Barry do us all a favour, next time you need something done to your van keep it quiet.Well after nearly a year and 46 pages it looks like there is a conclusion to the Hank the Tanks dodgy battery and solar system thread!
All thanks to @merl.
I've been here since yesterday morning and we only got knocked off about an hour ago. In the main because I kept giving poor Merl more jobs!
Ill try and keep it brief but he really has worked so hard sorting this. The new panel was put up straight away and its a fair bit smaller than the existing one so I guess I was right when I reckoned it was at least a 120w. (Forgot to take photos so will try when I Get home). We had to put a new roof gland in as the existing one literally fell to bits when we prodded it so that was kind of lucky really.
Everything in and working as it should and the second battery wired properly with "proper Cables". Very happy. Merl has explained all the Float, Absorption and bulk stuff to me and I have the Victron App. I think we were getting 8.5 amps in at some point this afternoon.
The bloody toilet flush had packed up so I asked Merl to look at it. After much investigating it turned out there was no power to it and the fuse was ok as its now integrated with the water pump. It took poor Merl a long time to figure it out and we had to run cables using rods round the back of the bathroom to rewire it all. I Cant thank him enough for this as I can guess if I had took it to a dealer or even my motorhome fixit guy it would have cost a fortune while they replaced everything first.
He also sorted my new bed supports as obviously I had not fitted them correctly and now all the right stoppers etc are in place. He even cleaned the old panel and roof lights!
Thanks to all who took part in this thread, I really appreciate it but a massive special thanks to Merl. You are a star!!
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Make sure you get a decent breakfast firstYes there is a Gizmott (great name) to the left of the Victron in the pic. Just checking the app and the sun is just up and its just starting to register at 12w.
Ill be leaving this morning but will probably wait for the traffic to die down a bit.
Yes mate, that's why I posted a link for you to get one, all we did was extend the wires Merlin soldered them but butt terminals would be fine, & connected it up for me in the fuse box under the dash right hand side, not a big job, it just sits on the dash in the corner by the screen, the Bluetooth range is off the charts, Merlin could pick it up from his kitchen window, and I was parked right in front of his van, I paced it out and got 42 steps so we reckon 30m +, I can take a picture of how it;s fitted for you or anyone who wanted to fit one, you need on of these to fit it into the fuse box though https://amzn.eu/d/65VvuSJ
To be fair, I've had stuff go missing, even from UK suppliers. It doesn't take much for the system to fail. Most stuff arrives on time and intact; if not, they send another out or refund you.
I assume swift did not use 0.75mm cable on a solar set up.Well. Thanks for the kind words from everyone.
Now having first hand experience of Barry's system I think the biggest factor contributing to his low battery capacity when on solar (it performed better after a hook up charge) wasn't particularly the battery, solar panel or PWM charge controller. Although all of the above were arguably only borderline adequate the issue was the wiring between charge controller and battery. This was previously done with 0.75mm flex which was massively under sized and so thin and at over 2metres long was dropping over half a volt, the upshot being that with decent sun and an output of 5A the output of the controller saw a voltage of 14.5V and hence switched out of bulk charge mode but in reality the actual battery voltage was still less than 14V and was nowhere near ready to be going into absorption stage. The result is a much longer and drawn out charging process and essentially an undercharged battery.
Anyhoo, that's all academic because there's an extra panel, and extra battery, a Gizmott and an MPPT charge controller too, with the cable size now 10mm ( yep overkill WRT power loss but not WRT the controller communicating with the battery, see above) So it's sad too see the final demise of this thread but I reckon it's curtains folks. Maybe we should have an annual meet up on here just for old time's sake? Perhaps not eh
, fitted my old spare 85w panel, removed the MPPT controller from where MCEA had fitted it against my wishes and refitted it as I had asked them to, he removed and re-used the cabling they had unnecessarily used and re-used some of that, fitted an isolation switch (yes we know a fuse would have done) which is a tidier method, fitted the wonderful Merlin Gizmott, and installed the the Bestek 300w inverter. All this is in the wardrobe now, where I can access it easily, he also fitted the BM6 battery monitor, sorted out my broken waste tank piep and valve, looks like a swinging dick now but it'll never break off again, he was going to fix the accident damage to my back bumper that i did in France, but it'd been whacked before and needed more work than I felt could be done there with what we had, so I will have to give that a bit of thought.
I believe that if your battery had gone to zero volts and killed the ECU and the cost was around £800 you might obsess for a while too, but once I know all is well I'll pretty much not bother, but it's good to know it's there and I'm sure it's a good thing to have, but it'll come into it's own come winter as the LB always had a good charge in it, I do have EHU (coz I put electric in my garage) if needed but I'm not sure I'll need it but at least I'll know and not have to rely on going to the van to see for sure, but you will
Modern vehicles will no doubt throw a hissy fit if you do that.
Photos are a bit crap but the two square boxes are the speakers and the amp is on the top left with all the valves on show. So clever.