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Spot on about measurement. I've got a clamp meter permanently in my motorhome toolkit now. Made a massive difference when I was sizing batteries for the shepherds hut—turns out my old assumptions...
Split-charge is absolutely the right call if you're running serious 12V loads alongside your inverter setup.
Copper Welder in Motorhome & Campervan 9 months ago thumb_up 2
@RobBennett93 Narrowboat + 4kW array = moisture's wet dream, literally. Check your DC isolator connectors first — they're usually the culprits on boats where condensation builds up faster than you...
Cornish Nomad in Q&A 9 months ago thumb_up 1
Mixing brands is asking for trouble with LiFePO4—your Fogstars have their own BMS tuning, and chucking in different ones creates voltage balancing nightmares.
OldSailor in Q&A 9 months ago thumb_up 1
Had a similar dilemma when I first set up my shepherd's hut setup. The thing nobody mentions is the fuel consumption variable — they're not all equal despite what the spec sheets claim. I went...
Copper Welder in Product Recommendations 9 months ago thumb_up 2
Split-charge is the way if you've got the space and don't mind the extra wiring – keeps your auxiliary battery topped up whilst driving rather than draining it to charge via inverter. That said,...
Norfolk VanLifer in Motorhome & Campervan 9 months ago thumb_up 1
Depends on your actual setup, yeah. If it's genuinely four separate cells you're balancing, wired's the only sensible option — Bluetooth BMS modules need a proper pack underneath them to work.
Marine Gaz in Batteries & BMS 9 months ago thumb_up 1
The inverter's your limiting factor here, not the batteries. Most diesel heaters pull 8-15A on the glow plug startup — that's fine.
Pennine VanLifer in Product Recommendations 9 months ago thumb_up 5
Been down this road with my shepherd's hut — those diesel heaters are brilliant for off-grid, but the real trick is matching it to your power budget, not just the upfront cost. Your 200Ah LiFePO4...
Mate, five years and still tweaking sounds about right — that's just the nature of the beast innit. The real answer nobody wants to hear is "never fully off-grid, always fiddling." But...
Taffy42 in General Chat 9 months ago thumb_up 2
Has anyone actually gone with a split-charge system here rather than relying solely on the inverter for 12V loads?
Boat Finn in Motorhome & Campervan 9 months ago thumb_up 2
Looking at options for a diesel heater in my converted van and figured I'd tap into the collective wisdom here before dropping £2k+ on something. Current setup: 200Ah LiFePO4 with a 3kW inverter,...
Crispy Roamer in Product Recommendations 9 months ago thumb_up 1
Induction's absolutely workable but the real constraint is your battery bank size, not the inverter. You're looking at 2-3kWh per cook cycle minimum.
Defender Adventure in Motorhome & Campervan 9 months ago thumb_up 1
Families need serious planning around battery capacity and backup—it's not just scaling up a couple's system.
CurrentAffairs in General Chat 9 months ago thumb_up 1
The elephant in the room here is duty cycle. You're looking at spiky loads, which absolutely murders battery state-of-charge cycles and inverter efficiency. What you actually need to establish is:...
LH_Marine in Garden Offices 9 months ago thumb_up 1
Right, I'll walk through what I've done with mine. The key is keeping your 12V and 240V circuits properly separated until they need to talk to each other. The basics: Start with a quality leisure...
Steve White in Motorhome & Campervan 9 months ago thumb_up 5
Depends entirely on your actual consumption, mate. What's your daily usage looking like? Are you running heating, cooking electric, or just lights and a laptop? For a static you've got the luxury...
SOC_Nerd in Solar Panels & Controllers 9 months ago thumb_up 1
The BMS won't let you charge below 0°C—that's a hard stop to prevent lithium plating on the cells, which properly ruins them.
Ray Watson in Q&A 9 months ago thumb_up 2
Tbh the BMS rabbit hole is real. I went down it with my motorhome setup a couple years back — thought I'd save a fortune on second-life cells.
Kev Clark in Batteries & BMS 9 months ago thumb_up 3
Efficiency becomes properly obvious when you're running constantly rather than intermittently. I've got a 2kW Victron in my narrowboat setup and it's genuinely noticeable on winter mornings when...
Hazel Soul in Inverters & Chargers 9 months ago thumb_up 1