I'm back time to start the project.

[Dr Bob]

2 hours ago, WotEver said:

Those who have tried wind generally say that it’s a waste of time on UK inland waterways. It’ll rattle the boat and make a lot of noise but it won’t actually generate much. 

We had a wind genny on our lumpy water boat and travelled from Scotland to the Med with a number of boats all with different wind gennies. I think they are pretty poor unless you get 15-20mph winds which you dont tend to get inland and in a blow you will want to shelter in a calmer area rather than be in the wind. The worst thing about wind gennies is the noise. Even the expensive ones make a lot of noise in wind and will annoy all your neighbours overnight. We lived with it for 3 years but the noise is a real pain. Please dont moor near us if you have one.

As others have said, Solar in the winter can be 10% of what you get in the summer. You are not going to use your electric boat much in the winter. Read up on Lithium batteries and how they perform in the cold. You cant charge them if the temp is below 0°C -otherwise the chemicals on the plates start stripping. Efficiency is poor down near freezing.

[Calranthe]

Wind is out then and that leaves just solar to top up as a bonus. thank you.

[cuthound]

Larger capaciry lithium ion batteries are particularly dangerous if they catch fire, and must be left to burn out.

More info here.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/safety_concerns_with_li_ion

[Calranthe]

2 hours ago, cuthound said:

Larger capaciry lithium ion batteries are particularly dangerous if they catch fire, and must be left to burn out.

More info here.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/safety_concerns_with_li_ion

True but the newer models like relion have multiple safety features, yes something can always go wrong but then again even though the burn time is less a petrol tank can cause issues and a run away diesel engine is not a fun thing to experience or deal with. 

I read that article and the major concern is grey market, all Lithium Ion batteries from reputable makes have specialized circuits and software built into them to counter this, size does not really come into it, yes if the cells get ruptured but lets be real here to do that kind of damage to a lion battery casing would take sever damage to the boat itself.

We will have 4 primary batteries for propulsion in two separate aft holds the software itself will keep an eye on temps in real time to the Dash and phone software. they will also be in quick release clasps and while my 100AH AGM test battery has a weight of 30kg my test 100AH Relion (which actually gives double the available charge) has a weight of 13kg. 

This will be completely separate from the two relion batteries that power everything else.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Calranthe

[cuthound]

Although lithium ion battery fires are quite rare, larger batteries burn fiercely and are difficult to extinguish. Here is a video of a Tesla suffering a lithium ion fire.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4997486/35-firefighters-tackle-enormous-Tesla-Model-S-fire.html

Having to pass mandatory crash tests means that the batteries used in Tesla's are about the safest, along with those used in aircraft.

Note that Tesla recommend quarrantining the car for 48 hours after because of the likelihood of the battery reigniting.

Personally I would wait until more is known about large lithium battery installations and how to extinguish them rapidly before installing them in my pride and joy.

 

[PD1964]

  Why don't you just buy a boat and enjoy it, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel?

  Your last venture on the canals ended in a large financial loss and the way you've started again with all these ideas will only end with the same result.

  Just buy a suitable and appropriate boat that meets your needs and requirements and enjoy it, it's not that hard.

  If you are going to carry on with all your ideas and questions can you please put them in the relevant Forum like "Boat Building and Maintenance" or "Equipment" as your Thread will only go like your last attempt to get on the water and spiral into nonsense and irrelevance

 

Edited December 23, 2017 by PD1964

[jocave]

Glad to see you both back and are now looking for a new boat, I like the sound of your ideas and I hope you can achieve your dreams but as time is obviously precious to you I have to agree with the above post, can you not purchase something like a narrow beam Viking and just get out and enjoy the waterways then maybe buy something similar that you can have on hard standing and can work on and convert over time , best of both worlds then, something you can just turn up and use whenever you want even if its just a day or two cruising up and down , then the second one can be worked on whenever you have the time/cash/enthusiasm and no big rush to get it in the water, you could spend time researching the best equipment/batteries or other systems you may want whilst still being able to be onboard something that is usable for now, my boat is a work in progress but we are still able to use and enjoy it for now, in the future we will need to look at wheel chair adaptions or even a different boat but as time is ticking at least the wife can still enjoy the canals ..

