Electrical Equipment On A Boat

[Frankphughes]

Hi all 

As some might be aware we are hiring at the weekend from Broom Boat ( from previous requests for advice).It is a broom cadet. If any one could direct me to a previous message/ link dealing with what electrical equipment can be used or not. The boat appears to have somthing you can connect or charge through a 12 volt cigarette type socket. It says somthing about 240 volt. Is this if you hook up to an external source like found in some mooring sites. 

Can Andrea use hair straiteners, could I use my Iron. . When cruising or do we need to be moored and hooked to an external electrical source?

 

if using power from battery etc when cruising can you use other plug in devices. ..?

is there any recommended telephone providers such as 3 , EE, regarding coverage on the broads. 

Any advice ,direction appreciated. Can’t wake 2 sleeps to go. Lol 

love the forum, the advice, support and witty banter. You sound like real characters. ..... and that coming from a Scot

 

kind Regards 

Frank 

 

 

[grendel]

best bet is to call the boatyard, but hair straighteners and irons are probably a no unless plugged into shore power. i use o2 for my phone and wi fi dongle, and there are only a couple of dead spots.

[CambridgeCabby]

Broom Cadet has shore power , and an inverter so you can use most electrical équipement where/whenever you wish , if my memory serves me correct it has a 1000w inverter so do not exceed that 

[SPEEDTRIPLE]

15 minutes ago, CambridgeCabby said:

Broom Cadet has shore power , and an inverter so you can use most electrical équipement where/whenever you wish , if my memory serves me correct it has a 1000w inverter so do not exceed that 

Yes, but unless it has a very powerful inverter, you should`nt use hairdryers or straighteners as they have heating elements that require a lot of power, possibly more than a 1000w inverter. As for shore power, yes, you can use most electrical equipment.  Re straighteners, you can buy 12v items, which do work, and can be run of the 12v ciggy lighter socket. Karen has a set which she always uses if we`re moored with no hook up. You can also get 12v hairdryers, but they take ages to work if you have a lot of hair (so perfect for me then ).

[stumpy]

Also, some straighteners (GHD for one) don't like the electricity from the less expensive inverters, they insist on pure sine wave or they let all the blue smoke out that makes them work.

[grounded]

Our hire boat, SWan Rapture, has an inverter system. Lyn plugged in her electric toothbrush to charge it. Result? One U/S electric toothbrush. Must be something to do with the frequency or something that the rechargeable battery does not like.

Lesson learned. New toothbrush bought.

Cheers

Chris

[annv]

There are two types of inverter pure sine wave which repeats home 240 power and modified sine wave which does not, if your appliance has led/arister controles you need pure sine wave if a motor, electric iron with a switch modified is ok a lot more technical then this but if touch screen controls pure if a switch modified is ok. John

[Frankphughes]

Thank you all for the very helpful advice. we are currently at oulten YS .  Andrea’s hair is looking lovely as is she. Got shore power and inverter worked fine when moored at Loddon last night. Hair dryer and straighteners. 

Fantastic weather today. Really helpful couple gave excellent assistance in mooring , quite windy and tide, . 

Been a stressful while at work and now able to unwind. Now the only descision is to have a Chippy or Indian and a Beer or a cider. Choices choices!

[BryanW]

On 25/07/2019 at 20:41, grounded said:

Our hire boat, SWan Rapture, has an inverter system. Lyn plugged in her electric toothbrush to charge it. Result? One U/S electric toothbrush. Must be something to do with the frequency or something that the rechargeable battery does not like.

I am very surprised at this, we have charged toothbrushes, shavers, phones, cameras and camcorders from the 240v inverter supply on numerous boats including Swan Roamer and Swan Radiance and never had a problem.  Could it have been pure coincidence?

[grounded]

On 30/07/2019 at 19:43, BryanW said:

I am very surprised at this, we have charged toothbrushes, shavers, phones, cameras and camcorders from the 240v inverter supply on numerous boats including Swan Roamer and Swan Radiance and never had a problem.  Could it have been pure coincidence?

Sorry to be so late replying, I have only just seen this. I don't think it is coincidence as it happened to Lyn's toothbrush on Classic Gem in 2017 and this toothbrush was a replacement. It had slipped our minds until she plugged it in and nothing worked. Too late we remembered! Had to buy another when we got back to NZ. perhaps our stuff is wired differently?

Cheers

Chris

[Puddleduck]

Do they supply an ironing board if you want to bring your iron?

[Mouldy]

On 30/07/2019 at 08:43, BryanW said:

I am very surprised at this, we have charged toothbrushes, shavers, phones, cameras and camcorders from the 240v inverter supply on numerous boats including Swan Roamer and Swan Radiance and never had a problem.  Could it have been pure coincidence?

Could be coincidence.  We had a few issues the last time we were on Moonlight Shadow and burnt out several chargers and had a close call with the TV.  I reported the issue through the defecting process and eventually, when a couple of other owners reported similar issues, the fault was traced to the inverter, which was of the modified sine wave variety.  Due to the nature of modern electronics, they should only be used with a pure sine wave inverter, which gives a cleaner output.

The inverter on Moonlight Shadow has since been  replaced and we made sure that the new one we had fitted to Norfolk Lady was also of the correct specification.

