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Meantime
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Posts posted by Meantime
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Good to hear its at How Hill where hopefully it can be recovered fully. There was no sign of anyone on the boat when we passed, just a hire boat keeping guard.
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There is a capsized Hunters boat between How Hill and Ludham bridge mid channel. Will take a little recovering I would imagine.
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So, I'm not gonna lie to you, I hear what your saying, if I've heard you correctly! I've been blue sky thinking it and could we use another word instead to start a sentence.
Basically, anything but so. We could add to the forum T+Cs that since tweny tweny four it has been unacceptable to start a sentence with so, do you see what I'm saying like!
So, basically, if I'm right, and I heard what your saying, that's probably the most forumites upset by one post!
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47 minutes ago, ExSurveyor said:
When did tweny tweny four become acceptable.
Probably since the end of tweny tweny three.
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17 minutes ago, marshman said:
It might not rain, and indeed, I hope not, but if Norfolk remains true to form, the area is likely to remain blanketed with cloud!
Stop being such a doom monger, the forecast is actually looking pretty good for next week.
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So, whilst I agree with you about the annoying trend for starting the sentence with the word so, there has to be an even more annoying trend, like, of finishing like every sentence with the work like and as if like that isn't bad enough, it get like thrown in all over the sentence like, along with it's cousin innit, like.
So, like, here's a warning to make the most of the rain like, cuz I'm coming to the Broads for a week tomorrow like and it's like going to be sunny every day innit, like.
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10 minutes ago, 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.
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17 minutes ago, 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.
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.
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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.
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3 minutes ago, 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.
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30 minutes ago, 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.
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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.
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Hmm, I can feel a moan coming on here! More and more supermarkets are starting to remove sell by, display until, or best before dates from fruit and veg. I can see why, because a tomato doesn't suddenly become unsafe to sell or unsafe to eat a day past its advertised date. In my local shopping centre there is a Greengrocer's stall and none of the fruit and veg displayed there has a date on it. The guy that runs the stall is a Greengrocer. He knows his onions. It is his trade and he is proud of how fresh his produce is. He personally goes to the markets whilst we are still in bed and chooses fresh produce. He performs stock rotation on his stall and has a small section where he places older stock into bargain £1 bowls to shift stock that supermarket best before dates would have consigned to the bin.
However, and its the big however, whilst my local supermarket, in this case Sainsburys, is removing sell by dates from fruit and veg, it also about 6 years ago got rid of the Butcher and fresh meat counter, the Fishmonger and fresh fish counter, the deli counter, the bakery and yes also the Greengrocer. The fruit and veg section is now stocked by regular shelf stackers with no idea of how to tell fresh from old fruit and veg. They simply open a new tray of onions and chuck them on top of the few that were left in the old tray. No idea of stock rotation etc. I no longer buy garlic from Sainsburys, having a 50 / 50 chance of it being old or mouldy. Similar with onions etc.
Quite simply supermarkets need to bring back the trained Greengrocer (and ideally the butcher and baker) or bring back sell by dates to guide the untrained shelf stackers!
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The property is still listed for sale on Rightmove, so I see no reason why they wouldn't continue to maintain the bank and collect mooring fees. Indeed until it is sold I would have thought it just as likely that the cafe and shop would open as usual for this year. Must be easier to sell an ongoing concern, than one that has closed.
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1 hour ago, CambridgeCabby said:
f.o.c mooring until April 1st though
Don't you mean free of charge at point of use until the 1st April. You've already paid for that mooring once through your toll.
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I think you are conflating two issues here and I'm not sure that the protest in London, and BRAG's aims have any real overlap.
The CRT are imposing an escalating surcharge on continuous cruisers without a home mooring, which on the face of it doesn't seem unfair. If you haven't got a home mooring, then your more likely to be making use of the facilities paid for by the toll more often and therefore an increased toll to reflect that extra usage seems fair.
The protest in London was by continuous cruisers and aimed at that specific increase, rather than the overall increases for all.
Edited to add:
The CRT are not attempting to make a financial move against continuous cruisers, they already have. The surcharge starts on the 1st April and increases each year for the next 4 years. By which stage continuous cruisers, those without a home mooring will be paying 25% more for their toll than those with a home mooring.
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12 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:
Today in a neighbouring village I saw a vehicle sporting a private reg plate - ' T O W 1 E'
Now imagine having an IQ low enough to want that displayed on your pride and joy
Griff
I would imagine its the same person who has earnt millions being one of the stars of Towie. Imagine having an IQ low enough to earn all that money
Just saying!
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6 minutes ago, CambridgeCabby said:
Realise that , it changed its name to Waters Edge prior to its closure , agree the one in the paper is the old Liberty restaurant , would struggle to call it a pub
But if you read the article,
"the relaunch will see it taking on more of a classic British pub feel during lunch service - serving classics such as fish and chips, pies and steaks."
They are aiming to become more like a pub at the relaunch. Agreed, it wasn't in it's previous form.
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The only problem with dogs in pubs or anywhere come to that, is not the dog, but the owner.
I was on the bus the other day when some self entitled young person got on with her toy dog and proceeded to firstly sit down in the priority seats when clearly they didn't need it, followed by lifting her dog with wet muddy paws to sit on the other priority seat next to her.
OK that dog maybe her world but really! Have some consideration for the next less able bodied person who actually needs to use that seat.
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12 minutes ago, PaulN said:
Shouldn't be fishing today, the closed season started at midnight.
He said he was fishing on Monday, though I did wonder why he waited until today to post his observation. Perhaps the boredom of the closed season has kicked in already!
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I also think that since the BA re-piled the end nearest the recycling, that end is slightly narrower than it was. The new piling went in front of the old I believe.
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2 hours ago, Gracie said:
Oooh, one or me too, except change the beer tap for a Prosecco tap
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As long as beer comes out of it though, I don't really see an issue with that!
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14 minutes ago, Broads01 said:
That's a recent change as I checked a few days ago and at that point the opening date was 30th March.
Probably just the BA coming out of Winter hibernation and suddenly realising that Easter is quite early this year. Not like the dates can be worked out well in advance
So a rushed update to the website. Will be interesting to see how eager the troops are to collect the mooring fee though.
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A PDF print out of the page has been created and saved should anyone have the need to use it as supporting evidence!
It has the update at the top and the times of moorings fees being collected further down.
Being staffed does not necessarily mean being chargeable.
I note elsewhere on the page it states Ranworth is staffed from 9am to 6pm during the Summer months, which depending on your definition is the 1st June to the 1st September, or 21st June to 21st September.
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So a rushed update to the website. Will be interesting to see how eager the troops are to collect the mooring fee though.
Warning Capsized Boat On The Ant.
in Broads Chat
Posted
It was on its side with no sign of the mast or boom. The keel was also below water, so it must have been sitting on its side on the bottom.