Friday, January 11, 2019

Derwent6 upgrade

So we needed some diesel and knew Mark on the coal boat was coming through in the morning. So we were up early and ready and meanwhile did some brasses and also cleared out the engine room.
Mark arrived at 10.00am and delivered us two bags of coal and filled us with diesel.
We then set off and moored over at Springwood Haven marina. We were seeing Kevin (who we have been speaking to) about getting some solar panels fitted and also we are finding out about maybe having LiFePo4 Lithium Batteries fitted.
Anyone following this blog will know we only had new batteries fitted a couple of years ago and they will also know that two of the six batteries we fitted have gone down, and had to be replaced. We have come to the conclusion that lead acid batteries just aren't as good now because the lead content has been reduced, so you probably get what you pay for . We got nearly nine years out of our first set of batteries and there is no way we will get that again out of these second set of batteries. So we spent two and a half hours with Kevin who now knows what we need and where it is going to go, and is going to price it all up.
So a little excited we then turned and moored up for the night.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to see you moving again, can't believe its taken you so long to sort solar out. !!
Matty
Old Friends

Del and Al said...

Hi Matty, I know, neither can we lol!! but hopefully we'll be solar ready soon :-)

Unknown said...

Oi! Where's the bit about me.

Anonymous said...

Exciting times I shall follow with interest.
We bought our new combi inverter from them!
They were very knowledgeable and reliable we found.
Good luck with that.
Keith and Ann XX

Del and Al said...

Oi! All good things come to those who wait lol!

Del and Al said...

Thanks Keith & Ann, yep should be good, glad you were happy with them. Mind you, we will probably need to be sitting down when we get the quote lol!

Peruvian Skies said...

Hi Del & Al
Hope you are well.
Kev fitted our solar panels and also wired them so we could monitor output on the battery monitor which was well worth it.

If as Keith says the lithium quote may be a high one,thought I would drop you a line on our experience with 2v traction batteries.

We fitted 12 batteries in the same footprint as the original 6 domestic batteries, this gave us 540 A/H. We rarely used more than 15% of the capacity in normal use.

We would take them down 80% approx every 6 months to give them a "shakeup" as advised by the battery manufacturer.

Kevin fitted us an additional victron charger to allow us to bring them back up quicker when we did take them down this low (approx 8-10 hours).

We are still in contact with the new owner who says they are still like new after nearly 10 years.

We had the top-up system fitted a "must that makes this job a doodle.
The downside was additional weight so we had to re ballast the boat, but it did make us a little deeper at the stern.

For comparison the batteries and top up cost approx £1500 which included fitting.
I am sure you have probably looked into these already but just thought this may help.

Regards
Dick & Netty



Del and Al said...

Hi Dick & Netty, hope you're both well. Thanks for the info, yes it was something we thought about so any feedback is great. Kev's been great, and we've now decided to go for 4 12v smart lithium's. So watch this space!.....