grendel

sorry, all the information should be there, but it was the only way I could copy the posts to a new thread without removing them from the original post

Meantime Full Members 4k Posted Thursday at 13:15 · IP On 04/04/2024 at 12:52, dom said: Wet lead acid batteries generally lose their capacity due to sulphation, which sets in rapidly as soon as batteries drop much below around 12.4v. Above 12.4v, the charge keeps sulphur in suspension in the acid fluid. Once the charge drops, the sulphuric acid splits into water and sulphur, and the sulphur molecules adhere to the lead battery plates. The sulphur progressively masks the plates off, insulating them and stopping them conducting electricity in the intended manner. As the amount of masking increases, the battery charge capacity drops. Meantime's description above is a classic example of sulphation happening in practice. The battery still functions, but the Ah rating is dramatically lower than it should be. There is a widely held belief that sulphated batteries are scrap, and it's often proliferated by narrowboat liveaboards, but it is possible to reverse in some cases - as long as you catch it early on, the batteries are non-sealed (rather than VRLA) and have removable cell caps. I've had a reasonable success rate using a combination of charging and Granville "Bat-Aid" tablets. Adding 2 tablets per cell increases the acidity level in the cell, helping to break down the sulphation deposits. If you then use a battery charger with an aggressive desulphation cycle, if you're lucky, it'll remove the remaining sulphation by effectively vibrating it off the the plates at high frequency (a bit like how ultrasonic cleaners work). I used to sell a lot of CTEK chargers. I don't particularly like the way they run their business, but their products are technically very sophisticated and very high quality. The recondition cycle on their chargers desulphates at higher than normal voltage - up to 15.8v, which seems to be one of the keys to success recovering badly sulphated batteries. There probably are other chargers on the market which do similar, but I'm not aware of any offhand. For all of the above reasons, I'd always stick with good quality, open cap wet lead acid cells for marine use (unless you can stretch to lithium, or sodium ion becomes more mainstream). Disconnect every load when not in use, no matter how small (but obviously make provision for bilge pumps). If at all possible, keep batteries stored for long periods on a pulse charge, not a float charge, which will overcharge after prolonged periods. The latter is another area where I know CTEK are suitable, but not sure if others have caught up yet. Alternatively, solar can be used, but make sure it's on an MPPT, not a PWM charge controller - and long periods on float can still potentially be detrimental to battery life. Expand I'd agree about sulphation but in practice with the two batteries I've had problems with the issue has been only one of the six cells going faulty and often well within the warranty period. One was only 10 months old. These were batteries that developed a fault, as opposed to getting old and tired. A good three or four stage battery charger will desulphate a battery as part of its charge cycle. They will usually charge up to 14.8V for FLA and up to 14.4V for sealed or AGM batteries. This is more than a standard alternator will push out. Quote Make today so great! Tomorrow will be jealous! dom Members 468 Posted Thursday at 14:11 · IP On 04/04/2024 at 13:15, Meantime said: I'd agree about sulphation but in practice with the two batteries I've had problems with the issue has been only one of the six cells going faulty and often well within the warranty period. One was only 10 months old. These were batteries that developed a fault, as opposed to getting old and tired. I think that's the sort of issue which has led to some hire yards favouring Rolls batteries. The price is very premium, but the extra cost is easily offset against the cost of an engineer going out to an avoidable breakdown, or an aggravated customer. Also means you know you're getting a true deep cycle battery, and not just a standard FLA someone's stuck a dodgy label on. On 04/04/2024 at 13:15, Meantime said: A good three or four stage battery charger will desulphate a battery