Killer Wiring! Bigger Batteries! We do a simple battery charger upgrade and find dangerous mains wiring We make it safe and rewire the mains supply to the Victron 50 amp 3 way charger. OTB 128.


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Closed Captions (CC):

bigger batteries
killer wiring
we upgrade david's battery charger and
find some potentially lethal cabling
earth the ground
has been cut out
but look at this
live can you see someone has stripped it
with a stanley knife
and exposed the wire after the terminal
and as we do the work we explain the
right way to connect batteries in
parallel
not the wrong way
[Applause]
[Music]
well today we're on a different boat and
um
those of you watch us regularly will
know what boat we're on
it's winter and the owner's back in the
uk
we look after his boat for him while
he's away do little maintenance jobs
bits and pieces
just before he left
he
upgraded his batteries
uh from two one eight five and power
lead acids to
three one nine five i believe um
and i'll show you some of the pictures
before and after
but when he upgraded he only had a small
charger and therefore you need to change
the charger
so this
is a viktron phoenix smart ip43 charger
three outlets only going to use two of
these
and we'll show you what we're replacing
and it's going to be
fitted in here
in place of the old battery charger but
all right let's show you what we're
going to replace
so we did
these batteries here
that's
two of them
the third one is
up there
i've got some rubber caps to go over
these
positive terminals and negative
terminals there
you can see it's all tidied up in here
because we now go to
two bus bars and if we can
so this positive cable here
goes down through there
and into the bus bar
same with this positive cable
and the one that goes up to that battery
and all of those are the same length and
all the negatives are the same length
that means that the batteries
are all charged at the same rate because
the resistance in the cable is the same
so it's important that when you have
these uh
more than one battery that you have the
same resistance to all of the batteries
from the load and the charge
let's put up a couple of drawings and
show you what i mean show you how this
works
okay just for illustration david shaw
power is 240 volts ac
it has a live earth and a neutral coming
in on the high voltage charge to his new
uh charger
obviously if you were in the state
should be having 120 volts ac and that
would be at 60 hertz
as you operate on a different voltage
but the principle is the same let's have
a look at the output
so the output on david's boat from his
battery charger is 12 volts
dc
at 50 amps
with the ability to charge three
different lots of batteries domestic
engine and of course bowel thruster
which he doesn't have
now his domestic battery bank is made up
from three
190 amp power
batteries which are in parallel giving
12 volts and 570 amp hours in total i've
drawn four here just for illustration
but uh you'll see why in a moment
so if we'd connected all of the
batteries in parallel using a common
negative and a common positive
with the first battery in the line being
connected straight to the charger the
batteries would charge but the first
battery in the line would be the first
one to take the major amperage loads and
also the charge
which would shorten its life
cycle quite considerably this is not the
way to connect your batteries in
parallel
so again just for illustration the
biggest amount of power in and out would
come from the first battery and the
smallest amount of power in and out from
the last battery in that circuit
a slightly better way of doing it would
be to take the power from the immediate
ends of the battery bank
i.e drawing power from the two ends
and charging from the two ends this
would equalize the two end batteries and
the two center batteries but the two end
batteries would still be taking the
majority of the load under heavy load
conditions
there is a much better way and that
better way is this
so this drawing illustrates how making
the live positives and the neutrals or
negatives all the same length to a bus
bar
what this does is it equalizes the
current draw across all of the batteries
both when they're under load and when
they're being charged
thus all of the batteries are being
treated exactly the same and one battery
doesn't fail or end up charging another
battery which is what happens in the
previous two illustrations
so that's the proper way to do it
okay let's move on
now just as a word of caution i know of
a number of boats which have come
straight out of the factory and had
their batteries wired as the first
example the batteries have been failed
within 18 months so check yours or wired
correctly
now here
is the existing battery charger
it's a quick
2-5-1 i think it is it's only a 20 amp
charger
um and
with this amount of batteries you need
something that's charging at 50 plus
amps or at least 50 amps
um
i would say 45 50 amps
for this amount of amp hours of
batteries
um so these are 190s
there's three 190s so that's uh
what's that
570 odd
amp hours of batteries
we we should really measure them in what
hours because that's more appropriate
as what so what we use
what hours are what we use
not amp hours okay
let's uh
let's get on and open up this victron
this one here
see what we've got
this is the bluetooth model model which
will integrate with um
david solar
because he did a big solar upgrade last
year you'll remember
we featured that
in the video
so all of these will talk to each other
let's see what we've got in here
that looks to me like a mains cable
yeah european plug on it
and then just
a couple of uh
a couple of collections there mains goes
in there and then batteries negative
there
and the positives in there couldn't be
