Broad Ambition - TLC Time Again

[Smoggy]

But Griff you're a bloody Yorkshire man, you have balls the size of Guatemala, you can repack a stern gland in the water  have a vax handy and pre cut the packing around the exposed shaft (ooer Mrs.) and it don't come in that fast, it saves the cost of a lift out.

[BroadAmbition]

I'm more of a fan of .177 PCP for a more permanent solution!             

I nearly commented the other day when you said you'd stay in the wetshed. Too nice a weekend for that, so good to see you got a bit of a run out, however brief.               

Griff

[BroadAmbition]

But Griff you're a bloody Yorkshire man, you have balls the size of Guatemala, you can repack a stern gland in the water  have a vax handy and pre cut the packing around the exposed shaft (ooer Mrs.) and it don't come in that fast, it saves the cost of a lift out.

Correct on all accounts 

However we are due out this year for our normal bi-annual AMP so thought we would do it then

Griff

[Smoggy]

If you're tempted with the dripless seals I believe the asap orbitrade ones have a vent and feed port so you can feed some raw water from the pump and never have to burp it.

Just make sure you don't mix metric and imperial measures as your shaft could be imperial. 

I also believe Guatemala shrinks on cold day....

[grendel]

3 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

Talking about Henry Hoovers, that reminded me I had to recently replace my works tiling Henry as it got married - Stopped sucking

I have just ordered 2 new hoses for my Hetty (bought cheap at a car boot fair), she is used in the workshop and this time i was hoovering up swarf and managed to get an immovable blockage in the hose- disconnected and finished the job with the hose from my henry (indoor hoover- bought new) and noticed the hose on the hetty was a good 1/4" smaller, now usually when the hose clogs i just drop a 12" bar of 1" dia steel down the hose and shake it up and down as a slide hammer, but this time the hose got properly bunged up, so I ordered a new bigger diameter one (plus a spare) only £8 each so i got 2. if the motor still runs its almost certainly a hose blockage.

my parents managed to blow their old henry (actually it may have been a james) up the other year, they complained- it was only 20 years old.

[BroadAmbition]

Even when here at home, looking after 'B.A' never seems to fully stop.

So, herewith our self draining water catcher.  I'll put about an inch of self levelling compound in t bottom of it this week when at work to give it some stability

It'll be taken down later this month and deployed

Griff

 

[BroadAmbition]

Patented auto draining rain catching system installed and operational
 

Griff

 

[BroadAmbition]

Replacement horns fitted and operational 

Griff

 

[BroadAmbition]

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

[Meantime]

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.

[BroadAmbition]

Tks and understood. What do you buy instead of multicellular batteries?

Griff

[Vaughan]

9 hours ago, 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.

[Meantime]

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.

eBay link

 

 

[MauriceMynah]

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.

[Vaughan]

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.

[Meantime]

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. 

[Meantime]

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. 

[BroadAmbition]

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

 

[dom]

3 hours ago, 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.

 

[Meantime]

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.

 

[dom]

23 minutes ago, 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.

29 minutes ago, 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.

[annv]

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

[grendel]

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.

[Meantime]

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.

[floydraser]

6 hours ago, 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.