[magpie patrick]

On 12/21/2017 at 17:19, Alan de Enfield said:

Good luck and may your God smile on you both.

+ another one

3 hours ago, PD1964 said:

  Why don't you just buy a boat and enjoy it, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel?

  Your last venture on the canals ended in a large financial loss and the way you've started again with all these ideas will only end with the same result.

  Just buy a suitable and appropriate boat that meets your needs and requirements and enjoy it, it's not that hard.

  If you are going to carry on with all your ideas and questions can you please put them in the relevant Forum like "Boat Building and Maintenance" or "Equipment" as your Thread will only go like your last attempt to get on the water and spiral into nonsense and irrelevance

 

I've moved the thread, although as Calranthe seems to have learned from the last attempt it is a bit harsh to describe that, or his posting, as nonsense and irrelevance. 

[PD1964]

56 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

+ another one

I've moved the thread, although as Calranthe seems to have learned from the last attempt it is a bit harsh to describe that, or his posting, as nonsense and irrelevance. 

Sorry, I didn't mean his attempt to get on the water, I meant what happened to his previous Thread which went in all sorts of directions and was filled with irrelevant and nonsensical posts by contributors, leading to the Thread being closed down.

Edited December 23, 2017 by PD1964

[Calranthe]

9 hours ago, PD1964 said:

  Why don't you just buy a boat and enjoy it, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel?

  Your last venture on the canals ended in a large financial loss and the way you've started again with all these ideas will only end with the same result.

  Just buy a suitable and appropriate boat that meets your needs and requirements and enjoy it, it's not that hard.

  If you are going to carry on with all your ideas and questions can you please put them in the relevant Forum like "Boat Building and Maintenance" or "Equipment" as your Thread will only go like your last attempt to get on the water and spiral into nonsense and irrelevance

 

I have always been an odd sort, a special snowflake and or a stubborn SoB.

I could have bought an cookie cutter solar panel system for my roof but that was too easy and I see too many flaws in the system, instead I built three prototypes Lets call them A B C

(A) was the old fashioned "it works so why change it" A normal 150w solar panel hooked up to a charger linked to 2*100ah lead acid batteries (the cheapest £60 ones on Amazon)

(B)Newest of the old A german 280w solar panel with ambient light properties Advanced charger and 2*100ah GEL Deep Cycle batteries from photonic universe (£180 each)

(C)Relion Used both the german and old solar panels plus a nice charger and 2* Relion 100ah Batteries (lets just say the price I spent on kathleen just about covered the batteries)

I then ran tests over the last three months ranging from the mundane of running a bedroom devices of them, to large appliances, purposefully taking them to 70% then 50% then 0% charge.

As you can imagine the £60 led acid are just about dead, surprisingly the Gel batteries have handled been dropped to 0 a few times and still hold a really good charge but long term they will fail, the Relions are absolutely amazing batteries.

Before Google and pre lycos days I built my own search engine, this was in the early 90's,

Also I created my own online game (mud) which holds the record for the longest running online game (started it in 98 and it is still running now on a server in my bedroom we have between 10-20 concurrent users and a playerbase of 1000 from all over the world I will not give out its name simply because it is a mature game).

Not saying this to brag or anything just to make a point that I like to improve things. or change things, or mess things up

An all electric GRP cruiser for canal and river should be possible, it will give more room and less vibration than a diesel or petrol outboard, it should be quite reliable and why not

I have at least 6 months before Paola will be up anything like this.

Why not take a good hull and rebuild it inside and motive power for the future ?

Kathleen was not a loss to me or my wife, the experience we had on her in that short time was worth 10 times what we paid and if she had been 5ft or more bigger I would have kept her and done this to her.

Money has never really meant anything to either myself or wife beyond keeping ourselves in a stable warm home base, we are not rich by any means but when you own your own house, do not smoke, do not own a car and do not enjoy nights out drinking you end up having a comfortable amount of capital, then when people mention financial loss I just think back to 2 years in cancer wards and the latest visit to the renal failure wards a couple of weeks ago, As long as I pay bills and everything is stable then extra cash budgeted for things like this has no affect on us if anything does not work, or as a next door neighbour told us 17 years ago, "I spent all my time building out the double glazing company I owned, put off spending any money, ended up with over 1 million in the bank and then my wife got an aggressive form of breast cancer and was dead in 3 months" he would have given anything to go back and have that time with her, spending that money and enjoying life.

