178. Installing Lead Carbon batteries (12V 100Ah) into my canal narrowboat
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- #narrowboat #narrowboats #canal #canals #liveaboard #cruisingthecut
At the time of filming this it was just over a week since the Crick Show where I had bought three new 100 Ah lead carbon batteries for my narrowboat. Having also bought some new wiring and dongle things to plug into my Victron inverter/charger, it was now time to pull out the old batteries and put the new ones in place.
For anyone claiming the order of the wiring on the bank doesn't matter, have a little read of this useful article: www.smartgauge....
Buy the batteries: geni.us/CtC_Le...
Got a question? Read this!
www.CruisingTh...
Boat & Filming gear I use:
www.CruisingTh...
Twitter: / cruisingthecut
Instagram: / cruisingthecut
Facebook: / cruisingthecut
Web: www.CruisingThe...
Tip jar at www.ko-fi.com/...
or / cruisingthecut
Get your Cruising the Cut mugs, t-shirts and other merch here: cruisingthecut...
Theme music: "Vespers" by Topher Mohr and Alex Alena, from the TH-cam music library
David. Still binge watching (for the 2nd time), slowly getting to the latest video again. As an ex electrician and an electronics techy (radio, tv, and transmission engineer) I must salute you. It may only be 12V but it can still be dangerous and caution is always a watchword, especially with high current situations. Your disclaimers are amusing but true. There are plenty of TH-camrs who profess to be experts, having learnt from the comfort of their armchairs, who show terrible examples of "expert knowledge" and send others down rabbit holes or worse, dangerous installations. I and am sure others, look forward to an update on the batteries performance.
Love the “not a tutorial” disclaimers that keep you irreproachable and your OCD over safety and thoroughness!
Great vlog. Anytime I work with electricity I've found that closing eyes and crossing fingers helps tremendously.
The joy of new batteries! And the wires all in order. Great job, more tea for you. And sandwiches.
Truly David you have missed one of life's most memorable learning experiences, that being the first time you arc across battery terminals with a conductive tool! 24 volt is even more entertaining than 12, don't ask me how I know of course. Love the geeky bits, makes me feel a kindred spirit!
Hahaha
Been there, done that, on a 12V automotive one... with one of those portable work lights/lamps that have a metal cage like surround around an old style bayonet/edison incandescent 60W bulb!
Nice work - you didn't let any of the smoke out of the wires! Everything else is a bonus.
Hi David, I discovered your chanel about 3wks ago and have watched all your videos from the start, What can I say, there is a reason for your numbers being so high and I am completely hooked to see what comes next. Keep up the good work and Fair Winds !!
Thank you
Loved your comment about the battery sparking and making you jump.
So funny 😂.
Good to see you doing a current topic.
Congratulations on achieving the installation of your new batteries. It’s great to see that you’re ready to tackle these jobs. Well done and thanks for the vlog because I’m going to take a look at these batteries for my motorhome.
Looks like you have been doing your homework, which is a really good idea, with the high current available with these batteries, an inadvertent short can cause a huge mess. It's good you caught the wiring error between batteries as well.
I had never come across Lead/Carbon batteries before so, I went to the Leoch website for information which, was a bit lacking. Looks like the advantages over an AGM battery are increased cycle life, faster recharge, and improved low temperature performance. Series resistance is still quite high with any deep cycle lead-acid battery technology. With that size battery, I don't recommend trying to pull more than 10 amps per battery long term (or 300 watts out of your power inverter). You can go several times this amount for short periods (no more than a few minutes), at the expense of reduced battery voltage and internal battery heating. The lead-acid battery technology does not like heat. The maximum sustained temperature is around 26 degrees Celsius. I know many of the batteries show a higher operating temperature but, it is at the expense of battery life, which erodes quickly as temperatures rise above 26 degrees. In fact, lead-acid batteries should never be mounted in an engine compartment, it really shortens the life, and batteries are expensive. Most people don't know this because, that's the way it is generally done with cars. The car manufactures do this to save money on battery cables, they don't care about battery life. Moving the battery from the engine compartment to normal room temperatures yields double the battery life as a minimum.