as part of its charge cycle. They will usually charge up to 14.8V for FLA and up to 14.4V for sealed or AGM batteries. This is more than a standard alternator will push out. The norm tends to be 14.7v for AGM, 14.4v for FLA/VRLA/gel. That's fine for routine use, but not for "repairing" maintenance related degradation where sulphation has been allowed to set in over winter or similar. Long term stored FLAs also suffer from stratification, where the acid splits into two distinct layers - one higher concentration acid, one water (which freezes more readily introducing other issues like case fracture and leaks). In some cases, it's helpful to have a charger which operates at higher voltage, to effectively boil the fluid. It can be beneficial to do this, as it "stirs" the acid content, removing stratification and the movement also helps to drive sulphur off the plates. I've always had best success recovering FLAs using tabs and a 15.8v charge. I used to manage a company which was one of the biggest UK retailers of CTEK's products - we actually had battles with them, as we ran a dedicated website and they accused us of passing off. As a result, I don't have a great opinion of them (IMO, they were trying to stop discounting) but their products were technically way ahead of anything else on the market. Most of the range were 8 stage units - although, annoyingly, not the marine ones back then. They do also do a really nice solar controller and DC/DC charger in one but, again, a bit fatally flawed only having a max input of 23v, so you have to parallel panels, which isn't always best in marine applications. Quote annv Full Members 1.4k Posted Thursday at 14:22 · IP (edited) Hi Many battery's problems are caused by not connecting them in parallel correctly.see diagram.Also checking the electrolyte level many battery's have the flush fillers hidden under the label across the top. John Edited Thursday at 14:26 by annv Graham47 1 Quote grendel Tech Team 15.6k Location: Canterbury Posted Thursday at 15:31 · IP A point to note for anyone considering changing over to lithium, or a mix of lead acid and lithium, lithium cant be charged directly from the alternator, it has to be passed via a DC/ DC converter, or it is likely to fry the alternator, lithium will quite happily devour as much charge as it can demand, this means the alternator is running at max output and more is still being demanded, thus burning out the alternator fairly quickly. there are videos out there that explain this in great detail, but I just wanted to make you aware. Graham47 and BroadAmbition 2 Quote Meantime Full Members 4k Posted Thursday at 15:44 · IP On 04/04/2024 at 15:31, grendel said: A point to note for anyone considering changing over to lithium, or a mix of lead acid and lithium, lithium cant be charged directly from the alternator, it has to be passed via a DC/ DC converter, or it is likely to fry the alternator, lithium will quite happily devour as much charge as it can demand, this means the alternator is running at max output and more is still being demanded, thus burning out the alternator fairly quickly. there are videos out there that explain this in great detail, but I just wanted to make you aware. Sterling Power do a battery to battery charger that overcomes this problem. Effectively you connect a normal lead acid battery to the alternator and then the battery to battery charger between the lead acid battery and the Lithium batteries to isolate and limit current flow. They also do a battery chemistry module that can be connected to the output of your existing charger and then connected to the Lithium battery to supply the correct charge characteristics for Lithium batteries. Quote Make today so great! Tomorrow will be jealous! floydraser Full Members 2.5k Posted Thursday at 15:59 · IP On 04/04/2024 at 09:19, Meantime said: By Multicell, I mean the make Multicell, they have an office in Norwich and others around the country. In fairness to Multicell I have been using them for years for cars, caravans and the boat, with no problems at all. They were started in 1989 where I live and you can find the history on their website: https://www.multicell.co.uk/ They have expanded over the years and only recently opened a massive new depot. They've never been taken over and it still remains in the family.

