Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Batteries!

[MtB]

Oh, sorry.

 

When referring to battery capacity what could have been meant if not amp/hours? I agree it is incorrect terminology but a great many people, not boaters, make the same mistake concerning battery capacity.

 

 

Lol you did that on purpose didn't you?!

 

Or are you another who can't tell the difference between Amps, Amp hours and Amps/hour?

 

 

MtB

[Alan de Enfield]

An analogy would be speed and distance. Amp is similar to speed, for example 1 mile/hour. Amp-hour is similar to distance: If you walk at 1 mile/hour for one hour, you will have walked 1 mile, walk for 3 hours you will have walked 3 miles

You wouldnt say 1 mile per hour per hour

 

If an appliance is rated at 1 amp that is the amount it will use in 1 hour, that is called an Amp

If the same appliance runs for 10 hours then it will use 10 Amp Hours

 

Or - the official defintion of an ampere (amp)

An ampere is a unit of measure of the rate of electron flow or current in an electrical conductor. One ampere of current represents one coulomb of electrical charge (6.24 x 10¹⁸ charge carriers) moving past a specific point in one second. Physicists consider current to flow from relatively positive points to relatively negative points; this is called conventional current or Franklin current.

 

Just a thought :-

Acceleration due to gravity is 32 feet / second / second

Maybe Amps are subject to gravitational pull and become Amp Hours/Hours

Edited October 19, 2014 by Alan de Enfield

[Erie Canal]

Borrowed a volt checker and one battery was 11.something and the other was oscillating between 5&7 I have just disconnected the 'dud' one and will see how I do tomorrow with just 1 for now. Didn't help that I had a migraine yesterday / today as well but it could be worse, am moored up safely

[Naughty Cal]

At 11V thats dead as well!

[DeanS]

Hi Eerie.

 

The 5V battery sounds like a dud. Remove it from the loop.

 

Then, run your engine and measure the voltage on the remaining battery. It should be 13-14V while the alternator is charging it.

If so, then when you switch your engine off (after an hour or 2), it should settle to about 12.7 or thereabouts . If you are only running 12V LED lights, that battery should keep the lights on for a week without another charge, especially if you have solar topping it up during the day. Water pumps use a lot of power, but since they aren't used permanently, the batt should stay charged.

 

As a backup you can run your engine each evening for a short while to give it some oomph through the night.

 

As a final test you can buy a clamp meter from Maplin for about £30 which measures DC current. Clamp it around the red 12V positive cable supplying your boat 12V circuit and it will tell you how much current is being supplied by the batteries at any moment in time. You can also use it to measure how much the alternator is supplying to the batteries while the engine is running. You can also stick it over the +12V cable coming out of the solar controller to see how much the solar is giving back to the batteries at any point in time.

 

Hope this helps you:)

 

ps...I CC-ed for months on batteries that went from 11V to 12.7V up and down every day. 11V is a problem if you use an invertor because the invertor will cut out and you lose any 220V, but 11V on it's own will still keep your LED lights on:)

Edited October 20, 2014 by DeanS

[bizzard]

To get a very basic indication that the batteries are being charged is to put something 12v on, an ordinary bulb light is best not LED and start the engine up whilst watching the light. When the engine is revved the light should brighten up whether the batteries are any good or not, but it sounds like they are not any good, one of them at any rate,

[MtB]

Borrowed a volt checker and one battery was 11.something and the other was oscillating between 5&7 I have just disconnected the 'dud' one and will see how I do tomorrow with just 1 for now. Didn't help that I had a migraine yesterday / today as well but it could be worse, am moored up safely

 

The fact that you have two leisure batteries which would normally be connected in parallel and giving two widely differing voltages tells us you have a bad or high resistance connection between the two batteries. If this is the case then you probably have other poor connections too, explaining their failure to charge.

 

To measure the two individual battery voltages independently you have to physically disconnect them from each other. I take it you didn't do this before measuring the battery voltages? Or maybe you did.

 

So a lot hinges on whether you got the 5 to7 volt result BEFORE you disconnected the 'dud' one, as well as after disconnecting it.

 

And given your report of totally flat batteries, I'd say the 5-7v battery was the one doing all the work, and the 11v battery was doing none, and it was 11v because it has been getting no charge for months.

 

If I'm right about the poor connections it is just possible that with this (them) fixed a good charge will bring both batteries back to life.

 

MtB

Edited October 20, 2014 by Mike the Boilerman

[Erie Canal]

Update: have reached my destination for my break in Limehouse. Have not been able to recheck it with a reader. Have only starter and 1 battery hooked up at present and after a days cruising I gave some lights. Will check for enough power for a shower in morning