The wiring around your batteries looks like it is good for no more than 100 amps. Currents are really high with a 12 volt system. For the amount of power you are trying to pull out of your inverter, I would go with a 24 volt system if I was putting together a new system (I realize this is not practical, you are stuck 12 volts).
As far as the observed spark when connecting the batteries back up. The power inverter, the solar charge controller, and probably your refrigerator, have a large capacitor bank that is connected directly across the 12 volt line. These capacitors are at 1 volt or less with the power disconnected. When you reconnect the 12 volts, thousands of amps flow at the instant the connection is made. This huge surge is very hard on switch contacts and, as you probably have noticed, takes a bite out of the battery terminals. To get around this problem, I temporarily connect a 12 volt incandescent bulb (5 to 25 watts) across the battery terminals, which does 2 things: (1) It greatly limits the surge current and (2) If the bulb does not go out within a few seconds (after it charges up the capacitors), it shows you may have a short in your electrical system.
With Solar Charge Controllers, the battery must always be connected first. Connecting the panels up without battery power can damage the controller. I know these comments were quite lengthy but, I'm hoping these tips will help others with their leisure battery system.
How does putting a bulb across the battery terminals help capacitors in other components when their circuit with the battery is completed? And surely the battery would power a bulb for more than a few seconds on a leisure battery? Can you explain or re-word what you meant about connecting a bulb across the battery terminals
You are quite right to be concerned when working with batteries. There is no on / off switch on a battery so it is always live and the current it can supply is only limited by it's internal resistance. As an electronics engineer I used to train customers on battery charging and the most important part of this vlog was to tape the spanner and, as a viewer commented, tape or remove any metallic or carbon items. The other important mention was that of the temperature sensor: if the temperature is high the charge voltage needs to be lowered and vice versa.
Having worked in mental health for nearly 40 years. I would doubt that the last comment was a trained psychiatrist and even if he was he would not be able to do a personality assessment of someone changing their narrow boat batteries. I think most patients in a mental health environment should look at the doctors and nursing staff and think to themselves “if that lot are normal I’m well pleased with myself”. Very interesting vlog.
Hahahaha thank you, I love that.
It's clear to me you have a very good DC electronics knowledge: more than you want to let on.
;-)
1200 comments on changing a couple of batteries........impressive.
Recommend you put terminal covers on the positive terminals..........will help prevent your wrench dropping fireworks
Nice channel
So fun !! Electricity moves like water (path of least resistance and can spike like a wave when things are turned off and on) ...your videos are a blast !! : ) Thank You !!
I always found the best way to work on any voltage is to have three or four Gin and Tonics and stand in a puddle. The G&T makes it so you don't feel the pain when you touch a live wire and the puddle makes a good ground/earth to drain the electric from your body fast :) :) :)
Hahahaha good advice!
good to see the old spring loaded poles getting some camera time...we miss you.
Good show David. What are the PVC poles over your head for?. Are they for laundry? I might ad that I grew up in my business as a fix-it-man. You are doing a great job. We learn by our mistakes. it is a learning process. Safety is paramount in any job. Your research and thought process is commendable.
Yes, laundry!
You’re not alone, ever since batteries started exploding(yes mostly lithium) I’ve become very nervous about batteries and being around them. All those people getting badly burned and hurt from just little batteries so I’d be crapping bricks being around ones as big as yours. Even though I didn’t understand hardly any of the information that you were discussing near the end I still found it very interesting. Great video! Oh isn’t sad that you cannot freely show everything because some asshole will hurt themselves but instead of taking responsibility for their actions they blame others.
The inverter has condensators that should be shortened with a resistor before connecting the new batteries, but that is expert stuff and almost nobody knows it. Best of luck with the new batteries. Be safe.
condensators = capacitors and shortened = shorted (discharged) GOOD Points, take heed! :)
@@sre331l Thanks.. As a foreigner my language is far from perfect. I stand corrected.
This is how we all learn how to manage our boats, by research, making a decision then doing it. Fun with the right attitude! Thanks for sharing your personal path.
This was your chance to do a video with ElectroBOOM. Sure your boat would have ended up on fire but hilarity would have ensued.
