Joined the club, killed my house batteries

[Cutwater28GG]

The research I did has the solix at the lowest idle draw compared with the competition

 

[brtnstrns]

You need to jump-start them. The BMS protected them. Easiest way to do that is to start the engine, so it's running. Parallel your engine and house, as that'll provide 14+ volts to the (6) Dakota batteries you have. That will jump-start them to start taking a charge. Then turn on your battery charger, un-parallel the engine and house (don't leave them in parallel for very long). Turn the engine off. Your battery charger should be able to finish charging your house lithium bank to fully charged. With a 60 amp battery charger and 600 ah, it'll take awhile... figure at least 12 hours.

Coincidentally, I also completely depleted my Dakota LFPs on our R-25 this week, so I tried this method just now.

I didn't seem to get any indication that it actually worked. Even with the engine running, turning the switch to parallel, there were no signs of the house system getting any voltage at all.

It may be a completely false memory, but I do feel like during orientation they said the parallel switch is between the engine and thruster battery. I may be incorrect there, but if not, there may not be a good way to parallel the engine to house LFP batteries.

 

[Submariner]

It may be a completely false memory, but I do feel like during orientation they said the parallel switch is between the engine and thruster battery. I may be incorrect there, but if not, there may not be a good way to parallel the engine to house LFP batteries.

The newest boats (mid-year 2026 and newer) come with EPOCH batteries which don't support engine starting. They have their parallel switch wired to connect the thruster battery to the engine battery. The Dakota's were wired such that you could parallel the house and engine.

With EPOCH batteries, you need jumper cables.

 

[brtnstrns]

The newest boats (mid-year 2026 and newer) come with EPOCH batteries which don't support engine starting. They have their parallel switch wired to connect the thruster to the engine. The Dakota's were wired such that you could parallel the house and engine.

With EPOCH batteries, you need jumper cables.

Interesting. Ours is a 2025, probably one of the last, if not the last before the switchover to electric steering and all that jazz.

Would you expect that with the engine running, parallel switch on there would be any signs of life? Lights wouldn’t turn on nor would the victron monitor when I tried earlier today following the process you laid out in your previous comment.

Going to go back down this evening to troubleshoot with actual tools on hand. It was just a coincidence I went down there earlier to find it dead and noticed this thread was ongoing.

 

[Submariner]

Interesting. Ours is a 2025, probably one of the last, if not the last before the switchover to electric steering and all that jazz.

Would you expect that with the engine running, parallel switch on there would be any signs of life? Lights wouldn’t turn on nor would the victron monitor when I tried earlier today following the process you laid out in your previous comment.

Going to go back down this evening to troubleshoot with actual tools on hand. It was just a coincidence I went down there earlier to find it dead and noticed this thread was ongoing.

Do you have EPOCH's or Dakota LFP batteries?

 

[brtnstrns]

Do you have EPOCH's or Dakota LFP batteries?

Dakota

 

[boatliker]

You need to jump-start them. The BMS protected them. Easiest way to do that is to start the engine, so it's running. Parallel your engine and house, as that'll provide 14+ volts to the (6) Dakota batteries you have. That will jump-start them to start taking a charge. Then turn on your battery charger, un-parallel the engine and house (don't leave them in parallel for very long). Turn the engine off. Your battery charger should be able to finish charging your house lithium bank to fully charged. With a 60 amp battery charger and 600 ah, it'll take awhile... figure at least 12 hours.

This worked like a charm. Back up to 100% in about 9 hours, maybe less. Thanks for the assist, Martin.

 

[brtnstrns]

Do you have EPOCH's or Dakota LFP batteries?

This worked like a charm. Back up to 100% in about 9 hours, maybe less. Thanks for the assist, Martin.

Went down to the boat last night and threw my multimeter on the Dakota house batteries: 0.31 VDC. Checked continuity between house and engine batteries with parallel switch both on and off and couldn't get continuity anywhere. Thinking my parallel switch isn't doing anything at all so I'll need to bug the folks at Fluid Motion about that since that could lead to some big issues if I wasn't at a marina.

Finally was able to wake the batteries up with a victron battery charger (only own EVs now so don't carry jumper cables with me anymore) and got them up enough to let the boat's charger take over.

 

[Submariner]

Went down to the boat last night and threw my multimeter on the Dakota house batteries: 0.31 VDC. Checked continuity between house and engine batteries with parallel switch both on and off and couldn't get continuity anywhere. Thinking my parallel switch isn't doing anything at all so I'll need to bug the folks at Fluid Motion about that since that could lead to some big issues if I wasn't at a marina.

Finally was able to wake the batteries up with a victron battery charger (only own EVs now so don't carry jumper cables with me anymore) and got them up enough to let the boat's charger take over.

I'd pull the panel on the DC switches for engine, house, parallel, thruster. Take voltage readings from behind those DC switches to figure out what gets joined when you turn on the parallel switch.

 

[Blueboy#1]

In general, these boats, an average boater will consume about 75-90 amp-hours a day. The cabin refrigerator is the largest electrical load and accounts for about 45 amp-hours daily.

