Hire Firms and Batteries

[JonL]

How do hire firms manage their batteries?

 

This forum is full of questions about batteries, the care of them, charging cycles, power audits etc etc.

 

I was just wondering how large hire firms get on with battery maintenance? I would imagine that the vast majority of people who hire would have little or no concept of the dark art surrounding batteries! In an ever increasing power hungry world it must be challenge.

 

Do hire firms have to switch out batteries on turnarounds and how long can they expect a set of batteries last ?

 

Just for interest.

[Albion]

How do hire firms manage their batteries?

 

This forum is full of questions about batteries, the care of them, charging cycles, power audits etc etc.

 

I was just wondering how large hire firms get on with battery maintenance? I would imagine that the vast majority of people who hire would have little or no concept of the dark art surrounding batteries! In an ever increasing power hungry world it must be challenge.

 

Do hire firms have to switch out batteries on turnarounds and how long can they expect a set of batteries last ?

 

Just for interest.

 

That's a really good question to which I don't know the answer. However, I think that some hire bases impress upon their hirers the importance of battery charging judging by the amount of, for example, Silsden Boats that run their engines statically for hours when moored up in central Skipton. My guess is that they've been told that their central heating and other power requirements require X hours of running per day and they achieve that by static running where necessary.

Roger

[bottle]

Roger is right,many years ago we hired a boat that was one of the first to be fitted with an inverter and the hire company said we needed to run the engine 8 hours a day.

 

In those days it was not a problem as we used to travel for about 6.

[dor]

A friend who hired recently (November) was told they must run the engine when the Eberspacher heating was switched on.

 

I suspect hire boats manage reasonably well as most hirers will be cruising a fair bit most days.

Edited January 24, 2012 by dor

[Proper Job]

In the main, I'd have thought that your average hire boat does nore than enough daily engine running hours to charge up the batteries.

[tillergirl]

I know what one hire firm does in Northants..........twice we've hire and twice we've broke down due to battery issues. The owner - bless him - comes out with a new battery and changes them. Not quite sure if that is part of his battery maintenance and audit schedule.

 

Others we have hired from have always had the boats running when we've arrived for handover. One firm even told us to switch the water pump off at night.

Edited January 24, 2012 by tillergirl

[larkshall]

Well hire boats seem to keep electrical appliances to the barest minimum, unlike owners.

[Nickhlx]

I think the majority of hirers likely want "to get their money's worth" and do quite long days. That coupled with not too much electrical draw being installed and the hire companies stressing to "switch everything off if you are not using it", during both the day but especially evenings ( or when engine stopped) allows most to get through their day...

 

Nick

[Bob18]

And of course most hires are in the "summer months", so with brighter, longer evenings there's less demand on the battery than a liveaboard in the middle of winter...

[JonL]

I would think the turn the water pump off at night advise is to stop it waking everyone up if it decides to prime up in the middle of the night !

[Guest]

Additionally - some hire boats (all the ones we have ever hired) will only generate hot water by use of the engine so by combining long cruising days which I think it's reasonable to assume most hireres will do, with the need to keep the batts topped up, you kill two birds with one stone.

[dmr]

Over the past few years we have witnessed quite a few broken down hire boats. Except for one where the rudder had been dislodged, they have all involved battery/electrical issues. The hire bases appear really good at fixing most breakdowns very quickly, usually by replacing just batteries. I suspect that they take the old one back home, charge them, and keep them ready for the next breakdown.

The repair to the rudder was also impressive with the engineer walking along the towpath carrying just the tools that he knew he needed!

 

Hire boating involves long cruising daya and eating out almost every evening which is exactly the opposite of us liveaboards.

[Guest]

Over the past few years we have witnessed quite a few broken down hire boats. Except for one where the rudder had been dislodged, they have all involved battery/electrical issues. The hire bases appear really good at fixing most breakdowns very quickly, usually by replacing just batteries. I suspect that they take the old one back home, charge them, and keep them ready for the next breakdown.

The repair to the rudder was also impressive with the engineer walking along the towpath carrying just the tools that he knew he needed!

 

Hire boating involves long cruising daya and eating out almost every evening which is exactly the opposite of us liveaboards.

 

I think that is pretty much spot on and from our experience it includes broken down hire boats on the Broads too...

