Electric Cookers

[geem]

Ha ha mega yacht yea , we now down to a very small 36 foot ,
Our full time liveaboard is probably over and we only be living on board for 6 or 7 months now and on land for the over six months , but who know , we sold in March with no intention of buying another boat for two years ,
late April we was off cruising in this boat.
Probably finish with the Med now and cruising Denmark, Norway even Iceland could be on the cards,

Too cold for me. We have been doing 9 months in the Caribbean and 3 month at home apart from during Brexit when we sailed home and did a refit on the boat. Been back in the Caribbean since benining of the year. We are not planning on being landlubbers next summer but we will sail to the Azores, Maderia for the summer then back to Caribbean for the winter months. We have had our fill of cold weather with one winter in the UK since 2014?

 

[sailaboutvic]

Too cold for me. We have been doing 9 months in the Caribbean and 3 month at home apart from during Brexit when we sailed home and did a refit on the boat. Been back in the Caribbean since benining of the year. We are not planning on being landlubbers next summer but we will sail to the Azores, Maderia for the summer then back to Caribbean for the winter months. We have had our fill of cold weather with one winter in the UK since 2014?

Yea not looking forward to winter in the UK but have to say so far this year in the Netherlands its been as hot as we had it in the Med at times ,
very little rain real nice sunny days ,
maybe it's a age thing but it quite nice to have it a bit cooler , everyone we know is complaining about the heat in the Med and these bloody storms that turning up each year earlier and earlier.
We use to sail to late Dec once last year mid Oct after my brush with the snubber hook nearly losing an eye in 60 kts winds we given up hand headed for a marina.

 

[Kelpie]

Well done at builded it at that cost , I have to say my bms cost as much as your batteries.
How big is your bank?
I found the bus bars where unless and not capable to put the type of current I may at times be using so I make my own .
B2B we very rarely had turned on as we found our 780w panels was more then enough to keep the batteries charge , it was used a couple of times over winter when we has some weeks without clear sky's and as the panels where shades by other boat mast with the amount of power used we found the odd time we needed the shore charge, though the B2B .

The battery is 271Ah, 4S, 12v.
BMS rated at 120A. I'm trying to source the upgraded 200A version before we leave Europe, that should give plenty of headroom and the existing one can be kept as a spare.

I never had any worries about the quality of the bus bars. At one point I did notice some heat in one of them, that was early on and I had a bit of a cell imbalance. Subsequently top balanced and rebuilt the pack and it's running really nicely now.

I did actually buy a B2B from a forumite, before I'd even bought the cells. I've never installed it. I probably should, but we're a year in and if I've managed this far without it, it's not really essential, is it? It's somewhere near the bottom of the jobs list, around page eight I think ?

 

[geem]

Yea not looking forward to winter in the UK but have to say so far this year in the Netherlands its been as hot as we had it in the Med at times ,
very little rain real nice sunny days ,
maybe it's a age thing but it quite nice to have it a bit cooler , everyone we know is complaining about the heat in the Med and these bloody storms that turning up each year earlier and earlier.
We use to sail to late Dec once last year mid Oct after my brush with the snubber hook nearly losing an eye in 60 kts winds we given up hand headed for a marina.

The Med has never appealed to me. I have sailed there but the extreme summer heat is a turn off. Its a summer cruising ground where as the Caribbean is a winter cruising ground. The Caribbean winter climate is perfect and the constant East trade winds make for the best cruising in the world IMO. About 25 countries alone in the Windward and Leewards plus the Western Caribbean if you fancy a change. There is also the South coast of Cuba and the Bahamas if you like less crowded cruising.
I was in Sweden a couple of weeks ago delivering a superyacht (as paid crew) down to Holland via the Kiel Canal. A great trip and nice to see a different part of the world. Never been to the Baltic before.

 

[Kelpie]

The Med has never appealed to me. I have sailed there but the extreme summer heat is a turn off. Its a summer cruising ground where as the Caribbean is a winter cruising ground. The Caribbean winter climate is perfect and the constant East trade winds make for the best cruising in the world IMO. About 25 countries alone in the Windward and Leewards plus the Western Caribbean if you fancy a change. There is also the South coast of Cuba and the Bahamas if you like less crowded cruising.
I was in Sweden a couple of weeks ago delivering a superyacht (as paid crew) down to Holland via the Kiel Canal. A great trip and nice to see a different part of the world. Never been to the Baltic before.

We ended up in the Med this summer more or less by accident. Only made it as far as the Balearics so I know our experience is just scratching the surface. But after crazy heat, unreliable weather, overwhelming amounts of motoring, and hundreds of selfish idiots in motorboats, we've had enough. The clear water and snorkeling were good, some of the older towns had their charms. I'll be very surprised if we ever come back with our own boat though. Really looking forward to the Canaries and the Caribbean.

 

[sailaboutvic]

We ended up in the Med this summer more or less by accident. Only made it as far as the Balearics so I know our experience is just scratching the surface. But after crazy heat, unreliable weather, overwhelming amounts of motoring, and hundreds of selfish idiots in motorboats, we've had enough. The clear water and snorkeling were good, some of the older towns had their charms. I'll be very surprised if we ever come back with our own boat though. Really looking forward to the Canaries and the Caribbean.