The NW edition, with AGM batteries.. R27, 25 and R23, came with two house batteries and provide about 100 amp-hours that is usable. This provides 1 night on the hook. The R29 and R31’s came with four house batteries providing 200 amp-hours that was usable, thus, they could do 2 nights at anchor.

I have a very in-depth spreadsheet that I modeled from Andrew years ago. It covers every switch and electrical device on the boat.

When we got our R27 in June 2020, it took me 90 days to sulfate and destroy my house bank. I had to figure out the electrical system and better understand my consumption. Once I did that, I had to decide, do I learn to live with less which would make me want to use the boat less? Or figure a way to increase capacity.

I eneded up converting my boat from AGM to LFP. I went from 100 amp-hours usable on a pair fo AGM batteires to a single LFP battery that provides us with 256 amp-hours that are usable. I used the detailed spreadsheet I made to better estimate how large a battery bank I needed. This also helped me determine how large of solar panels to upgrade to. I have 420 watts total. As a result, with Solar and LFP, shorepower has become mostly optional during boating season for us. But as you point out, everybody boats differently.

 

[Blueboy#1]

I bought a 2019 R-27 OB for Christmas and the original batteries were weak so I replaced them all in May with Interstate 3AGM-37s —thruster/starter, engine starter, and two house batteries.

I have the Victron monitor and I watched the consumption carefully. On an extended trip from Port Angeles to Princess Louisa Inlet via Nanaimo we stayed near Chatterbox Falls on a mooring ball for several nights. Mary and I are not huge power consumers but we used both fridges—the cockpit fridge turned up all the way as a freezer to keep bags of ice frozen. We also used the boat lights, stove and oven, a few rounds of the inverter to use the coffee grinder and hair dryer, and we used our Starlink Mini by using the cigarette lighter plug in the cockpit and placing it on the cover of the livewell/aft electric stove and turning it until it says it’s aligned.

We have two solar panels with a total of about 360 Watts but Princess Louisa Inlet has steep vertical rock walls that let less sun into the moorings, and after the first afternoon it was cloudy and rainy so not much solar power was being put back into the system.

By the morning of the third day without running the engine, we were down to around 62% and I lifted my trusty 40 lb Honda 1000 Watt generator out of the lazarette onto the back deck and put the heavy duty 15 ft extension cord into a plug adapter into the ShorePower outlet. The Honda produced around 15-20 amps of 115Volts and changed up the system to 90% in about 2 hrs, while we were running Starlink and the fridges and the Webasto diesel heater This worked fine and the generator is fairly quiet and uses a very small amount of gasoline to run for hours. We always have a couple of small gas cans aboard for the 2.5 Yamaha dinghy motor and the generator and have not had to refill the jerrycans during our trips.

The generator is old school and the 12volt cig plug for Starlink is kind of hillbilly compared to all the awesome electrical installations that Tugnuts have designed and installed. But we have gasoline aboard, our system works even if it isn’t sexy or cool, and our trips have been trouble free. I keep an eye on the battery monitor and know that if I see the house battery bank drop near 70 we are either going to need to run the engine during a power run or a slow boat cruise, run the generator for awhile (being sensible regarding time of day and noise disturbance in a quiet anchorage), or hope for a nice sunny day, or a combination of these power sources.

I appreciate Martin from Channel Surfing for his insights and advice on all R-27OB issues, especially his Utube videos on electrical systems, and thank you to everyone here for helping me learn and understand the boat. I am trying to keep it simple and easy to use the boat and my system works and so far has been trouble free (knock on wood!)

We are planning an extended cruise to Desolation Sound and The Broughton Islands soon and we will hopefully enjoy continuing performance from this set-up. I will report back on our progress and experiences—cheers until then.

 

[brtnstrns]

I'd pull the panel on the DC switches for engine, house, parallel, thruster. Take voltage readings from behind those DC switches to figure out what gets joined when you turn on the parallel switch.

Just to follow up, Andrew confirmed with me that the parallel switch on our boat connects thruster to engine battery. So unfortunately no jump start for the Dakota house batteries. I purchased a Victron smart battery charger as my failsafe.

 

[Homer_R23]

This year on our trip to Desolation Sound in our 2014 R27, I fried my solar controller from salt spray on the way up in the Strait of Georgia. Fortunately I had my Jackery 1500 on board with 4x 100W folding solar panels. I plugged the shore power cable into the Jackery and used it and the boats battery charger to charge the boat AGM House batteries each day while on anchor. Kept us reasonably charged for 4 days in Desolation Sound. The Jackery saved the trip!

BTW, normally I use the Jackery plugged in the same way to heat hot water for showers using the boats hot water heater. Just need to make sure to run only one device on the boat at a time to not overload the inverter. Of course, this year hot water was out of the question because I needed all the power to keep the AGM’s charged.

Curt

Curt, I have a 2019 R23 and I simply cannot find the solar controller. You mentioned you fried yours with salt spray. Where was it located, that, that happened?

 

[Red Raven]

I have a classic R27 so it will have no relation to where your R23 solar controller is. In my case it is tucked up in the aft corner of the port cockpit locker.

Curt