[webntweb]

6 hours ago, grounded said:

Sorry to be so late replying, I have only just seen this. I don't think it is coincidence as it happened to Lyn's toothbrush on Classic Gem in 2017 and this toothbrush was a replacement. It had slipped our minds until she plugged it in and nothing worked. Too late we remembered! Had to buy another when we got back to NZ. perhaps our stuff is wired differently?

Cheers

Chris

Hi Chris,

I had a CPAP machine for sleep apnoea which was manufactured in Australia.

The 12volt feed's polarity was opposite to UK.

I had to have a cable made up that reversed the polarity.

Roy

[oldgregg]

On 19/08/2019 at 08:09, Puddleduck said:

Do they supply an ironing board if you want to bring your iron?

You may joke, but some people bring all sorts of things onto boats with the expectation that the inverter is able to supply 240V power just like at home (where there's a 100 amp supply).

It has caused a number of issues on some syndicate boats.....

[grendel]

Oldgregg, I think that most people dont think about the power consumption of various devices, they just plug them in and use them, as an example at home I have a 64A supply, i considered installing a 10kW power shower (about 42A required), then looked at the supply cables and realised that if three houses used a power shower at the same time,  the main power cable supplying our 16 houses would be at its maximum add in the normal useage of the remaining houses and you would risk the cable burning out.

its amazing being in the industry so to speak, how some of the cable installations from even as recently as the mid 70's and early 80's were underdesigned to the point they can be overloaded so easily with modern usage. I wonder just how many people investigate the supply network when considering new appliances.

[Matt]

You may joke, but some people bring all sorts of things onto boats with the expectation that the inverter is able to supply 240V power just like at home (where there's a 100 amp supply).
It has caused a number of issues on some syndicate boats.....

Tell us more.....

Actually don’t.


Sent from my iPhone using Norfolk Broads Network

[Coryton]

50 minutes ago, grendel said:

I wonder just how many people investigate the supply network when considering new appliances.

I wonder how many people would know how to investigate the supply network?

I wouldn't!

[oldgregg]

1 hour ago, grendel said:

Oldgregg, I think that most people dont think about the power consumption of various devices, they just plug them in and use them

Very much so.

If you can put a regular plug into it then it must work, right?

I had an interesting discussion the other day where someone was under the impression that the reason you couldn't run an electric radiator off a particular boat's inverter was because the boat was old, and that on a new one it would work much better.

Obviously, you don't know what you don't know, but I was surprised by that one. 

In case anyone is wondering... A 1KW electric heater (ie not a very powerful one) would damage (not just flatten) a single boat battery in well under an hour.

1KW at 12 volts is 83 amps, probably more like 100 by the time you've added in the conversion losses of an inverter.

[grendel]

I do have the advantage of access to the local electricity network cable records, but that apart, there is a website called linesearchbeforeyoudig, that will give you access to records of underground services if you put a search in for your property, a query on there will return a comprehensive response from all the local utility providers, plus will provide a list of non participating providers with contact details.

this is pretty much an essential step if you are doing any digging deeper than a spade length to indicate where to go carefully.

[Coryton]

5 minutes ago, oldgregg said:

In case anyone is wondering... A 1KW electric heater (ie not a very powerful one) would damage (not just flatten) a single boat battery in well under an hour.

1KW at 12 volts is 83 amps, probably more like 100 by the time you've added in the conversion losses of an inverter.

Indeed. It's not just a question of how beefy the inverter is...

[grendel]

a 1 kw heater uses about 4.2A at 240V, at 12v that is 83A, on a standard 110AH Battery that will drop the batterry chage below the 50% minimum reccomended in under an hour - in the hour it will take the battery down to about 25% charge (about 11.6V), at this level when charged it wont recover to its full 100% capacity (you may get away with it once if you are very lucky).

[grendel]

this is for lead acid batteries, some heavy duty ones can withstand a deeper discharge, and other chemistry batteries can be discharged lower before recharge without damage, (I think Robin delved deeply into this on one of his videos when he was looking at various batteries.)

[Coryton]

On 25/07/2019 at 19:37, SPEEDTRIPLE said:

Yes, but unless it has a very powerful inverter, you should`nt use hairdryers or straighteners as they have heating elements that require a lot of power, possibly more than a 1000w inverter. As for shore power, yes, you can use most electrical equipment.  Re straighteners, you can buy 12v items, which do work, and can be run of the 12v ciggy lighter socket. Karen has a set which she always uses if we`re moored with no hook up. You can also get 12v hairdryers, but they take ages to work if you have a lot of hair (so perfect for me then ).

When we had our hand-over, we were told that on no account should we use a hairdryer on the boat.

The message was slightly undermined by the fact that there was a hairdryer in one of the cabins.

Hard-wired, and no doubt 12 V, but....

[ranworthbreeze]

Our supplies are the same that were provided between 1934  & 1939 when the houses were built, back in those days there were two 15 amp surface sockets (the old type with the switch on the front) and lights in every room (position of the lamp holder so that you could not be silhouetted by the light). I know of some houses that have not been rewired at all with additional wiring mixed with the old.

When we debating electric cars it was mentioned that the infrastructure could not cope with the demand and as Grendel correctly states modern showers, dual electric ovens and electronic goods all over place take their toll on our limited supplies.

Regards

Alan

[oldgregg]

Just now, Coryton said:

When we had our hand-over, we were told that on no account should we use a hairdryer on the boat.

Funny you should mention a hairdryer....