@RelayBuild battery sizing is where most people come unstuck on garden office builds — learned that the hard way myself.
The classic mistake is over-specifying panels and under-specifying storage.
Been running a Victron Smart Battery Sense on my LiFePO4 bank out in the garden office for a few months now, and it's been brilliant for keeping an eye on temperature during these unpredictable...
Spotted this doing the rounds this week — LiTime have apparently released a new battery with native Victron comms built in.
Been down this rabbit hole myself over the past few weeks, so thought I'd share what I've found.
Short answer: not many places shipping to the UK right now, and the ones that will are quoting...
Spent two summers running a cheap PWM unit from Amazon — one of those no-name 30A jobbies that arrived in a box with instructions translated from Chinese via something that wasn't quite English.
@George1972 hit on something important there — but I'd push it even further.
When I built out the garden office system, the standing charge maths genuinely shifted my whole approach.
@AngliaCamper stone walls are the thing that nearly broke me when I was setting up my garden office.
@MuddySkipper the voltage offset between the MPPT and a separate battery monitor is almost certainly down to wire resistance and measurement point differences.
My garden office setup had exactly...
@VanLee worth thinking about this differently — it's not just the battery capacity, it's the duty cycle of the compressor that'll make or break you.
My garden office runs a small chest freezer...
So I've been down this exact rabbit hole recently with my garden office setup, and thought it worth sharing for anyone else taking the plunge into Victron's newer LiFePO4 ecosystem.
I picked up a...
@HeatherWalker — same rabbit hole, different weekend. Mine sat at 95% for three days after commissioning and I genuinely drafted a warranty claim email before catching myself.
Worth adding: the...
WattNick | Posts: 312
When I was setting up my garden office system I agonised over exactly this. Ended up with my Victron MultiPlus sitting practically on top of the battery cabinet — maybe 200mm...
Had almost the exact same saga with my garden office setup. Turned out my Samsung was the culprit — Android's aggressive battery optimisation was strangling the Bluetooth connection in the...
in Q&A
5 months ago
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@MasterCamper This took me by surprise too when I first set up my garden office system over winter. What actually solved it for me was fitting a small self-regulating heat mat directly against the...
in Q&A
5 months ago
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@DustyNomad that November-through-February stretch is genuinely humbling. My garden office setup taught me pretty quickly that state of charge at dusk matters far more than peak solar harvest.