1-2-both switch! is it still required!

[PaulRainbow]

Trouble I had with a VSR on the camper: it kept clicking over as the panel kept the start battery topped up, but it disguised the fact that it was getting knackered, until it suddenly gave up one dull day.

There are obviously potential failure points in any system, you just have to mitigate as many risks as possible (i'm sure you know that). In the above case, just turn the emergency parallel switch on to get you home.

 

[B27]

as others have already said, going to lithium is a whole new set of choices in systems and there is nothing in what is proposed that would limit the choices. The VSR would go, but everything else would be basically carryover, but maybe used in a different way.

If you're going to invest in something like another battery bank, I think it would be worth thinking it all through before fiddling with the existing, because you may want to leave space on the panel for another switch, the way you lay out the cabling and bus bars might be influenced etc etc.
My boat is a fair example of what can happen when one 'upgrade' doesn't go brilliantly with another upgrade a couple of years down the line.
You can waste a lot of money and time on cabling and all those odds and ends which cost a fiver here and a tenner there, or you can end up with a messy system.

I'm looking at the possbility of adding a little more domestic battery capacity, which might be in the form of a 'portable' lifepo4 pack.
As I have an all-year mooring with no shore power, there might be mileage in a pack I can take home to charge.
I'm also looking at better solar controllers and some sort of current/voltage monitoring.

I think I've rules out installing an inverter, but I have a small portable one, which I might put some PowerPole connectors in for, so I can easily run the odd mains tool if I reed to.

Tacking things on one at a time is great tradition which we could do without IMHO.

 

[Tranona]

If you're going to invest in something like another battery bank, I think it would be worth thinking it all through before fiddling with the existing, because you may want to leave space on the panel for another switch, the way you lay out the cabling and bus bars might be influenced etc etc.
My boat is a fair example of what can happen when one 'upgrade' doesn't go brilliantly with another upgrade a couple of years down the line.
You can waste a lot of money and time on cabling and all those odds and ends which cost a fiver here and a tenner there, or you can end up with a messy system.

I'm looking at the possbility of adding a little more domestic battery capacity, which might be in the form of a 'portable' lifepo4 pack.
As I have an all-year mooring with no shore power, there might be mileage in a pack I can take home to charge.
I'm also looking at better solar controllers and some sort of current/voltage monitoring.

I think I've rules out installing an inverter, but I have a small portable one, which I might put some PowerPole connectors in for, so I can easily run the odd mains tool if I reed to.

Tacking things on one at a time is great tradition which we could do without IMHO.

But there is nothing redundant except the VSR if he chooses to go lithium. He already has 2 banks and the project is to make them independent - a question that has been ignored by many posters as commonly happens on a forum! It is by all accounts a simple boat so a basic drop in for the house with a B2B from the start will be fine. However if he fits an appropriately sized AGM as a house bank it will be 10 years or more before he needs to think about a replacement. With the set up he describes there really is no justification for lithium at this point but who knows what will be available in 10 years time.

While it makes sense to think about the next stage there is a danger of overthinking rather than making the best job of your current project.