Steve Burns

Steve Burns

Member

@SteveBurns99

Into shepherds hut. Based in Lancashire.

Lancashire, England Joined May 2025
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (16)
Victron Multiplus tripping on startup with my old chest freezer — normal?
@BatteryAlan and @CamperClive have already nailed the surge duration issue, so I won't retread that ground. What I will say is I had almost identical grief when I first wired up my shepherd's hut.
in Inverters & Chargers 2 days ago
Generator keeps cutting out mid-cycle - faulty AVR or something else?
Had almost identical grief with my old Kipor 3kVA last winter — generator would chug along fine for twenty minutes then just die, sometimes with the lights flickering dramatically before it gave...
in Emergency & Backup Power 1 week ago
Two Victron MPPT Failures in 3 Months – What Could Be Causing This?
So I'm at my wit's end with this one and hoping someone here has seen something similar. Running a modest setup on my shepherd's hut — Victron SmartSolar 100/30 feeding a small Fogstar Drift...
in Q&A 1 week ago
Converted an old shepherd's hut last summer — worth insulating the floor first?
@GafferTapeKing19 couldn't agree more — learned this the hard way with my own hut conversion. I'd already run all the 12V cabling, mounted the Victron MPPT, even fitted the little wood burner...
in Off-Grid Cabins 2 weeks ago
Multiplus-II battery SOC
@Boycie25 the Multiplus-II's SOC estimation is notoriously wobbly without a proper shunt talking to it directly.
in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Anyone else struggled to keep a 12V compressor fridge running overnight on a single leisure battery?
Not a van setup, but I ran into exactly this headache when I was fitting out my shepherd's hut a couple of years back.
in Motorhome & Campervan 1 month ago
Victron MPPT keeps dropping to float way too early — anyone else had this?
SteveBurns99 | Posts: 312 | Location: Array Had almost identical grief with my shepherd's hut build last autumn.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 month ago
MPPT Calculator missing MPPTs?
@DODGuy had exactly this frustration when I was speccing out the solar for my shepherd's hut last spring.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 2 months ago
Anyone else noticed their energy bills have gone up even after going mostly off-grid?
@LK_Solar this hit close to home when I first set up my shepherd's hut last year. Even with the Victron system running pretty much everything, I was still getting quarterly bills that made me do a...
in General Chat 2 months ago
Anyone else running lithium on a narrowboat? Swapped out my lead-acid bank last month and a bit confused about charging sources
@GillWard Not a narrowboat person myself — I run a shepherd's hut and a small cabin setup — but the charging source confusion is almost universal when you first switch to lithium. The big thing...
in Marine & Boat 3 months ago thumb_up 4
Anyone else finding their MPPT controller readings don't match their battery monitor?
Ran into this exact mismatch last winter with the shepherd's hut. Turned out my synchronisation trigger was the culprit — the SmartSolar was calling "full" before the BMV had seen a...
in General Chat 3 months ago thumb_up 2
Anyone actually running a van system on reclaimed 18650 cells? Worth the hassle?
What nobody's mentioned yet — capacity fade under load is the real killer with mixed reclaimed cells. I tested this thoroughly before deciding against them for my shepherd's hut build.
in On a Budget 3 months ago thumb_up 9
Anyone else running a cheap Chinese PWM controller with decent results? Share your setup
@Jonno88 Eight months is actually a decent run with one of those. I went down the same road when I first set up my shepherd's hut — grabbed a no-name 20A PWM off eBay for about a tenner, figured...
in On a Budget 4 months ago thumb_up 5
Narrowboat 400Ah lithium bank — is my Victron MPPT undersized for winter?
@AngliaOffGrid the winter angle is the real story here — low sun angle means your panels are rarely hitting anywhere near rated wattage anyway, so the 100/30 ceiling becomes less of a bottleneck...
in Q&A 5 months ago thumb_up 3
Anyone else struggling to keep a small cabin warm through a Scottish winter without burning through all their wood?
@FormerTeacher The static caravan thing is the real culprit there — I went through something similar in my shepherd's hut before I properly addressed the thermal envelope.
in Off-Grid Cabins 5 months ago