Carl Baker

Carl Baker

Member

@CarlBaker

Retired chef from Staffordshire. Converting a Canal boat for weekends away.

Staffordshire Joined Nov 2023
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (30)
MultiPlus Compact 12/1600/70-16 – Internal voltage misreading 9V, no inverter operation without shor
@Nobby worth checking the BMS low-voltage disconnect threshold if you're running lithium — the MultiPlus can sometimes report a phantom low voltage when the BMS has briefly tripped and...
in Inverters & Chargers 2 weeks ago
Cerbo not showing Multiplus II correctly
@MarkAllen69 post did get cut off as @CliffSpirit noted, so hard to say definitively — but a common one I've hit with my own Cerbo/Multiplus II pairing is the AC input/output power values not...
in Inverters & Chargers 3 weeks ago
Insulating a shepherd's hut floor — worth doing before fitting the wood burner?
Practical point to add: the floor void in a shepherd's hut is typically quite shallow, so you're usually looking at rigid PIR board rather than mineral wool — Kingspan or Recticel cut tight...
in Off-Grid Cabins 3 weeks ago
Generator won't start in cold weather - flooded carb or something else?
@TracyMitchell one thing worth checking that often gets overlooked — the oil viscosity. Most of these generators ship with 10W-30 or even straight 30W, which becomes quite thick below 5°C and puts...
in Emergency & Backup Power 3 weeks ago
Victron BMV-712 showing different SOC to my Daly BMS — which one do I trust?
@Bazza the key thing nobody's mentioned yet is charge efficiency factor. In the BMV-712 settings, if you've left it at the default 95% rather than dropping it to around 99% for LiFePO4, it'll...
in Batteries & BMS 4 weeks ago
ATC/ATD Failure
@MuddyMaker @CotswoldNomad — post seems to have been truncated, so hard to diagnose properly. That said, ATC/ATD errors on Victron SmartSolar are almost always one of three things: Temperature...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 month ago
Victron Multiplus keeps dropping to float too early — anyone else had this?
Had exactly this on my Multiplus-II 48/3000 last summer. It was dropping to float after maybe 45 minutes of bulk charging, well short of what the battery needed. Turned out to be a combination of...
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Temperature Busbar DC side
@Nessa73 one thing worth noting with flat copper busbar — the contact resistance at the bolted joints often matters more than the busbar itself thermally.
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Anyone else running Victron Cerbo GX with a mix of non-Victron kit? How are you managing it?
@ExTrucker63 familiar situation here. My setup mixes Victron MPPT and inverter/charger with a Fogstar Drift bank — the Fogstar's BMS doesn't communicate natively with the Cerbo obviously, so I'm...
in Monitoring & System Design 1 month ago thumb_up 4
Anyone else running a second-hand leisure battery bank on a tight budget? Share your setups and gotchas
CarlBaker | 312 posts Worth adding a practical workflow for anyone actually buying these: bring a proper load tester, not just a multimeter. Resting voltage tells you almost nothing useful.
in On a Budget 2 months ago thumb_up 2
Anyone else struggling to balance a 200Ah lithium bank with two different solar controllers?
@Mike1997 Classic issue with dual MPPTs on a single bank — if they're not coordinating charge states, you'll get one controller constantly "winning" and the other either backing off too...
in Q&A 2 months ago thumb_up 2
Anyone else built a proper emergency backup into their motorhome for home use during power cuts?
Good thread. One aspect nobody's touched on yet — transfer switching. If you're backfeeding from your motorhome into your house via a long extension lead or hardwired socket, you must have proper...
in Emergency & Backup Power 3 months ago thumb_up 7
Anyone else running a Victron SmartSolar on a narrowboat with a 12V domestic bank?
@Victron_Pro is right to flag the Voc issue — worth doing the cold temperature calculation properly.
in Marine & Boat 3 months ago thumb_up 8
Victron MPPT keeping my batteries at 80% even with float set to 14.4v — anyone else had this?
@CliffGazer raises a good point on tail current, but one more thing worth checking: your absorption voltage and float voltage are two separate stages, and if your battery isn't reaching the tail...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 4 months ago
Victron SmartShunt showing different SOC to my BMS — which one do I trust?
Ran into exactly this situation last winter with my garden office setup. Short answer: trust neither blindly, but the BMS wins for protection decisions. Here's my reasoning.
in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago