We are still land based and Inspiration is on-the-hard waiting for the lift crane operators to return from Christmas break. During the pre-Christmas days we went to St. Petersburg to spend Christmas with Martha. While there we went to marine shops to buy goodies that were our Christmas presents to each other. We left 12/27/14 for GCS.
Today 12/30/14 GCS: We spent the day today running between the Ace Hardware here and Inspiration II: Needed not so specialty Stainless Steel nuts and bolts. Wouldn't you know that the last machine bolt to install had a thread issue and was unusable! SAM scraped Cetol and painted Cetol Natural Teak and putty'd in some rough spots on the cap rail fairing. She also re-installed the boarding ladder steps she has been painting with Cetol NT.
The modus operandi will be to use the 8KW generator to charge the batteries, when off shore power, plus run other high power users at the same limited times. I may add a modest amount of solar power to minimize generator usage. I would like enough solar power to run the autopilot and refrig/freezer which should be about a daily 100 A-H as a WAG. This leads me towards 320 watts of solar power (figuring 4 full sun hours equivalent per day--> 100AH/4 H*12VDC nominal). Solar is cheap these days so I want to buy the best MPPT charge controller I can find: research is needed but Morningstar is the benchmark to beat.
I Installed the ProNautiqP 1260 battery charger today including three ANL fuse blocks in which I will install 70A fuses. I should be ready to fire it up tomorrow and try and charge the 4 new Trojan T-105 batteries ( I have them in two banks with two batteries in series to make 12VDC @ 225AH each bank). I haven't used the T&B Crimper for quite some time. Glad I had it to crimp the #8 AWG ring terminals.
Earlier in the week I installed two ANL fuse blocks with 200 A fuses close to the battery group 1 & 2 plus I put in an ATC fuse holder from the down stream side of the battery bank 1 since it was not fused before. I now am $250 poorer but feel 100% safer than having live loads wired straight to the terminals as before.
Today 12/30/14 GCS: We spent the day today running between the Ace Hardware here and Inspiration II: Needed not so specialty Stainless Steel nuts and bolts. Wouldn't you know that the last machine bolt to install had a thread issue and was unusable! SAM scraped Cetol and painted Cetol Natural Teak and putty'd in some rough spots on the cap rail fairing. She also re-installed the boarding ladder steps she has been painting with Cetol NT.
The modus operandi will be to use the 8KW generator to charge the batteries, when off shore power, plus run other high power users at the same limited times. I may add a modest amount of solar power to minimize generator usage. I would like enough solar power to run the autopilot and refrig/freezer which should be about a daily 100 A-H as a WAG. This leads me towards 320 watts of solar power (figuring 4 full sun hours equivalent per day--> 100AH/4 H*12VDC nominal). Solar is cheap these days so I want to buy the best MPPT charge controller I can find: research is needed but Morningstar is the benchmark to beat.
I Installed the ProNautiqP 1260 battery charger today including three ANL fuse blocks in which I will install 70A fuses. I should be ready to fire it up tomorrow and try and charge the 4 new Trojan T-105 batteries ( I have them in two banks with two batteries in series to make 12VDC @ 225AH each bank). I haven't used the T&B Crimper for quite some time. Glad I had it to crimp the #8 AWG ring terminals.
Earlier in the week I installed two ANL fuse blocks with 200 A fuses close to the battery group 1 & 2 plus I put in an ATC fuse holder from the down stream side of the battery bank 1 since it was not fused before. I now am $250 poorer but feel 100% safer than having live loads wired straight to the terminals as before.
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