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Inverter is on the fritz, maybe


wandering

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I have a problem and since I am green to the world of narrowboating I can’t tell if something is serious or not. So please forgive me in advance for my ignorance here and if you can, write to me like you would a child. Electrics is all gobbledygook to me so I get lost easily.

 

I left the marina for the first time 3 days ago, after 2 months adjusting to life on a boat.

 

On the first night, I put on my electric blanket but shortly after doing so, I heard a strange noise and what sounded like a whirring fan. I swiftly turned the blanket off and used the dogs instead to heat me.

 

Then the inverter beeped at 2am which made me panic so I turned it off.

 

What inverter do I have?

Victron Phoenix 12v 750 A

 

I also have 2 other Victron devices:

A Victron Phoenix  Battery Charger 12 / 50

 

And a Galvanic Isolator but I see no direct switches on that.

 

Anyway, I realised I don’t need to invert anything for the time being as all my things are 12v except for: my laptop charger, phone charger, and bike battery charger.

 

I turned it off.

 

The next day, I turned it on and the input level light was still red, not flashing. Even when I turn the engine off and have all my appliances unplugged, I get a red light and occasionally a beep. I noticed the fridge doesn't do its usual go on and turn off after a while and is no longer on/staying on.

 

Everything on the boat seems to work fine (lights, charging my phone, the radio) except the fridge but I can’t say with certainty what might be going on.

 

I ran the engine for a few hours to see if that might make a difference but as soon as the engine is off the light goes back RED, from GREEN on the inverter.

 

I should note when I turn the key a bit (to turn on the ignition, not the engine), the light goes back to GREEN. The fridge doesn’t go back on however.

 

I think plugging in the electric blanket did something here but I’m not sure what.

 

Any ideas about what you would do in this situation?

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Are you batteries goosed? Sounds very much like it, or your charging system is goosed. Oh and Electric blankets, hair dryers etc are for those weird people that live in houses :) How do you check that your batteries are fully charged each day?

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Do you have any means of measuring battery voltage? All these things look like the signs of knackered house batteries, which have little capacity to hold charge any more. They flatten quickly and the voltage drops. Electric blanket won't have helped. The inverter will start complaining.

You have turned off the Victron battery charger while off the shore line?

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You probably have one 12 volt battery to start the engine and two or three hefty 12 volt batteries for everything else. These are probably the sort of thing found in lorries and machinery. These will run lights, telly, and other bits and bobs quite happily for a couple of days or more but a fridge will flatten them after 24 hours or so and an electric blanket will flatten them after an hour or a lot less. These are the limitations of electric on boats. You can add more batteries but you will need a bigger alternator on the engine to charge them and you will have to run it for hours and hours. 

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47 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Are you batteries goosed? Sounds very much like it, or your charging system is goosed. Oh and Electric blankets, hair dryers etc are for those weird people that live in houses :) How do you check that your batteries are fully charged each day?

How do I check whether they are goosed or not ?

 

There is a panel in my room with Victron branding. Usually told me the state of charge. At the marina it was consistently 100%. As of three days ago, when I moved, the power would go back up. 
 

 

45 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Do you have any means of measuring battery voltage? All these things look like the signs of knackered house batteries, which have little capacity to hold charge any more. They flatten quickly and the voltage drops. Electric blanket won't have helped. The inverter will start complaining.

You have turned off the Victron battery charger while off the shore line?

Aside from the small panel telling me the state of charge etc, no. How would I do that? 
 

During the engine service, the engineer said the batteries are fine. I think putting on the electric blanket might of done something like deplete them / knacker them.  
 

 My boat is over 30 years old. Batteries may be 10 years old. I’m not in the marina anymore. Left a few days ago. But whist there the inverted was on all the time with no issue. 

40 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Electric blankets like hairdryers can use a Diode for the half power setting. Inverters don't like this generally make a loud buzzing sound and go pop.

What happens after the pop? Time for the burial?

15 minutes ago, Bee said:

You probably have one 12 volt battery to start the engine and two or three hefty 12 volt batteries for everything else. These are probably the sort of thing found in lorries and machinery. These will run lights, telly, and other bits and bobs quite happily for a couple of days or more but a fridge will flatten them after 24 hours or so and an electric blanket will flatten them after an hour or a lot less. These are the limitations of electric on boats. You can add more batteries but you will need a bigger alternator on the engine to charge them and you will have to run it for hours and hours. 

