Charging!

Good news, I discovered this evening that if I use my engines to get the batteries back up to 100% each evening, I can then use the generator to top up and keep topped up the battery banks. My Mastervolt unit has a 3 stage charging cycle. When drained it whallops in about 70 amps on what is called a 'bulk' charge stage. The generator won't cope with that but when the batteries are already as full as they can get using the engine alternators, the Mastervolt skips the bulk stage and begins charging using the 'absorbtion' stage which only puts in about 20 Amps - for this it copes fine and so therefore, I assume will also cope with the final 'float' stage which only trickle charges about 4 or 5 amps to keep the banks topped up. This is good news as it means I will use less diesel to charge the batteries up as the generator will trickle charge them until I shut it down at about 10.00pm so they will have less time to drop their charge.

My father bought me a safety helmet and trousers for when I use my chainsaw and these arrived today which is good. The last couple of days of 'cold snap' is forecast to end by the weekend which is about all the winter I like to have! Hopefully spring will be well and truely on the way then. The days are getting longer already and the buds are beginning to form. I recently secured a grant for a very posh and expensive bird box and camera kit for school. I hope it should arrive in the next few days for me to install as it woud be fantastic for the kids to be able to watch a bird making their nest and rearing chicks. Hopefully, I'll post some pictures if it ever comes about but click this link to see about the bird box.