David, Thanks for showing us a battery chemistry other than lithium. Both refreshing and very interesting. I am SO happy to see you cover your panels while disconnecting and connecting. Many a controller has ruined by arcing. Also you are spot on about an equalization charging as only certain types of battery chemistry should EVER receive such high levels of charge.
Cheers!
"Rather than have you argue about how I did it, I'm just not going to show you at all!"
Genius.
I thought so ;-)
CruisingTheCut 😉 aww, I so enjoy the comments from those basking in tubs of self knowledge. Best read with a shot or two of a favorite beverage 😀. Glad so many chose to comment anyway 👍👍
Just think how the comments would have exploded if I *had* shown how I did it! Hahaha
@@CruisingTheCut The tape on the positive terminals betrays you though .
Wonderful vlog as always. After plowing through many of the comments, I remain fully convinced that electricity is like economics; everyone is an expert and no one actually truly understands exactly how either one works.
Your three batteries are connected in parallel. Therefore all the positive terminals are at the same potential from earth. Therefore unless you connect the batteries together with bell wire or something it doesn't matter where you take your positive feed, as far as the electricity is concerned it's one terminal.
Hi. Thanks. Yes, I know they're in parallel but it does matter, as explained in the article linked in the video description. Cheers
@@CruisingTheCut I read the article you referenced. Interesting, and I'm not in a position to dispute the figures provide in it, as it is a specialist area way outside of my experience. What I would point out is that any imbalance in output is dependent on the tiny resistance of the bus jumpers and very high currents. As you don't use these three batteries for starting the boat's engine, the overall current pull won't be anywhere near the extremes needed to develop the illustrated scenario, so it is unlikely in ordinary circumstances to cause damage.
The other point is that the calculations were done many years ago and battery technology has improved somewhat, so there is a possibility they may no longer be valid.
That said, it is all a moot point as the connections have been reconfigured.
Keep up the good work!
@@chrisknight6884 Your 'time' point is not valid but everything else is. A matter of low currents flowing through thick cables - so no issues of imbalance. Had currents been in the thousands of amps, then balancing leads would have been much more important.
The inverter has some lovely big input capacitors. These drain as soon as you disconnect the batteries and then recharge very rapidly when you reconnect (whether the inverter is on or off) ... hence the sparks.
Oh for solid state batteries to the market.
100% correct the differences in boat batteries wiring set up.
Very very few engineering bods operate in the same way.
Good work David
Good move insulating the terminals for maintenance given the lifts and moves, sure don't want to accidentally drop things across those, an uninsulated wrench across those terminals and its a bad day.. As I understand it, the idea with removing negative first relates to automotive service, take off the negative first and if you accidentally drop the positive lead and it hits the car body then there is no risk of a short. Take the positive first, and accidentally drop a tool so it hits the positive terminal and the car body, you get the big spark. No big grounded car body around your batteries so it probably doesn't matter OTOH consistent methods are preferable. Sounds like your charger circuit is not disconnected by your master switch, so your spark is due to difference of voltage between whats left in the charger device and your battery bank. Would be desirable to put a disconnect on that as well, or switch off its breaker if present.
No big grounded car body round the batteries???????
The entire hull is STEEL & a hell of a lot more than a car body.
Positive short to any part of the boat would result in a very BIG spark indeed. Removing negative first removes the risk of a spark should the positive contact the hull. Yes l have a City & Guilds in electronics.
I always look forward to your videos and I'm never disappointed, thank you
I was taught many moons ago which ever the earth is, disconnect that first. The reason given was " when you disconnect the earth first, and you accidently touch the frame/chassis/hull, no spark as you are not completing a circuit (earth/ frame, same thing). Therefore when you disconnecting the "live" second, and accidently touch the frame/chassis/hull, there is actually no circuit to complete.
Cheers. As I said on the video, I've also heard equally good reasons why it should be +ve first. Hence my coyness at showing which way I actually did it ;-)
@@CruisingTheCut Is it possible that these equally good reasons are only for AC, where the Hot is sometimes referred to as positive? In AC wiring you do not want to disconnect the ground/neutral first. In 12VDC negative grounded systems, I can think of no benefit to disconnecting positive first.