The blanket was on for fewer than ten minutes. It happened pretty immediately.  Is the fridge that bad even if 12v? How do you keep your food cold and frozen?

Edited by wandering
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Ultimately you need to replenish whatever you take out of the battery. Running the engine for a couple hours is unlikely to suffice if you're using electronic devices which have significant drain on the battery. Electronics that generate any kind of heat were an absolute nono on my boat except when on shore-power. (I did not have a gennie or a solar set up)

 

I replaced my leisure batteries before they reached 3 years old. They can last longer if you have a proper battery management setup/regime. All that stuff is beyond me (hence why mine lasted less than 3 years) but is well documented on this site. :)

 

 

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19 minutes ago, wandering said:

Aside from the small panel telling me the state of charge etc, no. How would I do that? 

What is this? These amp-hour counters can tell lies when they report state of charge. They are good voltmeters and good ammeters, but state of charge can get out of sync with the reality of the batteries really quickly. I ran in to this problem when I first had this boat.

It sounds like you need to read the battery charging primer.

 

19 minutes ago, wandering said:

I’m not in the marina anymore. Left a few days ago. But whist there the inverted was on all the time with no issue. 

I'm guessing you were on a shore line cable connection and the battery charger was doing its job, keeping the batteries topped up and the boat's electrical systems running from the national grid. Now you are away, you are your own power company and what you take out for various electrical gadgets, you have to put back by engine running and solar, as @RichM says above. 10 years old is very old for bog standard lead acid batteries. They are probably knackered.

You'll need to learn how to look after the new ones, or they will get knackered too, very quickly. Welcome to the wonderful world of being off the electrical grid. 😀

Edited by Jen-in-Wellies
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1 hour ago, wandering said:

Electrics is all gobbledygook to me so I get lost easily.

 

I feel for you, but electrics are one of the main ongoing problems on narrowboats for people who don't understand them. That battery charging primer is good but may be a bit complicated for you at first so please ask about anything you do not understand, so we can try to help out.

 

I echo the bit about the thing saying 100% charged will be telling lies. Please ignore the % charge reading. Use the current (amps) reading to tell when the batteries are more or less fully charged and what is known as rested voltage to infer how much they have been discharged. (an hour or more after all charge sources are shut down). That is the voltage with no electrical loads running

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42 minutes ago, wandering said:

The blanket was on for fewer than ten minutes. It happened pretty immediately.  Is the fridge that bad even if 12v? How do you keep your food cold and frozen?

As others have said, electric blankets, hair driers, electric heaters, immersion heaters and basically anything else that produces heat for anything more than a few minutes, are out unless your boat is equipped with its own power station. That's why most boats have gas and/or diesel powered cooking, space and water heating. You used to be able to get gas fridges, but you can't install them these days.

Typically an electric fridge (whether 12V running directly from the batteries or 230V supplied via an inverter) will consume around half the total domestic electricity consumption. And a fridge freezer is worse than a fridge. So if your batteries are struggling consider turning off the fridge overnight, or keeping your perishable food in a cool place (on the baseplate, cool shady spot in the well deck) until you get things sorted. And forego frozen food.

Running the fridge while the engine running is fine.

If you travel for a few hours every day you are on the boat, then charging the batteries is no big deal. But if you are a liveaboard and only travel a short distance every few days then you will need to run the engine or a generator for a few hours most days to keep the batteries up. Solar will help in summer but is pretty useless in winter.

Edited by David Mack
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1 hour ago, wandering said:

I should note when I turn the key a bit (to turn on the ignition, not the engine), the light goes back to GREEN. 

 

 

^^^ This ^^^ suggests to me perhaps the problem is not (as others have suggested) related to battery state of charge. I'm more inclined to suspect a poor electrical connection to the domestic battery bank. 

 

No-one else seems to have picked up on this snippet of information.

 

Welcome to the forum by the way.

 

Unfortunately understanding your electrics is utterly critical to continuing to live off grid (boat or van). If you don't get a grip on this really quickly you'll probably have to give up being off grid and go back to the marina. Read the "battery primer" to start learning the basics. Come back and ask for clarification the instant you get to something that makes no sense... People here will give you endless help.

