Battery switches when docked

[davidr]

When tied up and plugged into shore power, should the house battery switch be left in the on position? We always turn off the engine and thruster switches. Am told that our marina is electrically “hot”. I had a galvanic isolater installed. I have a diver go under our CB30 twice a year and the zincs are mostly gone. Boat is in the water year round.

 

[Cutwater28GG]

you can turn the house off and your batteries will still charge. (keep the shore power dial correctly set on the blueseas panel)
you can keep it on if you want the fridge left on.

your bilge pumps and CO detector are wired to the thruster battery directly and ignore the red breakers.

 

[Cutwater28GG]

6 months is pretty good for zincs. 4months in busy/hot marinas is a good schedule for zinc replacement.

 

[BaylorU]

On a similar note, do the batteries charge via solar panels when the red switches are in the “OFF” position?
Ken

 

[jkhiser]

On my C-28, the solar controller is directly wired to the start and engine battery positive posts, with a 30 amp fuse near each connection. So the battery switches have no impact on solar. I suspect this is the typical arrangement.

 

[rpmerrill]

I just noticed jkhiser's posting about the solar panel being connected to the engine and thruster batteries.

When my boat was in storage and shrink wrapped the solar panel still gets some sunlight and puts out about half an amp on nice days. I'd been working under the impression that all three were getting the nice trickle charge current.
Last winter I noticed that my house battery had sagged down a volt or so below the other two. I flipped the switch over to "parallel" and everything evened up over several days. I left in in "parallel" the rest of the winter.

Just my imagination ?
Good idea?

 

[knotflying]

The solar is supposed to be connected to the house and engine banks. If the leads are connected correctly you have a choice (by using the dip switch on the controller) of splitting the charge either 50/50 or 90/10 between the banks. That would be 90% house and 10% engine. There are constant draws on the house batteries such as fusion radio memory, co detector and propane detector, if you have propane. A drain of a couple of volts depending on how long seems a bit high. Switching to parallel will only equalize the voltage and if you have a bad battery it could drain the good batteries.
My practice during a long layup is to just disconnect the battery terminals and play it safe. This is also a good time to remember to clean all the terminals and connections when reconnecting everything.

 

[Cutwater28GG]

as knotflying says, by linking the batteries if you had a bad parasitic load you are at risk of damaging all the batteries and not just the one with the load.

I would investigate the source of the voltage drop.
if the boat is on a trailer out of the weather for the winter I would remove all the cables from the batteries. and charge them monthly seperately.

 

[stwendl]

Just a reminder to not ignore the ACRs. If you apply a charging source to any single battery the ACR will combine batteries so any charging source that has multi bank “features” is useless. Acrs are useful if you have a single engine alternator to fill batteries that are separated.

Some of our boats have multi bank shore chargers and some have multi bank solar chargers. During those charge operations the ACRs are counter productive and need to be disabled.

I don’t have solar, but I linked a voltage output of the charger from the remote, indicating the charger is on and connected to shore, to the inhibit input of the ACRs to disabled their function during that charge operation. I monitored all three banks with a four channel hobo voltage logger to verify the my findings and can produce graphs supporting this

 

[sweeneyworld]

New to my 21’ tug. Brand new batteries, and now dead after being on shore power for ~2 weeks. Noticed the battery charger light is off even tho the switch is on with shore power connected. Is this a fuse? Any advise on how to diagnose would really alleviate my stress level. Thanks js

 

[Jfrano]

you can turn the house off and your batteries will still charge. (keep the shore power dial correctly set on the blueseas panel)
you can keep it on if you want the fridge left on.

your bilge pumps and CO detector are wired to the thruster battery directly and ignore the red breakers.

In addition to the Shore setting, does the AC1 need to be on as well to charge the batteries?

 

[MsChief]

sweenyworld - did you turn on your battery charger using the "on" button on the battery charger control panel? It may have been in the off position. On my Cutwater 26, the battery will take a charge from shore power cable regardless of the position of the red rotator "on / off" dial for the battery bank, however the battery charger must be "on". The indicator light on the battery charger panel will show green, and then it will go dark to conserve energy even if still on. Just press and release the "on" button for the charger and see if shows green. If not, it may have been off, thus draining your batteries to run the fridge and other battery only items.