There really no doubt that the weather in the Med has change especially the last10 years much hotter In the summer and colder in the winter ,
We use to start around late Feb very early March the comments we use to get from cruisers, where going its still winter or your still paid up till May its still dangerous.
We use to enter our winter marinas around mid to late Dec ,
Last year mid Oct after the last storm we encountered and as we sold the boat we never got around to leaving.

Best time in the Med is early spring and from later Sept, anchorage are empty and most have called it a day,
The problem now is these storms are arriving early a couple last month as I'm sure most people have read and there not what some people here think are storm force winds 35/40 kts but more like 60 plus and because there are coming earlier they catching out people who would normally be tucked away in a marina years back people with very little experience how to perpair for these storm , not that anyone can do enough to be 100% safe.
Taken a look at some of tho videos and photos from the other weeks boats anchored with easy reach of each other that if one should drag there very little time to do anything before they kissing the next boat or in some cases the beach.
We loved the Med and especially North Africa, Turkey and Croatia much more then say Greece , even the SOF is fantastic, Spain is probably the most dislike place for us .

Also not visit much by cruisers because of the rumours they read no anchorage , expensive marina is the west and east side of Italy fantastic coast and people to go with it .

 

[gregcope]

If you have a microbore system you would need to strip it out and start again if going the heatpump route. Heatpumps work most efficiently with underfloor heating as you can get the water temperature down to about 35degC. Radiators need to be at about 45degC. Normal gas fired boiler rads were sized traditionally on a mean water temperature of 75degC.

i think it depends on how much microbore. Some installs have 22m or 15mm and only then microbore to a rad.

rads can be run cooler, however if you do the delta-T calcs with lower flow temps you may need a bigger rad to achieve the right output for the rooms heat requirements. Those heat requirements depend on the insulation and surrounding rooms. This can be worked out.

 

[gregcope]

I was curious about heat pumps and was speaking to heat star engineer the other day who only supply for swimming pools (hence conversation) and his view was for your average bungalow even on the warmer climate on a tropical IoW was a non starter due to the lack of integrated insulation etc . Clearly in summer months makes a lot of sense heating a pool but using that for winter heating seemed a non starter. Slight thread drift but any heat pump house heater users have views?

a heat pump will have a lower output than a gass boiler and hence are not suitable for buildings that either have relatively little insulation and/or drafty. However i would argue that heating such as building will require lots of gass as well.

insulate and check drafts.

we have a heat pump, but I think this may be fred drift.

 

[geem]

i think it depends on how much microbore. Some installs have 22m or 15mm and only then microbore to a rad.

rads can be run cooler, however if you do the delta-T calcs with lower flow temps you may need a bigger rad to achieve the right output for the rooms heat requirements. Those heat requirements depend on the insulation and surrounding rooms. This can be worked out.

The problem with microbore when trying to get the same kW out of the rad at at lower delta T is the pipe velocity needs to go up dramatically to offset for the lower water temperature. Noise and pressure drop become a real problem. Radiators typically need twice the surface area at the lower operating temperature that makes the ASHP efficient. Trying to ram the amount of water needed down micropore pipes just doesn't work unless you raise the water temperature. You then destroy the efficiency. Underfloor heating is by the far the most efficient way to run ASHPs or GSHPs as you can have the delta T lower than with rads

 

[gregcope]

The problem with microbore when trying to get the same kW out of the rad at at lower delta T is the pipe velocity needs to go up dramatically to offset for the lower water temperature. Noise and pressure drop become a real problem. Radiators typically need twice the surface area at the lower operating temperature that makes the ASHP efficient. Trying to ram the amount of water needed down micropore pipes just doesn't work unless you raise the water temperature. You then destroy the efficiency. Underfloor heating is by the far the most efficient way to run ASHPs or GSHPs as you can have the delta T lower than with rads

I am not disgreeing. Just suggesting that some microbore is only to a rad from a 15mm or 22mm “main” so it could / might work and might be relatively easy to address.

if its microbore everywhere i agree
with you.

 

[gregcope]

A real thread tangent. I think air to air heatpumps aka aircon will become more popular!

 

[geem]

A real thread tangent. I think air to air heatpumps aka aircon will become more popular!

It may well become more popular but at great expensive to those installing it as an alternative to a gas boiler in an old poorly insulated house. Any ASHP or GSHP solution works best on new build where the property can be built to current building regs insulation and air tightness requirements. On apartments the best ASHP solution is an Exhaust ASHP where the ASHP is combined with a whole house ventilation system. The vitiated air from the house is passed over the heat exchanger to boost performance so you extract waste heat from the stale air. Nibe in Sweden make some of the best of these units.
We had a property in the Peak Park well away from mains gas. Thr house was heated by solid fuel and radiators. We ripped most of the system out and installed a better solid fuel system, lots of roof insulation better windows and we did the only ASHP/solid fuel heating installation we could find in UK. Mitsubushi Electric provided the heatpump. We mainly installed the ASHP so that we could go away for a week in winter and have the house background heated whilst away. Intergrating the two systems was fairly complex. It worked well but compared with heating the house on solid fuel it was expensive

 

[sailaboutvic]

So anyway about the cooker if mine I'm having problems in setting on sand , I started to wonder if it's the shape that's the problem.