I quite enjoy the geeking out. The wiring information reminded me of how an old diesel farm tractor we had was wired. We had several but only one, with a 5.0L 6-cylinder, used more than one battery. On each side were parallel cables running to the respective terminal points.
As for disconnection order, I was always taught whichever was the ground first (usually negative but on the farm we had some 6v positive ground machines,) but it was simply for a practical reason of many conductive surfaces nearby that were all connected to ground combined with the battery often being in even less accessible places (tractor designers then had learned to build some mechanically nice machines but didn't think too much about human access for maintenance) and insulating the wrench would have addressed it as well.
You where right, You haven't a clue, but you did make it sound like it made sense. Lol !
A friend of mine is a automotive mechanic. He tapes his wrenches also. He managed to weld his wedding ring to his finger once when his wrench caused an arc with a car battery. So, never hurts to be extra cautious.
Ouch
Not wearing rings or metallic watches while doing any sort of electrical work is a good idea too. I know a number of guys who have gotten burnt that way and most industrial electricians leave their rings at home for that reason (and use plastic cased watches).
Again I learned something from each of the YT narrow boat site up too 6 now watching 🤓🤓👀
David. As a bit of a sparky, just let me say. You have just made the grade to narrow boat level 1 sparky. Well done you.🇦🇺🇦🇺👍👍🥂🥂🥂🥂
Thanks, this was very interesting.
Happy Cruising
35 years as Electrical Power Generating Facility/Industrial Electrician here. ALWAYS disconnect NEGATIVE side of batteries first, then last when reconnecting. This is not an opinion, it's a fact.
Yes, but only if it's negative earth.
@@kevgermany just like in cars the negative is often connected to the hull. Hence the same rules apply. Disconnecting negative first/reconnecting it last lowers the risk of accidentally creating a short (to the hull or other conductive parts around the battery bay) with your tools when unscrewing the positive terminal.
The ability to research (and compare from several sources), read (carefully), and follow instructions (without jumping ahead because you just know what the next step must be) will do very well as a substitute for a great deal of training and experience in the hooking up of batteries, as well as a great many other technical subjects.
Used correctly, the internet, and all the other ways to disseminate knowledge, have made the modern world a lot easier to deal with. I feel we have passed a fairly long period where technical matters were the exclusive province of "wizards", leaving common people ignorant of the very things they depend on for their very lives. Up until about the 1960s, the average person could work on automobiles with a few hand tools and a repair manual. When cars began to depend on fancy electronics to operate properly, the "wizards" took over with their arcane instruments and tools, leaving a generation or more with little understanding of the beasts that carry them around. Today you can find a video that will show you how to do most things on a car. The same for the electronics that permeate our lives. It is vanishingly rare to be the only person in the world with any particular problem.
Peter W. Meek Very well said!
Why the H would they write out the box dimensions? What good would that do you?
Very important info for the warehouse I presume!!
Yes and for couriers moving them around the world too, they often want boxed dimensions too.
A really interesting article indeed, I couldn't really understand the technical charging bit at the end so I counted how many times you blinked which was 1 time :-) I was never good at electrics but one thing I have learned from you is that patience and knowledge gets you out of whole heap of sticky situations.
While you've done nothing harmful or even 'wrong', battery banks connected in parallel don't really care where the 'input - output' cables are connected. Putting the pos and neg on the same battery will result in exactly the same performance as placing one on the first battery and the other on the last... (Retired Commercial Electrician and boat wirer). Still doesn't make the damn things any lighter...
The reasoning I believe is that at higher current draws there is a small but non-zero voltage drop in the jumper links and connections. The first/last configuration distributes the current draw evenly between the batteries, in addition to resulting in a slightly smaller voltage drop overall. Probably not a big deal if your connections are all good and proper, but perhaps possibly somewhat significant in the event that they're not?
They do care when the amperage is high. Imagine a bank of ten batteries in series. Connected at the first battery at one end. By the time the tenth battery sees the charge it will have also seen nine interconnecting links each with a voltage drop across them.
@@Hagledesperado if there is a relevant voltage drop then the bolts are not tightened correctly. The cable resistance is negligible on those short links; even if it's only 6-gage wire (it should be more like 4-gage) the resistance is only about 0.4 ohms per 1000ft.