 

 

 

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Fridges..... We cruise a few hours a day in France where it can get really hot. The fridge is on when the engine is running and couple of hours after that, it goes off in the evening and stays off all night and only goes on when we set off again. the fridge is still cool in the morning and with care we still have cold beer, cold milk (if we can get proper milk not that dreadful long life stuff) and stuff stays OK with a bit of thought and planning. We have a small Waco 12 v. fridge and 2 x 110 ah batteries. We have all led lights, a car radio /cd player, a 12 volt telly that we use sparingly. We run the lot and charge batteries if we moor somewhere with electric hook up but apart from that we are a bit primitive. That's boats for you.

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2 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

^^^ This ^^^ suggests to me perhaps the problem is not (as others have suggested) related to battery state of charge. I'm more inclined to suspect a poor electrical connection to the domestic battery bank. 

 

No-one else seems to have picked up on this snippet of information.

 

Welcome to the forum by the way.

 

Unfortunately understanding your electrics is utterly critical to continuing to live off grid (boat or van). If you don't get a grip on this really quickly you'll probably have to give up being off grid and go back to the marina. Read the "battery primer" to start learning the basics. Come back and ask for clarification the instant you get to something that makes no sense... People here will give you endless help.

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, noticing the light change to green when the key is half turned is what led me to post here. I don’t know why. But it could be the starter battery is fine but leisure batteries are not. 

 

I’m confused why my engineer would tell me just last week that the batteries were fine after engine service but the consensus here is that perhaps they are not, in fact, fine. I think they were fine but I’ve done something with that bloody blanket. 

 

I hate not knowing what I don’t know. It feels both humiliating and humbling simultaneously. 

 

22 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

I feel for you, but electrics are one of the main ongoing problems on narrowboats for people who don't understand them. That battery charging primer is good but may be a bit complicated for you at first so please ask about anything you do not understand, so we can try to help out.

 

I echo the bit about the thing saying 100% charged will be telling lies. Please ignore the % charge reading. Use the current (amps) reading to tell when the batteries are more or less fully charged and what is known as rested voltage to infer how much they have been discharged. (an hour or more after all charge sources are shut down). That is the voltage with no electrical loads running

 

I am trying to understand. I have a very basic knowledge and have watched many videos. I have read that primer but I don’t learn reading a big wall of text like that unfortunately. I don’t want to go back to the marina. It was awful there. Like a caravan park. Not my thing. So I do want to get better at understanding all this but all the might in the world won’t make it easy for me to learn. I have a learning disability as well so that doesn’t help things. 

 

I think I’ll go back to the marina to enquire and get this sorted. 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, wandering said:

 

There is a panel in my room with Victron branding. Usually told me the state of charge. At the marina it was consistently 100%. As of three days ago, when I moved, the power would go back up. 

 

 My boat is over 30 years old. Batteries may be 10 years old. I’m not in the marina anymore. Left a few days ago. But whist there the inverted was on all the time with no issue. 

 Is the fridge that bad even if 12v? How do you keep your food cold and frozen?

The percentage meters often tell big lies and should not be relied upon, at 19 years old the batteries are probably worn out, while in the marina your electricity was coming from the shore supply , not your batteries. A 12 volt fridge in its a compressor fridge is one of the first things to complain it the batteries are bad. 

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5 minutes ago, wandering said:

I’m confused why my engineer would tell me just last week that the batteries were fine after engine service but the consensus here is that perhaps they are not, in fact, fine.

 

Nail on the head with that. 

 

Not all 'engineers' are the same. There is a HUGE spectrum of abilities and Tony Brooks posting above is as good as you can get. 

 

Where are you, roughly? If you say the general area someone here might be willing to nip over and do some testing/help explain some stuff to you...

 

 

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6 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Nail on the head with that. 

 

Not all 'engineers' are the same. There is a HUGE spectrum of abilities and Tony Brooks posting above is as good as you can get. 

 

Where are you, roughly? If you say the general area someone here might be willing to nip over and do some testing/help explain some stuff to you...

 

 

I am currently at Foxton Locks. 

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1 minute ago, wandering said:

I am currently at Foxton Locks. 

 

Ok! 

 

There must be other boaters around you there. Have you wondered up the towpath and asked one or two for some informal help? Moat boaters are incredibly helpful especially if you tell them you are new to all this and have a problem.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

The percentage meters often tell big lies and should not be relied upon, at 19 years old the batteries are probably worn out, while in the marina your electricity was coming from the shore supply , not your batteries. A 12 volt fridge in its a compressor fridge is one of the first things to complain it the batteries are bad. 