any more straightforward
all right so before we start first thing
we want to do is turn off the mains
which is that one there
it's the mains isolator
now the 240 volts 220 volts european
at 50 hertz
is not going to
give us a nasty
flavor in the mouth let it turn off you
can unscrew that and take it off
i'll isolate the batteries as well
that's just to turn the isolator off
[Music]
let's bring you in here
so
if there's our charger all disconnected
from the wall
we've got the 12-volt
down here to disconnect
and the 240 volt and i just wanted to
trace where that 240 volt goes and it
actually goes
into what's called a joint box which is
a bit naughty really
okay so a couple of seconds ago i said i
was going to take the top off that joint
box and
i've
moaned and complained as to why i don't
like joint boxes
now
let me show you something
that's that joint box
there
look at the center of the joint box can
you see there's a green and yellow cable
and earth
which isn't connected
can you see it just right in the center
there
that's not right
so i think what we're gonna have to do
is we're gonna have to put this make
sure this is this is done properly and
safely that is just not
it's just not right
well we'll do it properly
so i thought i'd just show you this
i've taken out the other cables
and look at this one
you see that
there's a neutral
and alive in the same terminal
that's
that is potentially lethal
holy divine jesus
right
anyway
grumble over let's put it right let's
make it
right well that's our mains undone
i've traced back these two wires
yeah and that one's the one with the
earth cut out
we'll trace those back see where they go
put a decent joint on them
here is the mains feed
for the charger
goes in there
and now we've just got undo these
little uh
allen key bolts
so we have one which is common which is
the negative violets of things set on
there
and then
one and two which are the two batteries
one is for the
starter battery
and one is the domestic
okay we've got uh a multimeter out and
this isn't mine this is david so i'm
using all david's tools rather than
bringing mine onto the boats a lot
easier
and he's got a good
reasonable quality
multimeter here just checked it works
okay it is on continuity
you can hear
yeah that's okay so what we're going to
do is we're going to check which one of
these is the negative and then which one
is the positive
back to
either the starter motor the starter
battery or the domestic doesn't matter
which one it is because once we find one
we know that the other will be the other
one so first thing i'm going to do is
put
one cable on sorry one test lead on
there and then one on the
negative down there
and although the negative
um although the power is switched off
the negative
[Music]
stays connected let's show you what i
mean
i don't know if you can see that
so
on to that one which i assume
is the negative and then on to the
negative bus bar and if i'm correct this
will beep
yes
so we know that that one is definitely
the negative
that blue one and the numbering on these
one and two will refer to the domestic
and the engine battery so we just need
to find out which one of those is which
we do exactly the same
right
so here i'm on number one
number one i'm going to the positive of
the engine battery
and i got continuity
yes
just put those
get back in there
yeah 12 volt oh 25 amp
251 quick
oh yeah 25 amp battery charger that one
same connections
much the same as the uh
there's the victron so we have
a negative there and then three
positives
i'll put that to one side and what davey
wants to do that probably sell it or
keep it as a spare
all right so we're just about to put
this in what i'm going to do is screw it
up on the
back plate on bavaria's there's a back
plate and if you can see the uh solar
charges there i actually well i fitted
that one
this one stands off quite a bit you can
see there's
a good seven eight mil
underneath these
cooling vanes
all right let's look at charges
and connections rather so our ac input
goes in here we have a battery
uh
ac lead which goes in there as this
little clip over stops it coming out
really good idea
and negative to the battery
which is common and then we have one
two three outputs
we have a remote
we have the ve direct
which you can connect up to screens etc
etc and there's actually a relay in here
as well which is norm there's one which
is normally open
and then the center and one which is
normally closed so
common sorry not center
so we're not going to be using any of
those we're just going to be using those
and connecting those to
these three here and the mains once
we've got remains sorted out so
let's get on with that
if you can see that there
yeah
so there is our common
negative
number one
is our engine battery number two is our
domestics
good solid clamping on these uh victron
i'm really impressed with that i've not
fitted one of these before but as with
all victron gear it's it's pretty damn
good um we have got an earth lug here
um
i think the american code requires
that this is earth i know that the uk
uh
i can't remember what edition we're on
now but the regulations in the uk say
that all metal um should be bonded back
to earth any exposed metal so
we'll bond that back to the earth as
well
um
once we get it in position
um
that's where the mains plugs in we've
just got to sort out this hickory
pickledy here
mount this up on the wall but uh i
thought we'd show you how good these
connections are really good and solid
just sorting out the wiring
for this mains um
for this charger i just wanted to show
you something
um now that i've pulled this cable out
and cindy's going to help me
identify the other end i just wanted to
show you something so this is what this
cable that came out
and we know that the
earth the ground
