In this episode of Sailing A B Sea we are one of five lucky yachts chosen by Green Yachting to receive a Solar Green package which is a 12 volt hot water hea...

Closed Captions (CC):
Well I've just got back from marina and I

have one of these a 55ml socket that

the tech services guy kindly lent to me.

So as soon as I have taken this one out

put the new one in and everything's

tight I'll get this straight back to him

because I'm a firm believer if you

borrow something don't stand around

finishing your job, get the tool back to

the buy you borrowed it from immediately

We are in

beautiful Samos one of the Greek islands

at the moment and the reason that we had

to get here by a particular date was to

meet Christopher from Green-Yachting.online

Christopher made a post in Med

Sailing's Facebook group a while back

Basically he was looking for five boats

that could help him promote his product

called Solar Green and in a nutshell it

is a 12-volt hot water heating element

that replaces your 220 volt heating

element and then uses excess electricity

produced from your solar panels.

Christopher is over at the quayside on

his yacht and we're just about to get in

our dinghy and go over there and meet

him, pick up the product and also go to

the hardware store because although

Christopher is graciously supplying the

element and the controller there are a

few little things that we need to buy.

I'm really excited about this, it'll be great

to have hot water to wash my dishes, wash

my hair, have a shower. Hot water will be

a luxury won't it!

All right let's go see Christopher

Good morning, good morning, good morning

This is the 12 volt 300 watt water

heating element which replaces existing 220 volt

unit that you will have in your

water tank. It's exactly the same

dimensions and the same thread.

The only drawback to that is that it

will take longer to heat the water but

it will always work even if you're

connected to shore power which is a very

common question, because shore power means

that you by definition have got enough

voltage to drive this anyway. So this

means you get hot water if you're on

shore power or hot water if you're not on shore power.

Okay great!

Excellent, thank you very much.

This is the controller unit - right - and

what that does is it detects the battery

level. If the battery level is greater

than 80 percent of full charge it will

interrogate the temperature probe

and if water temperature is less than 43

but not over 50 it will switch on

the water heater.

Beginning this installation

process involves running the electrical

cables. We're quite fortunate on A B Sea in

the fact that both the batteries and the

hot water system are on the port side of

the boat.

Here are our house batteries we

do have a negative bus bar there and I'm

going to take some photographs of that

and show them to Christopher and see if

we can actually use that instead of

buying an extra one. Then it's a question

of running the cables and following

those conduits all the way aft to the

hot water system.

What you doing today

Baz? You just love this little locker don't you?

Yeah I'm thinking of moving in permanently.

Here we are looking at our hot

water tank and what we've got to do is

get into this part here where the

current of 220 volt heating element

lives, extract that and put the new Solar

Green 12 volt one in there.

Me thinks there is gonna be some water spillage

into the bilge at some point during this

job.

We've already run a mousing line

from the batteries and bus bar area

through to the area where the hot water

heater sits. I'm having a big problem

trying to get something that's gonna fit

onto the actual hexagonal shape of the

element, the 220 volt element, that's in

there to be able to unscrew it and then

obviously screw in the 12-volt heating

element. Unfortunately when I try and

get my mole grips in around the hex and

they will open wide enough for the hex

screw, they can't get in and get enough

grip because of the shape of this banging up against this collar so what

I'm actually gonna do today is undo

these two big screws here which are just

holding down the tank so I can bring the

tank into an upright position and maybe

get a better angle on it and certainly

get a better look at it.

Well I've got those bands that were

holding the heater in position unscrewed

and removed and I thought that I might

be able to drag the whole heating unit

to here where I'm standing and

stand it upright to be able to access

the heating element and also get the

added bonus of not having to disconnect

any hoses and thereby losing water and

putting a lot of water into the bilges

But and as always there's always a but -

the hoses that go from the heating unit

to the engine where the engine heats the

water when the engine's running they are

a certain length and they won't allow me

to move them any further so I'm

definitely going to have to undo the

hose clamps. I have at the electrical

panel at the nav station turned off the

water pressure pump and also closed the

valves to both of our freshwater tanks

so the only water loss really should be

what's in the heater unit itself.

There's our engine hoses down there

minimal water loss because this is a

closed-loop cooling circuit for fresh

water for the engine. Here is the upright

heating system still full of fresh water

which is great because we didn't have to

disconnect either of these two hoses. Now

you can see the dilemma I've got here

trying to get something that's going to

go around that hex but also manage to

fit inside this lip. So now I've got it in

this position I've got more torque that

I can put on it and it's certainly a lot

easier for me to work on so I'll get my

trusty tools out and see what we can come up with.

Well I've just got back from the marina and

I have one of these, a 55ml socket

that the teck services guy kindly lent

to me.

So where are we at now?

Well let's see if the right tool gets

the job done.

Okay well that's not a perfectly snug fit but

That'll be right.

So you need 4 hands don't you.

Well getting the

element unscrewed was really hard work

Lots of twisting and banging with a

mallet but Baz has finally got that

done and now he's just removing it. Wow look

at that, it's only a year old.

Less than a year

old. Now that's something that

is a bit of a challenge

Coz there ain't no gasket on that one.

Oh no and that one's broken

and that one is cactus.