So just tighten the screws to the correct torque and use some terminal grease to prevent corrosion.
Contact resistance only becomes an issue on large battery banks. If you want to be on the safe side use bus bars instead of single wires - but with only 3 batteries this also just removes the contact resistance in the middle.
Good job David glad you were doing it, spanner idea great! Regards John
Just a remark to anyone doing their own battery installation. Connecting "first" or "last" battery in a group of batteries connected in parallell really doesn't matter as long as the intermediate cables are thick enough to not give any voltage drop.
It's almost certainly negligible but I've always been taught to source from across the bank rather than within it.
Well done David. I love your nerdy vlogs👏☺
Hello! I find all this Narrowboating stuff fascinating (I’m in the USA so totally new to me). I would LOVE to do a vacation for a couple of weeks renting a boat! I have a question, not related to that, but related to you video. While you are moored, you can plug in and the juice runs into the inverter and charges the batteries. While you are cruising, the engine is charging the batteries. When you are moored AWAY from a plug-in for several days, are the solar panels enough to keep up with your electricity usage? Or do you have to idle he engine for several hours a day to charge up your batteries?? With a boat that size I am surprised you don’t have a larger battery bank. How long will the batteries last without charging them? A day or two? I imagine the fridge would run it down fairly quickly and it all depends on how many things you are running. THX! Curtis from the USA!
For me, the solar is (usually) sufficient for everything from April to mid-October maybe. Yes, the fridge (and laptop) are the biggest consumers of power. The new batteries last about two days (to 50% charge) before I would need to run the engine if the solar was not up to it. I'd like a bigger bank but no real space to install one and the boat is 20 years old, they put smaller batteries in back then as people had fewer high-power devices!
Yet another great video. You’re not alone hating batteries.
Well done.
Hi mate. Just wondering if you could give an update on these now it's been a year?
I don't have an update to give; the batteries continue to work as I'd expect batteries to but I have no means of testing them. After a few more years, it'll be a case of seeing if they still charge and hold a charge.
@@CruisingTheCut
This batteries improvements is grossly under sold. Testing shows this battery capable of 80% DOD at 10,000+ cycles (the PbC battery operates at about 80% state of charge). This batteries lead, bathed in acid, will probably fail internally in about 20+ years. I'd say that's could value for the money.
@Schpankme Can you point me to where such testing is documented, please?
@@Lawiah0 Victron have a a range of lead carbon batteries. Their data shows 500 100% discharges and 1000 60% discharges.
www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Datasheet-Lead-carbon-battery-EN.pdf
@@CruisingTheCut
My apologies for not providing reference. I'm hard pressed to find the original document (PDF from 1996 research) that discussed Lead Carbon Battery with 80% DOD at 10,000 cycles. However, here is a data-sheet from Victron Energy, that mentions "Several manufacturers of lead carbon batteries claim a cycle life of up to two thousand 90% DoD cycles. We have not yet been able to confirm
these claims."
www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Datasheet-Lead-carbon-battery-EN.pdf
Also, from Sandia National Laboratories discussing 50,000 cycles (PDF). Figure 6
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1502636
Great video very entertaining. And yes I also would wire from positive at one end of battery bank and negative at the other end to have a true circuit. but maybe have reversed my input to my output leads. Love your shows keep floating and be safe.
Yes, the solar power leads could have been wired opposite/"mirrored" with regards to the main discharge wires, to avoid clumping all the connectors on the same terminals. Would have been a little bit neater mechanically.
Another informative vlog, thanks. I had an epiphany after joining the 12v boating group on facebook. I previously used just a smartgauge to monitor charge and discharge, however the charge side was a revelation to me and now I have less money and a Victron 30 amp charger and Honda generator and critically a Victron battery monitor that tells me when my batteries are full and what each individual item consumes if I wish to monitor it as I use it via the natty bluetooth interface. I went for AGM's and I am ashamed to say my wiring needs a good sort out even after I rewired it all. You have a tidy install and one that now seems wired correctly for balancing the inputs and outputs on the new batteries. Interesting to see how they perform. Take care
Thanks. I'm a member of that valuable group too though there's always debate on there about the usefulness of these Amp Hour battery gauges. I'm quite pleased with the install so far. Cheers
Well a good one gain and hope all is good love it
David, you should suggest to The Narrowboat Experience that they install these in their new boat. Anna stated in one vlog that they don't tend bring their batteries up to 100% most of the time. From what I can find about the Lead-Acid batteries, they are a very good, lower cost, alternative to LiFePO4, provided you can deal with the same shortcomings of voltage drop as Lead-Acid (this is coming from a retired Chemist.). Nice vlog and I hope these batteries serve you well.
