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Electric clothes dryer


aracer

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2 hours ago, Robbo said:

Electric heating will be about double the cost of a stove or diesel heater.

I've not got a diesel heater, just an old Alde gas one and Calor prices seem to be going up all the time. The stove is at the other end of the boat to the bedroom - it's just for use warming that up a bit when the eco fan isn't doing enough ?

1 hour ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

If you go down this route and then please get some battery monitoring equipment and do a little  study on how to interpret it. (Plenty on other topics about this and which scales to totally ignore on the popular ones).

Sure - I'm an electronic engineer and own a multimeter, have been checking the batteries manually since before I bought the boat (and understand the impact of power draw). At some point I'll probably build myself something to log battery condition and usage using one of the Raspberry Pis I have lying around 

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27 minutes ago, aracer said:

At some point I'll probably build myself something to log battery condition and usage using one of the Raspberry Pis I have lying around 

Why not save the effort and time and just fit one of these right now?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/500V-500A-wireless-VOLT-AMP-temperature-coulomb-capacity-power-battery-Monitor/332700653036?hash=item4d768115ec:g:yEAAAOSwsThbM3Zk

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53 minutes ago, aracer said:

 

Sure - I'm an electronic engineer and own a multimeter, have been checking the batteries manually since before I bought the boat (and understand the impact of power draw). At some point I'll probably build myself something to log battery condition and usage using one of the Raspberry Pis I have lying around 

 As we have not met for a long chat I have no idea about your knowledge but as an autoelectician of many years experience I have learned that many electronics people have very little knowledge about fat amp circuits, batteries, and charging. As an example, when I worked for the MOD on apprentice training anyone who could not make the grade in electronics were back  squadded in vehicles. More than once we had ex electronic students who would not go near batteries once they learned they can produce many hundreds or thousands of amps, totally ignoring the fact that at 12V or 24V little or no current could get through the skin.

 

Unless your multimeter has an external shunt or is a DC clamp meter there is no way that I think a typical multimeter (10 or 20 A DC maximum) can be used to decide when the batteries are fully charged so the question must be are you fully charging your batteries at least once a week? The only way is an inference after the event if you check the rested open circuit voltage but with the need to rest for several hours that is a bit hit and miss, especially as rested open circuit voltages tend to vary according to type and manufacturer. However that is far better than no monitoring.

24 minutes ago, WotEver said:

 

Hope Lady W reads this. This is the type of instrument I was referring to towards the end of her thread but still not convinced about its Amps accuracy but probably near enough.

Edited by Tony Brooks
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Sure, I understand, but I've done plenty of power stuff and have a fairly good understanding of batteries (I've designed and built smart battery chargers with V and I sensing). Currently I'm on shore power with a decent charger on float - I've not done any checking of tail current but then I was doing days with 8-10 hours of engine running in the first week and using very little electrical power. The batteries aren't in great condition anyway from the testing I've done (to some extent I'm mainly interested in testing to get some idea of just how bad they are at the moment) which is a shame as they're expensive trojans - but I know from pre purchase testing I did that they'd been run down too much (I knew before I bought and budgeted for replacement). Though I'm unlikely to spend more than a couple of nights moored without shore power (normally I expect I'll move every day) and will probably do longish days of engine running, so can cope without huge amounts of capacity - I also know to be careful with power hungry stuff (I bought a 12v laptop charger before picking up the boat so I've hardly needed to turn the inverter on)

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25 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Hope Lady W reads this. This is the type of instrument I was referring to towards the end of her thread but still not convinced about its Amps accuracy but probably near enough.

From what I’ve seen, everything except SoC on these devices is pretty accurate. There’s no facility for entering charge efficiency so the SoC reading is even worse than other Ah counters but it’s cheap, easy to read and gives pretty accurate Ah, current and voltage readings. There are several versions of these so search around and find one with the best price/delivery time available. At this price there’s really no excuse for not having one. 

 

With the Hall effect sensor it doesn’t even require any wiring knowledge. 

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52 minutes ago, WotEver said:

From what I’ve seen, everything except SoC on these devices is pretty accurate. There’s no facility for entering charge efficiency so the SoC reading is even worse than other Ah counters but it’s cheap, easy to read and gives pretty accurate Ah, current and voltage readings. There are several versions of these so search around and find one with the best price/delivery time available. At this price there’s really no excuse for not having one. 

 

With the Hall effect sensor it doesn’t even require any wiring knowledge. 

 

That's why I think one may suit Lady W better than the shunted type.

 

My only reservation  re accuracy is the result of buying a "far eastern" digital voltmeter and finding it consistently reads 0.2 to 0.3V too low with no obvious adjustment. OK, its easy enough to mentally compensate for that but it makes me wonder about how much calibration is done. However even 1 or 2 amps would not make it unusable.

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3 hours ago, aracer said:

The stove is at the other end of the boat to the bedroom - it's just for use warming that up a bit when the eco fan isn't doing enough ?

That’s because you need the Super Eco Fan Plus model for that extra ummmpph.   They come with a warning not to stand to close to the fan due to risk of getting burned :) 

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