 

Edited December 24, 2017 by Calranthe

[Calranthe]

6 months minimum is a nice comfortable amount of time to source a solid Buckingham or Viking hull (or the equivalent) have it transported up to a local mooring on the TMC and have it worked on, unfortunately a lithium battery fire is almost impossible to stop once it gets going and you just need to let it burn out but lets compare it to three other volatile substances we all have experience with.

Petrol and Gas and carbon monoxide each of those can be killers and apart from carbon monoxide are very fast and deadly and yet we all deal with them daily.

Now lets look at a Lithium battery, one of the big differences is a lithium battery is not just a battery it has circuits and software built into the case it is part of the expense and the very IMPORTANT point is this a so called thermal runaway when a cell breaches and begins to react and heat up is not an instant event, temperatures slowly build internally and externally, it can take hours for it to breach containment and while you can not stop it as long as you have external thermal sensors at well as internal.

Meaning you have time to remove the battery and set it away from the boat, call the fire service and deploy your D type fire extinguisher, this is very very different from a petrol, gas or even CO event.

All those thermal runaway videos on youtube usually do not mention one thing, to get these batteries to thermal runaway they first pry open the cell and remove/break the circuit whose sole purpose is to stop a thermal runaway. (primary concern is grey market suppliers)

For the places where the batteries would be stored to get trashed to the point those batteries took enough physical damage to breach that boat would have to be completely messed up anyway.

[jddevel]

My wife likewise having lived with two different life threatening problems for nearly 15 years every day you wake up is a good one but the conclusion we came to was first to, like you, buy a boat capable of both sea and canal passage to be used for leisure purposes. We bought a "2nd hand " trailerable Sealine 24S with an aft sleeping double bed and inboard Volvo diesel with 850 odd hours on the clock originally from Portugal (in EU) for £16500. Trailer cost me another £2750 but I had a vehicle capable of pulling so the combined weight of just under 3.5tons was no problem. It had everything with it including warm air heating toilet cooker,sink and bench seating/table that converted to either two singles or a double. ( I had to install a holding tank for canal use in the engine room). Draft allowed quite a wide cruising range with a hood when lowered gave a reasonable airdraft. As it happens though we never put it in the water for two years and eventually took the bull by horns risked the time frame and bought a sailaway spending a year fitting it out. But that was our decision. The important thing is ask yourself what are you trying to achieve? In our case holidays on the canals that we`ve enjoyed for over 50 years but in our own boat rather than hired. So my point is not get bogged down on the how am I going to move it, heat it etc. Buy something and enjoy those quality times together. Even a reasonable vessel you could "update/upgrade" whilst enjoying it. Personally the challenge of doing this helps both of us keep our health and might I say youth- our  children might question this!!  We`ve a LPG converted Honda generator and just having 300watt panel installed. All ongoing improvements whilst enjoying. Just a thought and now`s the right time to look/buy. Spain,Greece, Portugal perhaps.

[colinwilks]

Calranthe, if ever I come across you and Paola stuck on the cut somewhere and out of juice, I for one will be very happy to offer you a tow to your nearest hookup.  Whilst I find your project eccentric, I admire your creativity and stubborn determination! Happy Christmas!

[Dr Bob]

8 minutes ago, jddevel said:

 Just a thought and now`s the right time to look/buy. Spain,Greece, Portugal perhaps.

Greece is a very cheap place to find 2nd hand boats. Only problem now is the Euro:pound but still a great place to find bargins.

[Alan de Enfield]

5 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:

Greece is a very cheap place to find 2nd hand boats. Only problem now is the Euro:pound but still a great place to find bargins.

Our last one came from Croatia.

[PD1964]

17 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

+ another one

I've moved the thread, although as Calranthe seems to have learned from the last attempt it is a bit harsh to describe that, or his posting, as nonsense and irrelevance. 