I think I'm right in saying their new boat has much more solar than the old so I think their batteries will get slowly charged to 100% a lot more than on the old boat.
@@CruisingTheCut Thay aren't really shown much of the new boat, so didn't know that. Thanks.
Hope everything works out well. I'll be watching for a bright flash and mushroom cloud from the direction of England just in case. Very entertaining video.. Thanks...
The inverter has large capacitors (and they drain fairly fast, however not instantly takes a few minutes), when you connect to the inverter, you will draw a spark (which charges the caps) unless you pre-charge the caps with a resistor first, once the caps are charged then remove the resistor and connect directly. No spark. The bigger the inverter the bigger the caps, so the more important to pre-charge the caps.
Geek on! Jolly interesting to us DIYers.
Great video, loved the camera turn off to stop the arguments very funny
I disapprove of turning the camera off before disconnecting the old battery.
Yes, it's the sparks, smoke and bang effects that gets new subscribers!
Most inverters have a large capacitor on the input. When you connect the power it has a very sudden and high current draw as it charges. The victron 5kw unit makes a big bang. You are supposed to charge it before connecting it.
Great detail and enthusiasm!
Very good geeky video 😁
Enjoy you videos. The sparks that you get when you connect your inverter up is normal. It is caused by the capacitors in your inverter charging up to match the battery voltage.
It was good to get to the end of the video without you appearing covered in soot and hair on end.
10:25 Please put a little piece of conduit on the red solar wire, right next to the terminal. Boat vibrates and in a year you will have exposed copper strands there, which effectively will revert you to the original charging of the first bank battery ;)
Martin he did this over 8 months ago so if he hasn’t figured it out by now.....
Hope you didn't let the supplier kindly "recycle" your old batteries (like I did!). Pop along to a scrap metal merchant and they're worth between £10 and £20 each based on weight.
No, still got the old ones awaiting proper disposal.
Having the box dimensions on the box and not the battery itself is a bit mad i totally understand your confusion i really enjoy these videos were the maintenance and repairs and day to day upkeep of your home is covered
The dimensions on the box are a requirement of and for shipping companies so that they can allocate accurately the space required for transportation, of the product,
If you look at any cardboard box of imported goods those dimensions are there, BOX SIZE
Learnt by my mistake, like the idea iof tape on the spanner, make sure you remove any jewellery, when I did it arched across ,a my eedding rind just happened to be in the middle,
The 4 batteries on my sailboat weighed 125 lbs each yes seriously
Good thing number one son got them from the dock to below decks
😎 good heavy plate batteries are what you want 10 year life is excellent I only got 4 years on the ones that came with the boat from factory , but second set lasted 12 years well they did cost 225 usd each yep boating ain’t cheap
Nice one David and you are quite right to be cautious around batteries, especially the potential capacity of 300 Amp/hours. That's an awful lot of stored energy and people are often dismissive of batteries because they are 'only' 12 volt. The perennial 'spark' is probably just very minor voltage differences balancing themselves out. When you jump start small cars from a Land Rover with 50mm squared cables, there is always a bit of a sparkle. It's when it's a great blue, snarling thing you have to watch it!
Well done for doing something I would be just as cautious about and I used to ramp MRI magnets up and down - you have just the right degree of caution and common sense, with the ability to RTFS, as we used to call it. (Read the freakin' screen.)
looks like you had fun :)
Well done, most informative
Again, thanks for sharing!
As another non-expert, and at the risk of crashing the internet..... I have always understood that if working on something like a car where the vehicle body is usually earthed, the reason for disconnecting the negative first is that if your (untaped) spanner touches the chassis as you are working it will not cause a short. Once the earth is disconnected, touching the spanner to chassis while working on the + terminal will not matter either.
