R-31 Newbie..Electrical System Questions

[Happy Place]

On the main panel, I see a meter with switches for 1, 2 and 3. I see roughly 12-13 on the meter for battery 1 and 3 but zero for 2.

I believe that 2 is the start battery....and I'm on shore power so why would battery 2 be dead?

Is there somewhere on board that I can see the percent of charge of my batteries? A percent reading?

Last question.....I'm on the hard right now...is there a way I can fire up the generator to test it? Can I set up a water hose for coolant? Same question for the air conditioning...can I test it on the hard?

 

[Martin610]

First thing I would do is get a multi meter and check each battery terminals individually.

 

[Craigmconrad]

Having run a pair of Opti's on my last boat (very voltage sensitive) I monitor the batteries all the time. I installed a solar panel with Victron 100/30 controller and use a Smart Battery Sense to send Voltage and Temp to the controller to optimize the charging. I can see the direct voltage reading on my cell phone or ipad. With this in mind, I installed a Smart Battery Sense on the Eng and Thruster batteries to get direct voltage. They don't show %, but there is a chart you can cross reference voltage to % SOC. ie. 12.71v no load is equivalent to 100% and 12.06 is 50% and you can interpolate the rest. It's not perfect, but works for my as I do not discharge below 12.3v (60%) to save battery life. On my cell/ipad, i name each battery sense by the battery bank and can monitor all three very easily. Hope this helps and good luck

 

[JamesC28]

You can start the engine for a moment to see if that's it. If it is that dead, nothing will happen. You can also test the thrusters.

 

[Happy Place]

Does the generator have a separate battery or does it use the starting battery?

 

[bill46]

My 31 switch is 1=house, 2=thruster, 3=engine.
There is a switch to parallel house and engine for emergency start.
Generator is started with aft thruster switch and battery.