Thank you maggie patrick for moving as I imagine his posts would only confuse and be bewildering to the "New To Boating" as can be seen by the above long replies.

[MaggieMay]

It seems to me that another disadvantage of electric propulsion is going to be the loss of "free" hot water from the engine. I don't remember any mention of provision for hot water in the early posts on the thread. Having said that doesn't the owner of Waterway Routes have an electric, or at least hybrid, boat? Does anyone know how he heats water? As I understand it gas bottles do not last long when used for water heating.

[magpie patrick]

1 hour ago, PD1964 said:

Thank you maggie patrick for moving as I imagine his posts would only confuse and be bewildering to the "New To Boating" as can be seen by the above long replies.

No worries, and apologies for the misunderstanding over your words earlier 

[Dr Bob]

5 minutes ago, MaggieMay said:

It seems to me that another disadvantage of electric propulsion is going to be the loss of "free" hot water from the engine. I don't remember any mention of provision for hot water in the early posts on the thread. Having said that doesn't the owner of Waterway Routes have an electric, or at least hybrid, boat? Does anyone know how he heats water? As I understand it gas bottles do not last long when used for water heating.

That's a really good point. It's easy to forget that oodles of hot water is on tap following a days cruise, or a bit less after running the eberspacher on a cold frosty morning. Important to plan how that is going to be delivered.

[Naughty Cal]

For what it is worth I think you should buy a boat you think will be suitable and run it for 12 months before spending any money on it or modifying it.

When you decide it isn't the right boat you can sell it on without having spent thousands on it and devaluing it to other purchasers. 

[Alan de Enfield]

33 minutes ago, MaggieMay said:

As I understand it gas bottles do not last long when used for water heating.

1Kg of gas produces 7Kwh

A 13kg cylinder 'holds' 91Kwh

To heat 20 litres (a typical calorifier size) from 10 degrees C to 85 degrees C using a 3kw burner will take 35 minutes, or roughly 1.5Kwh per 20 litres.

You can heat '60 calorifier equivalents' (1200 litres) from a 13kg Cylinder at a cost of under 50p a time.

Yes - when cruising the hot water is 'free', but when moored up for a few day would running your engine for 30 minutes (0.75 litres of diesel = 50p ) heat 20 litres of water from 10 to 85 degrees ?

Edited December 24, 2017 by Alan de Enfield

[Alan de Enfield]

20 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said:

buy a boat you think will be suitable and run it for 12 months before spending any money on it or modifying it.

But being disabled means his wife cannot access or easily move about on a boat without modification, admittedly propulsion modifications are not immediately necessary but when they are done, it may impinge/affect the mods already done to allow disabled use. 

[MaggieMay]

23 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

You can heat '60 calorifier equivalents' (1200 litres) from a 13kg Cylinder at a cost of under 50p a time.

I wasn't thinking about the cost as much as the bother of having to buy replacement cylinders frequently.

[Naughty Cal]

17 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

But being disabled means his wife cannot access or easily move about on a boat without modification, admittedly propulsion modifications are not immediately necessary but when they are done, it may impinge/affect the mods already done to allow disabled use. 

Finding something which suits them for access and accommodation should be a bigger priority then something that is easy to needlessly modify the propulsion.

There will be a boat somewhere that has easy access for them both.

There are a couple on the marina here who have had their boat modified so that he can wheel the wife's chair straight into the cockpit.  Sensibly though he waited 18 months first to makes sure it was the right boat for them. Then he had the transom modified. They have done a good job of it and you would never know the job has been done.

1 minute ago, MaggieMay said:

I wasn't thinking about the cost as much as the bother of having to buy replacement cylinders frequently.

They will need replacing at some point anyway!

[bizzard]

Engine heating water whilst cruising along ain't free, in fact the cost is roughly the same as any other way of heating it. The engine is over cooled for much longer because of the colorifier until its thermostat opens at normal running temperature, therefore using more fuel than if it didn't have one, like running with the choke out for longer with a petrol engined car.   No such thing as free power on this planet, Even solar panels are absorbing the suns rays, nibbling away at it and wearing it out before its time.   The end is nigh!!!