Your link to the page about why to wire the batteries the way you did was very interesting, thanks!
I use a resistor with alligator clips and attach to either end being connected or disconnected. It takes any ambient charge and slowly dissapaites it to heat. Happy to share more.
Nice tip!
Sparking is usually a capacitor charging up once again.
Good vlog. Looks like you had the wash out drying. Get yourself a dust buster, little cordless hand vacuum for those small little messes, and for when you have the power off in the boat.
I want a nice cordless but the cheap ones are crap and the good ones are expensive :-(
@@CruisingTheCut I use a range of Makita cordless power tools for my work, they do a great little vacuum which is quite cheap if you already have the batteries and charger. If you have any existing cordless tools you might find a compatible vacuum.
@@CruisingTheCut alas the benefit of having Walmart with other stores available for shopping by price and ability in the US.
Always better to be safe than end up as a british space experiment.
As part of the checks when installing new batteries it's good practice to double check with a multimeter that the polarity is as indicated (ie positive is indeed by the red/plus mark) . I installed a set of four lead acid batteries a few years ago and one of them was marked wrongly. Fortunately I didn't connect them up in a bank of four otherwise there would have been an almighty dead short and probable explosion!
Yikes!
Blimey! That was incredibly dangerous. I have to say in 30 plus years in the industry I have never seen such a thing or heard, until now, from anybody that has.
Not being so geeky myself, the main thing I picked up from this is that you seem to look younger with each new vlog - may be connected to my great age and that thing about policemen....
A small spark is normal due to voltage differential between the batteries. Yes, even a 10th or 100th of a volt. If your inverter was connected, the caps and such, even when off, creates a load due to bleed-off discharging. Look up "capacitor forming tool" to see how to connect a light bulb to balance the differential voltages before connecting without a spark.
Cheers, sounds like a good idea
Yes, the Inverter caps will charge to the battery voltage almost instantly when you connect up, and that can be a lot of amps. I'm totally off grid and have 1500Kw of solar and a 450Ah 24v battery bank. I also have a combiner box with each panel going through its own breaker and a massive breaker between battery and inverter. So I can isolate everything with a flick of a switch. That means I can connect the batteries to the inverter with the breaker off, no sparks, and then turn it on, no sparks there either. Much better for the heart rate! I would recommend you consider a breaker or some sort of disconnect between battery and inverter. Many inverter manuals recommend that or a suitable fuse, just in case the fault occurs in the inverter and you have to disconnect quickly.
Great vlog as usual. I'm really interested in how the batteries work out.
I'm definitely going to consider adding one in!
Good lord, why the hell would they bother to print the box dimensions on the box? Who the hell cares what size the box is, that’s just stupid! Glad the batteries themselves fit... these are popular with rv’s as well... will be interesting to see how they work out.
Companies which have to storage the boxes, sometimes need the dimensions.
Fabulous.
A geek fix...bliss.
Now let me see...
"Remove the red wine first"..mmm
This could take some time; there are still four bottles left.
I'll get back to you.
so many experts.... well, those sparks are simply tiny differences in voltage from the different batteries. as they are connected directly even the slightest difference sets of a current to equilize.
connecting across or not is simply a question of thickness of the connection wires between batteries and amps drawn. high amps and relatively thin wires turn those wires into resistors so to speak. now they do play a role and diagonal is the rule.
big connectors and low amps: do whatever you want.
I'm not sure that the 10 mV difference would be enough to draw an arc though.
I'm 99% sure the order that the terminal are connected doesn't make any difference in practical terms, but from an OCD perspective it certainly does.
Your spark may well be from current flow from the batteries equalising to the same voltage each.
I thought you were a " right numpty" when it comes to diy having done that I don't think you could call yourself that now, if I tried my hair( what's left of it) would be sticking up from being shocked.great job and great vlog.
If you had a good long time friend with you as you did the final wire hook up …
I would hope they would enjoy having a small paper bag … and a sense of humor …
Blow up the paper bag , grip it inflated in one hand … a pop it loudly … as you connected !
