Starting Battery

[hughesdave123]

quick question . is the starting battery the same battery that the fridge should be drawing from ?

I ask this because I am trying to understand what should be on the "House" bank.

I just notice ( actually panicked for 5 min then discovered ) that when spending the night on the water , I cant start the engine the next morn unless I start the generator , and use the battery charger for a couple min with generator power.

 

[NorthernFocus]

The starting battery shouldn't have anything else on it at all. There is a switch on the panel in the "cave" to connect the engine and house batteries together for emergency starting. Sounds like you may have that switch in the on position and drawing the engine battery down overnight.

 

[hughesdave123]

Ill check that out . I got this Boat as the second owner and didn't get the full debrief on the battery options. Thanks !

 

[baz]

These are my battery health notes from a few years back.... they might help you understand the battery health issues.

I checked my batteries today using the floating 4-colored-ball device. Every cell I tested caused all 4 balls to float, indicating full charge state.

After talking with Andrew today it was decided while the boat is docked I should disconnect the shore power and turn off any 12v draining device and leave it this way overnight to let the batteries rest.

Tomorrow I will return to the boat and using the battery voltmeter located alongside the helm I will check the voltage for all three banks using the toggle switch adjacent to the voltmeter. This will/should provide me with a reliable voltage readout for the batteries.

Prior to disconnecting the shore power and turning off two devices; the 12v refrigerator and a 120v dehumidifier the voltmeter for all 3 banks registered 13.5 volts. The battery charger was also engaged prior to disconnecting the shore power and recall that it wasn't charging at the time.

When all power draw in the boat was removed the voltmeter on all 3 banks slowly sank to just over 13 volts. This was maybe over a period of 10 minutes after removing all the power draw.

I'm hoping that tomorrow after the batteries have been allowed to rest, assuming the batteries were fully charged prior to removing all the power draw and the battery charger, the voltmeter on each of the 3 banks will register around 12.7 volts.

The next morning....

So this morning after some 14 hrs allowing the batteries to 'rest' I observed the voltages on all three banks to be...

Bank 1 at 12.82v
Bank 2 at 12.8v
Bank 3 at 12.8v

I now turned on the shore power and took voltage readings again

Bank 1 at 14.2v
Bank 2 at 14.2v
Bank 3 at 14.2v

I now turned on the 12v Refrigerator and the 110v Humidifier and observed the voltages again -- all Banks registered 14.45v.

I did not hear the battery charger kick-in.

From this I'm concluding my batteries are in very good shape.

 

[hughesdave123]

Thank you .

 

[knotflying]

Baz,

After letting the batteries rest as you did using the hydrometer and checking the strength of the electrolyte wouldn't be a bad thing to test along with the voltage.

 

[JerryE]

Beware, I discovered my R25 starting battery has the thrusters attached to it. Actually, that makes sense as you would never start the engine and use the thrusters at the same time. I have not seen or found anything else wired to the starting battery. The manual (such as it is) says nothing about this.

 

[Levitation]

Jerry at risk of beating on the obvious - the engine start battery has to be separate from all other loads (kick that dead horse, eh :mrgreen: )
If you found it wired to the thrusters I have to assume the previous owner(s) was attempting to wire the thruster battery in parallel with the house set but did not know what he was doing. Actually making the house set a 3 battery group with the thruster running off the house battery set has a lot to recommend it - but it has to be done properly, of course
So, how is the thruster battery wired?

 

[JerryE]

Thanks Denny for the comment. I'll check. I can recall, years ago, quite a few comments on this bulletin board about "leaky" thrusters with regard to battery drain issues which is an argument to have the engine battery not attached to a potential drain (or to anything else as you say). So I will study on this as soon as I find my sun glasses, get the beers in their cozies, set out the lawn chair, open the onion dip, and prepare to get to work in that battery compartment.

 

[Favunclerich]

Jerry,

I had the same issue with my 2008 R-25 hull #42 several years ago. I found that the engine had been incorrectly wired to the house batteries. It took a while to sort out and removing some of the insulation to chase the wires. I corrected the error, replaced the damaged house batteries and have had no issues since.

Rich