Scooby

Our Barrus shire 45 has 8000 hours on it. We bought it with 110 hours on. All I have done is change oil and filter around 250 hours. Its never been repaired or let us down.

Install Travelpower job sorted. No damage to the batteries and always charging.

Use 6mm2 wire from panels to controller and then thicker wire to the batteries

Fill the roof with solar and use the engine for the rest of charging. No need for a genny. I have one and since I got more solar I haven't used the genny. Get between 500 watts and a 1000 and you won't worry about power anymore apart from 2-3 months in the winter which will need a little more engine use.

I use a 3 mifi. Depends on area but I get 4g with pings under 60 and 50 meg download and about 20 meg upload. Played the cod series and loads of other stuff. I use my phone when travelling to check for decent Internet just before we moor up. I have an alienware laptop to keep the power down and link it to a keyboard and monitor.

Yeah 4 months old batteries would probably be ok. It's good you noticed one panel not working too. Add a little more and you will notice that you can survive without the engine and then charge up with solar again the next morning.

I am planning on doing that, so far i have fitted a perspex sheet to my side hatch which slides out.

If i was a cc er the roof boxes wouldnt fit coal in anyways where would a months supply of beer fit haha.

Them 2 roof boxes at the front are actually pretty big, approx 1200 x 1200 each and 250mm high so they would easily fit 6 bags in each maybe more, but due to them having tables, chairs, fishing tackle and lots of other crap in them i put the coal on the riverbank lol.

Terry, I am a liveaboard and a heavy user, 700 watts of solar and 5 batteries x 110amp, 12v fridge, laptops, monitor screen, led lighting, water pumps, dvd player, radio, macerator, oven, inverter x 2(600 watt and a 3kw), shower pump, webasto, mifi's, microwave, mobile phones, slow cooker, etc the list goes on, i have 5 batteries but only cheap ones, if i get 2 years out of them i will be happy,(they are a year old now) they cost £50 each and when i scrap them you get about £7.50 back per battery so 2 years costs about £215 which i am happy with, i barely put the engine on during the week in the summer and only an hour a day in the winter, my suggestion for you would be think about more batteries when its time to replace them, (dont add new ones to old), and more solar panels, i had 200watts of solar last year and never had enough power the upgrade of 500 watts more has made all the difference, i have used the slow cooker this summer for the first time using up the excess solar power. I did buy the outback controller which cost £450 which is brilliant. We do have a travelpower as well which obviously works well for a quick charge when using lots of power. I cant recommend enough to buying a nasa 2 battery monitor as well that way you can always make sure you dont let your batteries drop below 12.2. I would say i have gone from 3 hours a day of engine use to 1 hour in the winter and from 1 hour per day in the summer to almost zero. Solar is definitely the way forward now the price has dropped.

It's a Samsung. Not sure what model. It was from amazon. Smart led 3dtv it. I forgot to mention it also has free sat and free view built in. So we don't need to use a free sat box anymore and can use a dish or aerial. Cost about £500

I think it says 50w on the back of the telly. But I know it uses about 3.4 amps in total with the inverter on cos I have an amp monitor showing usage.we have had it nearly 3 years and it uses about the same as our old 20 inch 12v we had. They are led now so loads better.

We also have 500 watts it's peak was around 40 amps. But usually stays above 20 on a sunny day. 5 amps per 100w I would say is a good average for a decent day of sun.

I also have a 32 inch smart 3dtv. It uses approx 50 watts. I use a small 600 watt inverter from maplin about £60 the inverter uses about 0.5 amps and the telly about 3. But I have wired in extension cables and also use my gaming laptop with separate monitor screen most nights. 12volt fridge uses approx 1.2 amps per hour and we have 4 x 110 amp batteries (cheap ones). We don't use the engine much in the summer apart from hairdryer and microwave use. We go out at the weekend most weeks.