I would actually wet myself 🤣
Bravo! You can even make the geek stuff interesting. :)
Why anyone would print the Box dimensions and not the Batterie dimensions on the Box is beyond me...
I uttered a few curses until I suddenly realised.
Most likely for shipping as that doesn't care about the dimensions of the battery.
AH! Surprised to see that you linked to exactly the same page as I used when setting up my four inverter batteries, many moons ago. Ignore the smartarses who keep maintaining it doesn't matter.
Well done 😁👍👏👏👏
A this got me charged up this morning! :D
The secret is to look as though you know what you are talking about...and lots of cups of tea
Tea for sure!
And Hobnobs.
another good vlog
Batteries aren't going to kill you, I've exploded a wrench or two on 24v system and I'm still around, for now.
As an electrical guy, I'm afraid that I did a lot of head shaking and eye rolling, but what you did is fine and you did it all safely which is really what counts. I'm interested in the lead carbon battery technology - I'm not familiar with it, so thanks for showing this! As always, nicely done video!
Since you had the battery switch off, I expect that the little spark that you saw was because the batteries were slightly different voltages - the inverter should be after the battery switch, so it wouldn't have any effect.
Cheers!
By the way, looking through the article that you have the link for, your original install was closest to Method 4, in regard to charging. The charging cables went to the center battery and fed out from there, making it the most balanced option (the top and bottom battery were both 1 link away from the charger).
If you go by the article, you should also hook your main red and black wires there, if I'm reading it right.
Cheers!
The inverter in this case is connected directly for reasons I can't recall.
@@CruisingTheCut Hmm - that's interesting, and now your theory makes more sense! If you have a chance to change it to after the battery disconnect, you should probably consider it. The inverter has active electronics that can fail/short out and you would just have to watch it burn if it's connected directly to the batteries...
It seemed he wired the inverter direct to the batteries and not thru the switch. Same as my thought on the spark - low voltage spark, high current.
@@markbulla1851 That's the layout that seems the most logical. To take it any further, he could have made rings out of it - by linking the two outer batteries together - so there were leads 1 to 2, 2 to 3 AND 3 to 1
Technically, every point that is connected together with a conductor is electrically the same point, so any of the terminals with the red wire will do, and the same with the black. It does not matter where you put the panel connections so long as there is no corrosion at any of your terminal connections to create a voltage drop to differentiate the point. They are in series, so it was probably in the middle to do the least damage to the least number of batteries should rot and corrosion be allowed to gain a foothold under the insulation on either side.
It does indeed matter, see the article referenced in the video description
very strange way of looking at things, indeed.
@@CruisingTheCut I hate to be another armchair expert digging up an old topic, but since you commented only a day ago - here we go! I have to disagree with that article. It sounds very professional and I don't doubt his measurements but something sounds iffy. From the clip @5:18 I'm guessing it looks like AWG0 wire connecting the batteries (approx. 1 cm diameter) which should have a resistance over 30 cm of about 0.0001 ohm. Three links, from top battery to bottom battery, is 0.0003 ohm. If in the worst case scenario you are drawing 100 Amps! The voltage drop along the wire is a mere 0.03 V. Not enough to tax the batteries significantly differently over a 10-15 year life. But you will almost never be drawing 100 Amps continuously. Not something you need to realistically worry about, just have a cup of tea! The results in the linked article might indicate he was using much thinner wire which will of course lead to a slightly higher voltage drop.
It very much does matter
"electrically the same point" would only be correct if you have a conductor with zero resistance.
I know this is an old video but a little thing. You really should have everything switched off before operating isolators. Not all isolators can handle the arcing you get when switching power on or off and even if they can they can be a lot me hassle to replace.
Apologies if you have had this before but I didn't spot anyone saying the same in my quick skim read.
I've found that having a disconnect between the battery and the inverter will stop that spark. I believe that the inverter has a power draw even if it is not on.
I think "Journey with Jono" would be your go-to guy with this. When he switched over to Lithium batteries, he seemed to be trained in electronics.
Jono not needed - I put them in perfectly OK :-)
But Jono shelled out a lot of money for his Lithium infrastructure. Still fascinating to watch his meticulous electrical design.