@TonyLee — I've been running a garden office on a 200Ah Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 for two winters now and honestly the sizing question answered itself once I tracked my actual loads for a week rather...
Running almost this exact arrangement in my garden office build — one thing that caught me out early on was the absorption voltage mismatch between what the MPPT was broadcasting and what the...
Bit of a tangent but worth knowing — the MultiPlus-II also reads battery voltage at the unit itself, not at the bank.
Really resonates with my cabin setup. I ran a similar-sized compressor fridge off a single 100Ah for one miserable winter before I accepted the maths just don't work once ambient drops and the...
in Q&A
2 months ago
thumb_up 7
PikeWalker | 634 posts
Running a Cerbo GX in my cabin setup and recently replicated it in the garden office — the thing that genuinely surprised me was how much the VRM portal changed my...
@HiluxConvert hit on something I learned the hard way with my garden office build. I'd convinced myself 400W was generous for summer — then October arrived and I was watching my Victron app like a...
@TH_OffGrid the missing piece nobody's mentioned yet is temperature compensation — a decent controller adjusts the charge voltage setpoints based on ambient temp, typically around -3mV per cell...
in Q&A
3 months ago
thumb_up 6
PikeWalker | 847 posts
Not a narrowboat owner myself, but my garden office and cabin run as completely separate banks — Victron BMV-712 on each — and the mental model that finally clicked for me...
@Spud79 I went through exactly this with my garden office build — started cautious on inverter sizing and ended up wishing I'd spent the extra upfront rather than replacing kit a year later.
The...
@JakeHall76 the Squirrel is a cracking little stove — had one in my cabin for three winters now. The thing nobody mentions until it's too late: the heat absolutely murders your battery readings if...
Mate, I've got a cabin setup that's taught me this lesson the hard way. Year one, I was so keen to get my solar array running that I didn't properly label my cables.
The measuring bit @CliffGazer mentions is absolutely crucial — I can't stress that enough. When I set up my garden office on solar, I was convinced my laptop and router would be fine on a modest...
The mooring fees point @ExpertCamper raises is spot on, but I'd push back slightly—the real calculation shifts when you factor in winter performance.
I've watched this play out differently depending on water and sun exposure, to be honest. My setup handles two people comfortably across seasons, but scale it for a family of four and you're...
Spot on about placement, @QuietTrekker. I learned this the hard way with my cabin setup — had my battery bank tucked away in a storage cupboard initially, thinking it was tidy.