I believe I accidentally reset it to 100 so I know that view in the panel is inaccurate. I wish I knew how to show images and videos of what I’m taking about here but fie size too big. The rate at which the number depletes, should that too be considered inaccurate? Ok it’s not 100%, that we can agree on, but now it’s going down to 99.6%. Is the change false too then, do you think?

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9 minutes ago, wandering said:

I believe I accidentally reset it to 100 so I know that view in the panel is inaccurate. I wish I knew how to show images and videos of what I’m taking about here but fie size too big. The rate at which the number depletes, should that too be considered inaccurate? Ok it’s not 100%, that we can agree on, but now it’s going down to 99.6%. Is the change false too then, do you think?

 

Post screen shots of your images not the actual image.

 

That is the quickest way I have found of defeating the forum file size limit.

 

Vids need uploading to something like you tube and then linked to.

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36 minutes ago, Bee said:

Fridges..... We cruise a few hours a day in France where it can get really hot. The fridge is on when the engine is running and couple of hours after that, it goes off in the evening and stays off all night and only goes on when we set off again. the fridge is still cool in the morning and with care we still have cold beer, cold milk (if we can get proper milk not that dreadful long life stuff) and stuff stays OK with a bit of thought and planning. We have a small Waco 12 v. fridge and 2 x 110 ah batteries. We have all led lights, a car radio /cd player, a 12 volt telly that we use sparingly. We run the lot and charge batteries if we moor somewhere with electric hook up but apart from that we are a bit primitive. That's boats for you.

Long life milk is up there with margarine, and so called spreadable butter muck. Retailers worldwide should receive a minimum 3 years custodial sentence for selling the vile garbage!! Skimmed and semi skimmed milk should be a minimum 2 year sentence.

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There is a difference between voltage and capacity.

 

You can have a 12 volt battery the size of your finger nail, or one the size of a car. They are both 12 volts but their capacity (how many Ah) they have is the difference.

 

A lead acid battery needs to be recharged every day (ideally) to 100% state of charge, this can take 3-4-6 hours of engine running depending on how much you have used.

 

If you do not recharge it fully then it becomes clogged up with lead bits'sludge (it is called sulphation) this reduces the capacity of the battery. The next day you do not fully charge the battery again and it gets more sulpahtion, same next day, same next day and your battery that when new had a capacity of 100Ah now has a capacity of (maybe) 20AH.

 

Think of it like a 3 gallon bucket. 

It holds water (voltage) and has a capacity of 3 gallons of water (amphour)

Put some mud in the bottom and it is a still a bucket and holds water (voltage) but it now has the capacity of 2.5 gallons, add more mud and it becomes a 2 gallon bucket..

 

One a battery starts to sulphate then you will find that it charges quickly (because it takes less to fill it from empty) - think filling the bucket with water when it is already half full of mud. And because it has a lower capacity it goes flat very quickly.

 

Are you running your engine every day ?

If so for how many hours ?

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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45 minutes ago, wandering said:

Yes, noticing the light change to green when the key is half turned is what led me to post here. I don’t know why. But it could be the starter battery is fine but leisure batteries are not. 

 

That suggests to me that you have a single alternator and a simple split charge relay. The relay connects the two banks for/during charging and disconnects them when charging stops, so you may very well be correct. Such relays are usually fed from the "ignition on" key switch terminal. There are complications but often the relay joins the two banks the moment the ignition is turned on, so the engine battery can feed into the domestic battery.

 

50 minutes ago, wandering said:

I’m confused why my engineer would tell me just last week that the batteries were fine after engine service but the consensus here is that perhaps they are not, in fact, fine. I think they were fine but I’ve done something with that bloody blanket.

 

Batteries fail in two ways. One, chemical changes take place (called sulphation) that gradually reduce the electricity holding capacity of the battery. When this happens, a simple voltage test may well show up as OK, but they will go flat very quickly. The blanket would have drained them fairly fast.

 

There are indications that imply sulphation, but I am not going through them at the moment because it will get technical.

 

Two, batteries are designed to have a finite number of charge-discharge cycles. When this number is reached, a or some cells in the battery will start to short out, self discharging the battery. Again there are signs that imply shorting cells but if the batteries were on a modest charge the engineer may not have seen them - especially if the batteries are sealed.

 

You are far from alone in all this, I think such things happen to well over 50% of new boaters who buy second hand boats. Keep working at it. You can see from this there is so much to learn.

 

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