BroadAmbition Events and Promo Team 8.8k Location: Gods Country Author Posted Wednesday at 23:29 · IP Last weekend whilst Bro and crew was out and about on t rivers, that issue of the battery power bank not lasting above five hours reared its ugly head once more. This time on Sunday night. Both Friday and Saturday nights they were hooked up to shore power so the six leisure batteries were fully charged. Then about three n half hours running before stopping for overnight at Womack Water. After five hours or so the display was showing only 10:5 volts in the system. This of course caused many systems to shut down. Firing up the Beta floated the system and all was good, but having to fire up the engine is no solution, especially if there are neighbouring craft and after 2000 So Monday in t wetshed after crews departed left me, Bro and Purdey dog in attendance. We checked and checked and tested and metered every which way we could think of. Both alternators are producing healthy voltage. The Sterling split charger is accepting load, all check lights are performing, we opened it up and gave it a gentle hoover out - All looks good. It is distributing voltage correctly. Both battery banks are receiving charging voltage correctly both from onboard alternators / solar panels and shore power. We know from last month that the batteries are good from the tests carried out. We also know there is no amperage drain, loose connections, there is no excessive amps drain when under load either. So what is the issue? It just has to be one or more of the batteries being tired. Yes they all pass a short sharp heavy load 'Drop' test but it seems a steady demand over a period of hours can't be accommodated as it should be. We had the same issue five years ago, we replaced the entire bank and all was cured and to the good. Now we could of course pratt about for hours trying to discover which battery (Or batteries) is at fault and just replace the one, sods law will then dictate that another one fails in short order. We have never since 2007 just replaced the odd battery in the leisure banks and have always fitted a complete complement Therefore we have decided to order six new uns. Best price so far we have found is £480:00 for six 130Amp Hrs items. Yes I know that we will be throwing out five potential good batteries that still have some life left in them, but what price peace of mind? Another way of looking at it is £480:00 over five years = £96:00 per year or per year per battery = £16 - doesn't sound a lot at that Once the new items are with me I will charge them here at home on a trickle charge, take them down and replace the present items onboard on a Saturday morning. Then its testing time, so a proper run will be called for, Ranworth or Thurne dyke, stop for an hour or so, then run back to Griffs Corner on t Ant arriving as early as I can. Here everything 12 and 240v that I can turn on, will be turned on for the duration through to around midnight, if its too warm for the Planar running flat out then all t windows will be opened. Sunday forenoon a run back to t wetshed then home. Of course being at Griffs Corner will give me the opportunity to do a spot of bank maintenance and push on with some further clearance wx permitting, so charging of the brush cutter batteries will be happening too Bro can't make it due to intending to waste a good walk in a Gentleman Only Ladies Forbidden competition, MrsG can't make it and if JT and Robin are not onboard then it'll be a solo crewing weekend for me (With Purdey) so I don't need it windy and more than 7ft7" airdraft at Ludham bridge please Griff MargeandParge, bucket, CeePee1952 and 2 others 5 Quote Typical, Just Typical !! Meantime Full Members 4k Posted Thursday at 08:23 · IP Griff, This has happened twice to me, both times with Multicell batteries, I won't buy them now. It is also relatively easy to find the faulty battery. When charging a good battery from 10.5V, lets say using a 20amp charger, it will draw the full 20 amps and the voltage will gradually rise over time as the battery accepts a charge. Once the voltage is somewhere above 12.6V the charge current will start to drop until the voltage reaches either 14.4V or 14.8V depending what you have your charger set for. At this point the charger switches from bulk charge to equilisation charge for a set number of hours and then eventually into float or power pack mode. Your good battery will take hours to complete the bulk phase of charging. The faulty battery will take the full 20 amps for about 5 or 10 mins and the voltage will rise a lot quicker until it gets above 12.6V and the current starts to back off. It will then enter the equilisation mode very quickly and at this point is not really accepting a charge. It is this behaviour that messes with the charging of the other batteries when connected in parallel to the faulty battery. The alternator which generally doesn't put out as high a charge as your advanced battery charger will very quickly reach its maximum charge voltage and effectively stop charging the batteries. Your shore based charger once it reaches the equilisation phase is at this point not charging the faulty battery, but is putting something back into your other good batteries, which is why once you have left shore power your batteries will generally last longer