[Timleech]

One thing hire companies seem to disregard totally is the 'generating hours' rule. Hirers that I've come across are completely ignorant of this, & as has been said some hirers are told to run their engines more or less from when they get up until they go to bed!

 

Tim

[Albion]

One thing hire companies seem to disregard totally is the 'generating hours' rule. Hirers that I've come across are completely ignorant of this, & as has been said some hirers are told to run their engines more or less from when they get up until they go to bed!

 

Tim

Agree completely. A lot of the Silsden boats that I have seen running engines continuously when static are in wintery evenings with the diesel burner heating going. They run them way into the late evening/early night and are usually moored just below a large block of apartments in Skipton.

Roger

[Naughty Cal]

We never really had a problem with battery power on the boats we hired (Broads based). The only time we had them switched was when the gear box spewed out all of its oil about an hour after we set off and left us stranded between the Pontiac Roadhouse and Great Yarmouth in the middle of March, not the greatest place to breakdown. We were towed into Yarmouth and the yards engineers set about changing the gearbox. They did offer to take us back and exchange boats but we were three days into a fornights holiday and didnt fancy back tracking. Anyway by the time they had changed the box it was late in the evening and we couldnt really run the engine without disturbing a lot of other boats, so they put us a different set of batteries onboard. Not the boats fault or the batteries.

 

One thing we wouldnt do again though in hindsight is to head out straight onto Breydon Water with an untested gearbox set up

[JonL]

One thing we wouldnt do again though in hindsight is to head out straight onto Breydon Water with an untested gearbox set up

 

Tell us more sounds interesting

[jonathanA]

when we used to hire i always noticed large piles of batteries lying around the hire bases and assumed they had a fairly short life...

 

The last hire boat we used had volt meters and we were told to keep and eye on them and as one was labelled 'fridge' i assumed the fridge had its own battery bank. we were also told to the turn the fridge down at night to make the battery last.

 

I suspect the engine running when using the diesel heater is more to do with the voltage needed for those things to spark up and wind themselves up into full jet engine mode.

[Theo]

I know what one hire firm does in Northants..........twice we've hire and twice we've broke down due to battery issues. The owner - bless him - comes out with a new battery and changes them. Not quite sure if that is part of his battery maintenance and audit schedule.

 

Others we have hired from have always had the boats running when we've arrived for handover. One firm even told us to switch the water pump off at night.

 

Switching the water pump off at night is the way to avoid wasting water and frightening the crew if someone leaves a tap dripping.

 

Nick

[mrsmelly]

How do hire firms manage their batteries?

 

This forum is full of questions about batteries, the care of them, charging cycles, power audits etc etc.

 

I was just wondering how large hire firms get on with battery maintenance? I would imagine that the vast majority of people who hire would have little or no concept of the dark art surrounding batteries! In an ever increasing power hungry world it must be challenge.

 

Do hire firms have to switch out batteries on turnarounds and how long can they expect a set of batteries last ?

 

Just for interest.

 

I cant speak for all companys but the one I worked for the case was that batteries are expendable and if in doubt just change them. We did usualy get a full season out of them as many people cruise all day then park up and go to the pub so dont use much lectric. The bad times were beginning and end of season. The thing is once they are full then they are full but people pull up earlier some times in late/early season and wack the dreaded eber on and LEAVE it on. Also if a boat had females on and a boat with an inverter you can say what you like to them about batteries but in a lot of cases out comes the HAIR DRYER TONGS etc etc and say 8 ladies getting ready to go out the batts are soon depleted how ever long they cruised for. So in short there was no quibble change em but give the crew plenty of info about batts, oh and we always told them NO ENGINE running when moored after 8pm etc.

Edited January 24, 2012 by mrsmelly

[Semitrad]

We had a share in an ownerships boat a few years ago, no matter how careful the various owners were, two years was about the longest between battery changes.

[Jus73]

On average the batteries in our fleet last around 18 months, some slightly less. As soon as we get feedback that on the odd night the inverter alarm has gone off in the early morning (and we know that the customer has put some cruising hours in) we'll change them. Although we spend a lot of time explaining to customers about power usage on board, some still think that they're connected into the grid! All part of the learning curve for them though

Justin