Battery Drain During Storage

[dougs527]

When I store my R25 boat, I always turn off the main battery switches, but I still have battery drain. The main battery switches do not cut off power to ALL onboard circuits. For the last couple of years, when I store my boat for more than a couple of weeks, I disconnect the ground battery cables. Disconnecting the ground cable to battery 1, effectively disconnects all battery grounds. By doing this, I experience NO battery drain.

Rather than having to get a wrench out and unbolting the battery ground cable, I’m thinking about adding a ground cable battery switch. I can then turn off this one switch and be assured that ALL power is turned off to the entire boat.

My other alternative is to trace down the leaking power that the main battery switches do not turn off. Looking at the buss bars, there are a number of these circuits like the bilge pumps, wallas stove, stereo memory, and volt meter that remain active.

How have other owners dealt with this battery leakage problem?

 

[wefings]

Its a common issue , dont forget the Carbon Monoxide detectors are always on .
Marc grove

 

[RProffer]

If your boat is going to be on a trailer or chocks for the winter, it is best practice to disconnect all batteries. Make sure to remove the keel drain plug, especially if you do not use a boat cover or shrink wrap.

 

[sparky]

Solar panel. It's a wonderful thing....

 

[Stella Maris]

The simplest way we found to solve this was to just use Karma all winter long! The anchorages are empty. The marinas are empty. The waterways are empty with the exception of commercial traffic.

Yes, we have to pay even closer attention to the weather as it can get quite nasty on Puget Sound when the weather turns ugly but, it is well worth it.

 

[Spirit of Gratitude]

Like David we use our R-29 all year round. I have solar on mine and never plug it into shore power. My batteries are always full.
Even when we pull our boat out and store it for a month I have a full cover built for the boat that has a clear panel built into it that goes over the solar panels. I always walk into a boat with full batteries.
During the summer months the fridge is on 24/7. In the winter months in between the times we are using her, I shut everything down.

The solar and the AGM batteries was one of the best things I did to the boat. I just love never needing shore power!

Stuart