than once they have been depleted and recharged on an alternator. Once the bad battery has started to discharge a little it will at this point be constantly held up by the remaining good batteries, thus providing the drain you haven't been able to find. A good battery should never be discharged down to 10.5V, but the faulty battery will happily keep draining your good batteries until they all read 10.5V. So for faultfinding. When the batteries have just gone down to 10.5V, disconnect them all and leave them for 5 mins. The good ones will probably recover slightly to something around 11V. The faulty one won't. The one reading the lowest is more than likely your faulty battery. If the batteries have just been charged on shore power, disconnect them all and measure the voltage. The faulty one will probably have a higher float voltage and typically be something above 13V. The others will all be the same and normally lower than the faulty one. Finally from flat, charge them all individually. If they are still accepting a bulk charge after 15 mins they are probably good. The faulty one will be in equilisation charge within about 5 to 10 mins. I would start with the one identified as the likely faulty one from the above measurements. I had a real battle with Multicell in exchanging faulty batteries. I'd take it there fully charged, they would do a quick drop test and pronounce it ok. It was only when I persuaded them to do a longer capacity test that they agreed they were faulty. Each 12.6V battery is made up of 6 x 2.1V cells. It's as if the faulty battery has 5 cells working normally and one that can only hold 3 or 4 amps. Hence the battery works ok until that one cell is discharged and then the battery quickly drops to 10.5V. When charging the faulty cell quickly stops accepting a charge, the voltage rises and stops the rest of the cells from charging fully. Bikertov, Vaughan, Karizma and 1 other 4 Quote Make today so great! Tomorrow will be jealous! BroadAmbition Events and Promo Team 8.8k Location: Gods Country Author Posted Thursday at 08:41 · IP Tks and understood. What do you buy instead of multicellular batteries? Griff Quote Typical, Just Typical !! Vaughan Full Members 7.5k Posted Thursday at 09:07 · IP (edited) On 03/04/2024 at 23:29, BroadAmbition said: Another way of looking at it is £480:00 over five years = £96:00 per year or per year per battery = £16 - doesn't sound a lot at that I agree with Meantime and would add that a "dead" cell in a battery is partially shorting owing to sediment that has fallen off the plates, and will therefore drain all the other cells and batteries in the same bank. I think your problem is simply "Anno Domini". BA is a boat which does a lot of cruising, all year round and 5 years battery life sounds quite reasonable. They wouldn't last that long in a hire boat! You can't equate this with a car battery as, by its very nature, a car battery is always fully charged (or should be). With domestic (slow discharge) batteries you are using them almost to capacity when moored at night and then charging up again when cruising next day. This is known as a CYCLE. Most domestic batteries will last about 600 cycles and after that they are finished. The number of cycles should be marked on them. Think about the number of nights that have been spent on BA over the last 5 years, as each one of them is a cycle of the batteries - unless you are hooked up to shore power. Edited Thursday at 09:09 by Vaughan word added You, annv, Bikertov and 1 other 4 × Quote Meantime Full Members 4k Posted Thursday at 09:19 · IP On 04/04/2024 at 08:41, BroadAmbition said: Tks and understood. What do you buy instead of multicellular batteries? Griff By Multicell, I mean the make Multicell, they have an office in Norwich and others around the country. I used to buy Bosch leisure batteries from CostCo. I've had one of those last 15 years, but the later ones don't seem to be as good. More recently I've bought HLB700s from Halfords, but they seem to have doubled in price in recent years. The last pair I bought were Hankook XV110 which seem to get good reviews. I paid £159.51 for a pair from Battery Megastore on eBay. That included free delivery. I decided against Bosch or the Halfords batteries this time around as I really wanted to go for Lithium Ion, but think that prices still have some way to come down on them before adopting them and changing chargers etc. eBay link Quote Make today so great! Tomorrow will be jealous! MauriceMynah Full Members 8.7k Location: The Broads. Posted Thursday at 09:21 · IP If you do decide to change the whole bank, what do you plan to do with the old ones. I know a chap who would welcome them with open arms. Quote I think therefore I am. René Descartes. I sink therefore I was. Maurice Mynah. When your back is to the wall, don't give up, just turn and run. Vaughan Full Members 7.5k Posted Thursday at 09:30 · IP We used to swear by Elecsol batteries, which were very expensive, but were good for 1400 cycles, so they were worth the money. Unfortunately I don't think they are available any more. We then had good success with Optima batteries, which are sealed and maintenance free. They come in three colours ; red, blue and yellow, where yellow is the slow discharge version. They also have the advantage that they do not need installing in a