesman and have a balanced picture I suspect they will let it drop.

?? How does fitting a 95mm2 cable risk burning out the inverter? Well, assuming we are talking about 2 95mm2 cables, one for positive and one for negative!

Trading Standards will never take it to court once they are in full possession of the facts. For starters, which bit of consumer law would they be prosecuting under? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but there isn’t an offence of “failing to have sufficient telepathic powers to carry out the customers unspoken requirements”. As has been mentioned, not one person on this forum is taking your side. Why is that do you think?

I am reminded of several people who over the years have told me that “I just had the car serviced, and a week later it broke down”. But the car had been serviced to the manufacturer’s recommendations which didn’t include checking whatever it was that broke. Even worse, “I just had my car MOTd, the next day it broke down”.

My head is getting sore now with all the wall banging, so I give up.

But he did upgrade the battery interconnection cables and the cables to the MPPT controller and the panels, which is what you asked him to do.

No, the cabling to an appliance (the inverter in this case) is not part of the battery and solar system.

We come back to what you specifically asked him to do. Was it “check the entire boat’s wiring and correct any pre-existing defects”. Seems doubtful. Or was it “please install solar and Li batteries” which seems more likely.

You are. Both the batteries you mention can supply 285 amps (which I presume is what you meant when you said volts). It is true that the Li can do this for longer, but the LA can do it plenty long enough to melt and smoke undersized wiring. FYI before we had Li batteries we had 450Ah lead acid and it ran the electric kettle fine, and the washing machine. But of course not very good for LA long term, and rather inefficient, which is one reason why we switched to Li. Now the wiring does exactly the same job but with an easier life due to slightly less current (because the voltage is slightly higher with Li). Anyway, you take you mad to court and see how you get on. When you lose, please don’t set up a “go fund me” page because I will spam it with “I told you so!”.

I already made this point in the other thread and was going to make it again, but brick walls, heads and banging springs to mind!

No. The BSS only checks the battery interconnect wiring, not the wiring to each and every appliance (or any appliances!) as that would not be feasible.

I think we must accept that the chap is not in touch with reality and no amount of logical argument will impinge.

What is a lead oxide battery? Anyway, 400Ah of lead acid battery is quite capable of delivering 300A. The Peukert effect reduces the apparent capacity, ie the Voltage will be lower after a while than it would be with Li, but still more than enough time to melt under-rated cable. Maybe 30 mins or so. A lot of the rest of your post is just waffle.

I think the battery in question was 100Ah.

However, in case other readers are not aware, you have a widebeam which allows you to have a lot more solar than on a narrowboat.

Well mine does. And earlier this year I put on the electric kettle (2kw) and then after a minute or two gingerly felt all the cell terminal bolts and interconnect busbars to see if any were warm or hot. They weren’t.

Obviously. But I doubt they do. There is a class action in the making against battleborn, and plenty of other people and groups are sounding warnings about their batteries overheating due to poor internal connections.

That is what the complainants are saying. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they. There would be unlikely to say “our batteries are dangerous but we are suing Will for pointing it out”.

It’s a canal but so normally there would be no increase in level unless extreme flooding. Might be below normal in a drought I suppose!

Ah yes, so all this fuss about the Gas Safe register is just hot air!

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If it’s anything like our Beta 43 install, there is an electric lift pump but also the mechanical lift pump on the engine. The former is “optional” depending on the installation, but anyway makes bleeding much easier. So there should be no problem with the engine continuing to run without the electric pump. Ours certainly does. Our engine also has a manual shut off lever adjacent to the solenoid. In the absence of that I guess you could block off the air inlet to force a stop, probably better than turning the fuel tap off.

I’m not sure that it makes any difference re airlocks, but in terms of getting rid of moving pockets of air, in an unpressurised system they escape through the header tank (which also allows air in!) whereas with a pressurised system there should be an automatic air vent at the highest point, typically a sort of float thing which sinks down when in air and opens the vent, and floats up to close the vent when the air has been expelled. A bit like a carburettor float chamber in reverse.