Well I do have gasket stuff

let's get the gasket stuff

out and make a gasket. Right

Oh there we go

Here we are on day three of our

installation of the Solar Green 12-volt

hot water heating system. The main delay

was sourcing the right 55 millimetre

socket to remove the old 220 volt

heating element and to be able to

install and tighten up the 12-volt

heating element. So I'm lying here not

just for the fun of it, I'm lying here to

show you guys what I've just installed

So if you step this way here is the main

controller for the 12-volt water heating

element. I've already connected two

cables because it was just easier to do

because I'll be working upside down, the

third one is a lot easier to get on

because of the way it's shaped and on the

back of the unit I also put two strips

of double-sided sticky tape just to hold

it into place even more securely. These

two short red cables attach to the

positive connectors on the heating

element which are the two spare ones you

can see here. There is one more red cable

to be attached here which is your

positive feed coming into the controller

unit. This gray cable that comes out of

the control unit has two connections on

the end, well one's not really a

connector this is actually a temperature

sensor which goes in the hole in the

centre of the heating element. This is

the negative feed for the controller and

that connects to the heating element

where the negative feed comes from the

busbar for the batteries, which is right

here. The gray cable is now run to here

and the negative feed back to the smart

controller is attached to the negative

bar on the heating element. The heat

sensor is now inside the hole and

because there's no way of firmly

attaching that in there and it hasn't

got gravity on its side what I've

actually done is I put Sikaflex in there

to seal it in so we'll let that cure

before we start messing around with this

any further. One of the jobs we can

complete while we're waiting for the

Sikaflex to go off is to run the

positive and negative cables back to

the battery compartment using this

mousing wire that we ran on day one. As

you can see we now have both the

positive and negative cables run under

this flooring and through that bulkhead

and into the aft cabin where the batteries are

where I will connect the positive, and

the negative bus bar where I will

collect the negative. But first I got a

couple of more connections to make here

The positive cable that we've just run

under the floor through the bulkhead

into the battery compartment it's not

connected at the moment obviously the

connections are the last thing you want

to do when you're buggering around with

electricity but this end goes into the

middle socket - the in socket of the

smart controller. The final electrical

connection here are the two positive red

wires which come out of the smart

controller and go to the opposite side

of the double heating elements that are

in this unit. Here in the port aft berth

are where our batteries are stored and

there's also quite handily a negative

bus bar. And now that we have our two

main cables moused back from the

compartment that houses the hot water

system we can begin the process of

connecting things up here. The first

thing we're going to connect here in the

aft berth is this circuit breaker. Now

Solar Green recommends a 40 amp but

unfortunately all they had in the

chandlers was a 35 amp so I made

inquiries to Christopher at Solar Green

and he's done the calculations and he

says yes you should be fine with a

thirty five amp fuse, circuit breaker

or switch whatever you want to call it. One

thing to remember when connecting a

circuit breaker is to have a look on the

outside and you'll see embossed

somewhere near these connections "load"

which is this side and "line" which is

this side. This cable that we ran from

the hot water compartment gets attached

to the load side of things and this

short cable gets attached to the line

and then finally it

gets attached to the positive terminal

on one of our batteries

I've now turned off the batteries at the battery

switches and we're going to attach this

negative to this negative bus bar right

here. That negative wire attached to the

bus bar attaches to the negative side of

the two heating elements inside the

water heater and from our circuit

breaker / switch we have a positive

red wire running all the way back to

this house battery the positive terminal

connection

And now the moment of truth

I'm going to get Aannsha to switch the

batteries back on

Well so far there's no

pops bang scratches sparks or sounds of

sirens so that's a good thing now we're

going to flick the switch and then go

and take a look at the smart controller

at the hot water system

That's a good

sign to the 35 amp circuit breaker has

stayed in the open position and we have

a red light which means that the water

in the tank is now being heated from our

photovoltaic solar array. If that light

was green it would mean the system is on

standby and that means one of two things

either your water has reached the

designated temperature or the batteries

are not fully charged and in that case

priority is given from our solar to

charge up with the batteries first

And I think that's job well done

of course the proof of the pudding will

be in the eating when we have a look at

how hot the water comes out of the tap

when the sun goes down this evening. A

couple of things left to do obviously

the first thing is to rescure the hot

water system, tidy up all the cables and

make sure that they're all tied off with

cable ties so there's no movement which

could cause any chafing of the wires

How is it going in there?

Oh it's great I'm having a hot shower!

Can we have a look?

No!!

So at this point I'd just like to say

thank you very much to Christopher and

everyone else who works at

Green-yachting.online thank you very much

for choosing A B Sea as one of the winners

of your complimentary Solar Green 12

volt hot water heating systems it really

will make a difference to our life here

on board and

we'll give you regular updates on how

things are going.

Just as a little bit of

a bonus also I want to show you the

complete mess that this boat is in at

the moment just for this installation

To be completely transparent we were not

paid to promote the solar green product

we did receive the 12-volt heating

element and smart controller for free

with the agreement that we would make a

video about our installation process. We

also do not receive any commissions

from sales of the Solar Green product

however with the product now installed

we can say that we are more than happy

with the finished result and the

availability of constant hot water is a

welcome bonus

Somebody's got a lot of

tidying up to do