sealed and ventilated battery box. Happy and Graham47 2 Quote Meantime Full Members 4k Posted Thursday at 09:43 · IP On 04/04/2024 at 09:30, Vaughan said: We used to swear by Elecsol batteries, which were very expensive, but were good for 1400 cycles, so they were worth the money. Unfortunately I don't think they are available any more. We then had good success with Optima batteries, which are sealed and maintenance free. They come in three colours ; red, blue and yellow, where yellow is the slow discharge version. They also have the advantage that they do not need installing in a sealed and ventilated battery box. Elecsol were very good and used a new technology at the time, involving carbon fibre in the plates. The guy behind the technology passed away and I cannot remember if it was his business partner, or brother who carried on the business, but at that point he decided it was far cheaper to buy cheap batteries from the far East and trade off their previous good name until he run the business into the ground. When they were at their best, they were excellent and were universally praised by the caravan fraternity for their longevity. They were not cheap, but lasted well. Unfortunately when they moved to cheaper rebadged far East batteries the premium price tag remained. The remaining partner thought it would be viable to keep exchanging batteries under warranty, but destroyed the good name the batteries previously had, until trade dried up. Graham47 and Vaughan 2 Quote Make today so great! Tomorrow will be jealous! Meantime Full Members 4k Posted Thursday at 09:53 · IP Elecsol were two brothers Dennis and Stephen Gallimore. Dennis was an engineer and the brains behind the technology. He sadly died in 2005. A year or two after is when Stephen started to buy cheap standard batteries and rebadge them as Elecsol. The business then declined until about 2013 when it was dissolved. I'm never quite sure what happened to their patents because I've not seen batteries with carbon fibres in the plates since. Quote Make today so great! Tomorrow will be jealous! BroadAmbition Events and Promo Team 8.8k Location: Gods Country Author Posted Thursday at 11:01 · IP MauriceMynah - we intend to ring the local scrap merchant, even if it’s only £5 per item, that’s £30 towards the replacement costs Griff MauriceMynah 1 Quote Typical, Just Typical !! dom Members 468 Posted Thursday at 12:52 · IP On 04/04/2024 at 08:23, Meantime said: The faulty battery will take the full 20 amps for about 5 or 10 mins and the voltage will rise a lot quicker until it gets above 12.6V and the current starts to back off. It will then enter the equilisation mode very quickly and at this point is not really accepting a charge. Wet lead acid batteries generally lose their capacity due to sulphation, which sets in rapidly as soon as batteries drop much below around 12.4v. Above 12.4v, the charge keeps sulphur in suspension in the acid fluid. Once the charge drops, the sulphuric acid splits into water and sulphur, and the sulphur molecules adhere to the lead battery plates. The sulphur progressively masks the plates off, insulating them and stopping them conducting electricity in the intended manner. As the amount of masking increases, the battery charge capacity drops. Meantime's description above is a classic example of sulphation happening in practice. The battery still functions, but the Ah rating is dramatically lower than it should be. There is a widely held belief that sulphated batteries are scrap, and it's often proliferated by narrowboat liveaboards, but it is possible to reverse in some cases - as long as you catch it early on, the batteries are non-sealed (rather than VRLA) and have removable cell caps. I've had a reasonable success rate using a combination of charging and Granville "Bat-Aid" tablets. Adding 2 tablets per cell increases the acidity level in the cell, helping to break down the sulphation deposits. If you then use a battery charger with an aggressive desulphation cycle, if you're lucky, it'll remove the remaining sulphation by effectively vibrating it off the the plates at high frequency (a bit like how ultrasonic cleaners work). I used to sell a lot of CTEK chargers. I don't particularly like the way they run their business, but their products are technically very sophisticated and very high quality. The recondition cycle on their chargers desulphates at higher than normal voltage - up to 15.8v, which seems to be one of the keys to success recovering badly sulphated batteries. There probably are other chargers on the market which do similar, but I'm not aware of any offhand. For all of the above reasons, I'd always stick with good quality, open cap wet lead acid cells for marine use (unless you can stretch to lithium, or sodium ion becomes more mainstream). Disconnect every load when not in use, no matter how small (but obviously make provision for bilge pumps). If at all possible, keep batteries stored for long periods on a pulse charge, not a float charge, which will overcharge after prolonged periods. The latter is another area where I know CTEK are suitable, but not sure if others have caught up yet. Alternatively, solar can be used, but make sure it's on an MPPT, not a PWM charge controller - and long periods on float can still potentially be detrimental to battery life.

