Need some explanation on stuff
 

Okay so im sitting in blizzard hell in PA right now.
LOL
Anyway
Had a question on proper use of batteries on board
Suppose I sleep out for the weekend (which I will be doing a good amount of the time)
Boat has 2 batteries on board
Both with switches
How do I use these
I have one battery on board at moment with is a 1000 CCA battery for the engines
Should I get a deep cycle to run cabin lights and accessories during night time
How long can that battery be using the mood lights , radio or TV or ect with out the engines running?

Is there any rules of thumb that I should know like for evey 5 hrs of battery usage, run engines for 10 min ect?
Dont want to go out and nuke a battery and have only one left.
Next is the Refridgerator on board
Alot of us have the same Nortic cold ice box fridge on board
How much power does this draw? Is there an inverter in there somewhere that can be used for somthing else or do I need a new one for other accessories like coffee maker or tiny TV thing?
More questions coming soon as I think of them
Thanks guys
Jason

Well well well, look who's back. :D

I don't have a full answer for you, but I do know you probably don't want to keep frying a battery until it's drained. Everytime you drain a battery the electrons jump off the plate and whne it is recharged, not all of them go back on to the plates. Therfor, you shorten the life of the battery. Just my .02, glad to see ya back around, even if you are mentally unstable.... in fact,we like that around here :D Later

You should have a deep cycle for running all your accessories. The battery rating that is important is “amp hours”. Type 27 batteries are usually 100 – 110 amp hours. Two things are known: An engines charging system is really not capable of charging a battery more than 80% of full capacity. So, if you have a battery rated at 100 amp hours, you really only get 80. Also – you never want to discharge you battery lower than 50%. This greatly reduces the overall life of the battery. So, you really only get 30 amp hours out of a 100 amp hour battery. To figure out how long 30 amp hours is you have to add up the usage of all your stuff. If all your stuff added up draws 1 amp, then you can run it for 30 hours. If all your stuff added up draws 30 amps, then you can run it for only 1 hour – get the idea?

Also – stuff designed to run on 120 volt house current will need to multiplied by 10 when running on 12 volt battery current. For example, a TV that draws .5 amps in your house will draw 5 amps in your boat. Using the formula above, you could run that TV in your boat for 6 hours (5 amps times 6 hours equals 30 amp hours).

Also – Don’t think that your engine can recharge a type 27 deep cycle by running 10 minutes. Figure more like 8 hours. Best bet
Is to charge it on a charger after each 30 hours.

are these things listed on each item on the boat? Or should i look around for more battery powered items like battery TV or the like?
What do you guys do when you head out for a weekend? you run the fridge all day and night or use a cooler with ice?
What second battery is good for this type of useage? Like I said I have a high CCA battery to knock over the engines (can I charge that quickly as well?)
or start up and run for 20-30 min on that and then change over to charge deep cycle battery?
Thanks
Jason

Sounds like a trickle charger for weekday use is a good bet to prep for weekend useage
Jason

So how much amp's am I drawing with 600 watts of stereo!!?? :D :D

Tank

Well you could do what i did and overkill the system! I have 4 batterys and 4 switches onboard my Scarab. Each engine has its dedicated battery and i also have two extra batts for the stereo and acc's. They are all wired up so i can use any one of the four batts to start the engines incase something was to go wrong. Or i can use all 4 batts to start one engine. I have never run out of juice yet even while playing the Stereo all day at Party Cove and had teh fridge running too! :D :D

Tank,

A 12 volt device that requires 600 watts of power input would be drawing 50 amps of current however, the 600 watts you reference is probably peak output not input. In addition, 600 watts of peak output is seldom hit. At any rate, input requirements are listed on the device in question or in the owners manual.

OK OK, all I know is I can kill two batteries in a day bumpin the jams at havasu! My alternator will not re-charge the batteries. The stereo sucks up more juice than the alternator puts out! But then again I think my alt. was going bad. New motor soon though with new alt. :D :D

Tank

That is EXACTALLY what I want to avoid
Maybe Ill buy a third battery and the 2 on one side will be deep cycle and the other 1000 CCA will be for engines
That way a reserve is on hand and ready to go in the event of an issue or loss of power

My boat is too small for a generator
Jason

I have a stand-alone deep cycle hooked to a 1500 watt inverter and it's not even part of the boat's electrical system. This works for me since all I run are carry-on devices that I plug into the inverter (coffee pot, blender, small vacuum cleaner, etc). When I get back home I hook it up to the charger. I know this wouldn't work for you guys with big power stereos that are hardwired-in.

Do you need some fancy huge charger unit or does a trickle charger or standard car battery charger work okay?
Can you install in the deck somewhere a plug attachment for charging like shore power?
Jason

I have seen several set ups where they had a 1000ah starting battery for each engine and a deep cycle for the accessories. The deep cycle battery is connected to one of the engines via an isolator so it will charge when that engine is running.

Jay-A fridge will pull down a 27 deep cycle in 8 hours. I don't use mine unless I'm plugged in. The good news is that if you use a cooler most of the weekend most of the stuff in the fridge is still cool at the end of the weekend. If you are going to use an inverter I would also recommend a dedicated battery. On my boat I have a 27 deep cycle and a 1000 watt inverter that will run everything but AC. I bought a Guest battery maintainer for about 25 bucks and wired it in to that battery. It starts charging as soon as I plug in at the dock. I have also left it on for weeks with no appreciable water loss in the battery. If you go with an inverter keep the battery cables fat and short ;) , the more amps, the better when feeding those things. :D If you wnat to feed a 600 watt stereo, might as well get a battery for that too. Then another engine to get back all the speed you just lost with all the freekin' batteries :D

Oh, and try and stay away from isolators-they are very inefficient-battery combiners work much better-or just switch them all.

Insptech, can you expand on the "dont use isolators" comment please. Why are they no good? And what do you mean combiners? I need to get my whole batterey situation dialed in too when I get the new motor put in. My prob. is I seem to always blow up the alternators. I would like to run a battery for just the motor and then two batteries for the stereo. But I would like to be able to charge all the batteries (even if one at a time) off of the alternator.

Sorry Jay to jump in on your thread!! :D :D

Tank

Isolators are basically just 2 diodes branching off a single pole. A diode by it's nature has lots of resistance one way and a little resistance the other way. It is the little resistance that gets you into trouble. As charge amperage goes up the resistance in the isolator hampers full flow to the batteries and develops heat(ever notice the heat sinks on an isolator) as the heat goes up so does the resistance and on and on....
So some companies have come up with battery combiners that sense charging and use a relay to route the charge to the batteries. West Marine and others have them out there-they are more expensive than isolators but will allow much more efficient charging. I believe there are some that will jumper the batteries together for emergencies(jump starting)also. This takes the place of the jump solenoid found on some performance boats(Scarabs for sure). If you have been trying to charge 3 batteries with one standard alternator I suspect that is why you keep popping them. I think a high output alternator might be in your future :cool:

Thanks Ted I will have to check into the combiners instead of the isolater I'm using. I'm not charging all the batteries at once. What I usually do is play the system but the battery dies then I switch to the other battery....by the end of the day its just alot of strain on the alt. every weekend you know!? People have told me those high output alt. cause more heat and more heat kills alternators too so you are dammed if you do and dammed if you dont!

A HO alternator can build up heat but theoretically it shouldn't work so hard so the heat should stay down. You can also go to a larger pulley and slow it down some for high perf motors while still getting some charge at low speeds.