has been cut out
but look at this
live can you see someone has stripped it
with a stanley knife
and exposed the wire after the terminal
now
that potentially could have hit
any other of these cables because it's
not protected so this bit would is live
and if
this had been long enough to touch that
it would have gone live
and the other thing is at the other end
where you can see it's cut out
let me just turn this over so you can
see
i've actually just been on the phone to
david in the uk and told him
you can see
this
neutral this blue wire
has been stripped
all the way up to the end that cut goes
all the way up there
and that's where somebody has split that
with a stanley knife
to cut the outer sheaving off gone right
through the outer sheaving through the
neutral
protector
right up to the very end so again
potentially
this
would give you electric shock if it
touched that little piece of copper
that's sticking out there touched on
there
that all becomes live
it that's you know potentially lethal
you know 240 volts will kill you
rarely but it will kill you
so i thought i'd show you that
we've mounted the
charger
we just got to trace back this cable
this white cable here
that one there my glamorous assistant is
now
and we're going to find out where that
goes
uh i think that is the live
feed the 240 volt feed from the breaker
and if it is
then uh
we're just going to uh
we're going to do a decent
fitting on the end i've got something
implant for that to make it a decent
fitting right let's uh let's see if we
can find that
right well we seem to have got to the uh
long and short of it that cable that
came through there
actually went up through
this
conduit here
through the back of the chart table
into
the mains
here
and into this little connector
what we're going to do is we're going to
replace this the right size cable
back down to there
so
a lot of
a lot of jiggery poker actually whoever
did the original stuff has marked it all
up
and looks good it's
just whoever put the extra sockets in
um
and put this
well what can only be
described as
death trap in as um
a poor job but we're going to put it
right now so
there we go
all right well plan b
what we've managed to do is
this
is the mains plug
for this it's a bit short at the moment
and that's purely because i'm
connecting the other end
but managed to pull it all the way
through
up to the mains
i'll connect it properly
using the correct connectors
pull this back
and plug that in there bob's your uncle
finish your arm
proper job and done away with
all of that nasty wiring
and it will be on its own its own five
amp breaker
which is what it wants
so we've got a a five a ten and a
fifteen
and i think it'll go on the five
without any
problems
right let's do that get it in get it on
let's uh show you what's happened
so at this end
there's a special plug which goes into
the back of these breakers i've
disconnected as you saw earlier
the
mains voltage from the shore power so
this is all dead at the moment
so now the correct cable goes into the
correct connector
which then clips into the back of here
we then pull a little bit of slack back
the other way plug that in
put this all back in but uh do up the
little wing nut screws
that uh
hold that all in
then we can uh turn the charger on and
get it set up so
first thing is to plug
this
back in there neutral at the top
live at the bottom
don't really like these kind of plugs
but
that's what's on the boat
that's
there we are that's in
a little bit of cable
back down that conduit i'll pull it from
the other end
let's just pull it from the other end
so we've got enough
here we are
that's it and then this
goes
in there
and that clips on there i think i might
put a bit of tape around it just to stop
that coming undone
[Music]
let me see that
okay so that's on that's there
battery isolators back on
i'm not going to put the
i'm not going to put the shore power on
until i've got this in because i don't
want to get a shock i'm going to put my
hands in the back there can't see what's
going on so i'll get this put back in
and then i'll put the shore power on i
think
okay folks so the panels are all back in
um mains is on
let's switch that on
and switch out
battery
isolator on
there we go
that should
there we are look at that
let's put our battery on
battery charger on
so jobs are good
um
what we'll do is
just get my phone in a minute check the
bluetooth's all working
i'm going to put a little bit of tape
around the bottom of that plug where
that little wire thing comes in just to
stop it
waving about and falling out
going through the motions see what the
battery voltage is doing
over here
14.21
and
14.4
14.5 on the other battery so
yeah that's it
all going all working
all fixed up
jobs are good
so with the job all done i quickly went
on to the bluetooth app
and upgraded the software for the
victron charger
set up an eternity
um
group for all of the bluetooth items
that he's now got
and uh
stuck them all on that and they're all
talking to each other so he's got uh
full victron stuff
he's just gotta get a bluetooth dongle
now for his battery monitor and then
that's it everything talks to one
another it's a really good upgrade i'm
sure he'd be very happy with that
this is the schematic of the system that
we've done we have all of our
positive and negative feeds to and from
the batteries all the same length
all of the resistance is the same and
everything is charging or discharging
equally
two batteries and a spare
and yeah i'm sure david will be over the
moon with it
so over this summer this coming summer
we're going to be monitoring david's
system as well as our own lithium and
we'll let you know how the two compare
[Music]
so
[Music]
well that's another video done
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[Music]
[Music]
you