while I could split the posts out of this thread I dont see a way to copy them, i will continue looking

well knock me down with a feather, they are available with steel toes on ebay for just £23 I suppose I should have known, as safety footwear normally has shoes and boots up to my size (though not a great selection, usually in just 1 style for shoes, 1 for boots, and 1 for wellies.

I am sure I have a pair of wellies somewhere- finding wellies in size 14 (49.5) is not so easy, but I did find some years ago, now where they got put- well thats a totally different story

I have amended the post to just a link rather than an embedded youtube, due to the presence of a couple of incidents at ludham bridge which conflict with our TOS

the dog whistle made me wince though.

movies you click the link and it downloads, then you can play it.

one of my cars was written off as structural damage not repairable category D, even the DVLA centre said it should never have been category D, the damage was a dented bonnet, broken numberplate and broken grill incurred in a less than 5mph accident when a post office van pulled out from behind a bus while I was busy passing it in the other direction, I only had about 5 feet of warning when he appeared. (the bus had been turning right from a side turning and was still part in my lane so I had slowed right down- the post office van wanted to make the right turn, even though he couldnt see past the back of the bus) sothe insurance garage quoted me in excess of £2000 to repair, I bought the car back from them, went on ebay and found a new bonnet and grill for £40, and just a few miles from me- even in the correct colour, that and £15 for a new number plate and a £60 test at the DVLA centre to get a category d back on the road (basically they looked at it- looked at the photos of the damage, asked what work I had done and then issued me with the documents (with the comment noted above. ) All insurance companies are interested in nowadays is scrapping cars even with minor damage. and paying out as little as possible

A point to note for anyone considering changing over to lithium, or a mix of lead acid and lithium, lithium cant be charged directly from the alternator, it has to be passed via a DC/ DC converter, or it is likely to fry the alternator, lithium will quite happily devour as much charge as it can demand, this means the alternator is running at max output and more is still being demanded, thus burning out the alternator fairly quickly. there are videos out there that explain this in great detail, but I just wanted to make you aware.

done

youtube posts split from mermaids meandering

well done, you got there in the end, I once got stuck trying to turn at the bottom of the dyke, it was blowing half a hooligan, and I got stuck side on on the red and white post on the end, it made a right mess of the paintwork, right down to bare wood. I ended up turning the boat using the ropes, on my own, fortunately I had a good long rope that I tied at one side at the back then lead it to the front of the boat along the outside, then with judicious pushing and shoving I got the back out into the river, pulling it around (its easier with several people)

another thing my Gran did was to put tin cans into a metal biscuit box (the old fashioned ones a foot cube) and bury them in the garden, when we went visiting she would dig up one of these tins and we would have a meal of pot luck, as invariably the labels had disintegrated so we would get corned beef (easily recognisable tin) from goodness knows what date (maybe even as far back as the war) with peaches instead of peas. maybe it was her way of discouraging visitors to call round for a meal (it worked). or you would all go shopping which was when she inevitably found she had left her purse at home. she was however a very fun grandma with a wicked sense of humour.

I once burned spaghetti, (both the pasta and the sauce) so you are not alone there Gracie

you just need sensible wooden boats, Water Rail can do Wroxham at 6 foot (maybe even at 5'11") but needs 6'3" at Potter Heigham (due to the corners of the roof at the back), very rarely she cant do great Yarmouth at high tide.

water rail holds so little it almost always under £50 (they will usually struggle to fit 30 litres even from nearly empty.) plus I have a 20 litre jerry can I fill up at my local asda before leaving.

mind you we did once find a mummified marrow she had put behind the oven to dry out- maybe 5 years earlier- maybe longer- it was a dry husk

my gran used to store them in some liquid- isopon or something, isinglass that stopped the air getting to the shells which was what made them go bad, this way you could store them for years

this is why we have the no name and shame in our terms of service, if any such video is posted here, we will take it down from the forum- ok that only stops it here, but in general I agree that it doesnt show the broads in its best light, also i dont like the videos where the footage is speeded up making it look like all the boats are speeding, the broads is supposed to be a tranquil place. the problem is these videos are popular and gain the videographers subscribers.

you wont be the first- or last person to mess up, it happens- even to the best of us, dont forget, take things slowly.

There is also the marina t burgh castle that does pump outs and fuel, and not forgettingt the small yard opposite the yacht station at great yarmouth as well.

you mean like the warning your car gives when a bulb fails or other electric component fails- no I dont believe most boats will have this.