Odyssey
Active Member
I just finished a little boat project that was kinda cool and wanted to share it. As my boat is a 1995, I have older electrical technology and I'm sure the newer boats don't have the issue I have.
A while back, I replaced all 4 main batteries (my boat has 2 banks of 2 batteries, not including the genny battery). One bank of batteries starts the port engine. The other bank not only starts the starboard engine but also provides power for the "house". Every time change my batteries, (after the batteries have been disconnected), I check the charger to make sure it is putting out the correct voltage to charge the system. This time, I checked inside the charger instead of checking at the cable ends. I discovered was that my charger has 4 positive 12 volt charging posts which means that it can charge 4 separate batteries or banks of batteries at the same time. I guess this type charger is rare and most chargers have less than 4 posts. Anyway, the 2 main banks were connected to 2 of the posts, the genny was connected to 1 post and the other post was not being used.
Where am I going with this you ask – as each of my main battery banks are used to start one of the CAT engines, I do not have a battery that only operates the "house". So when I start each engine, it pulls all the voltage away from everything else because the engines draw so much power from the batteries. So every time I start the engines, my sat dish dies and re-starts because of the voltage drop. It can take up to 10 minutes to find a signal, sometimes even longer. So, with the vacant charging post available, I decided to buy a small 12 volt battery to separately feed to sat dish. The battery could be connected to the spare post on the charger so it wouldn't lose its charge. I also installed a small UPS so the Direct TV receiver doesn't re-start when I switch from shore power to generator. That can take 10-15 minutes to re-start too.
Nick helped with the fuses, block and connections and we set it all up. It works like a charm. Like I said, I'm sure most of the boats out there don't have that problem but it was aggravating to go through that process every time I went to use the boat.
Thanks for listening
A while back, I replaced all 4 main batteries (my boat has 2 banks of 2 batteries, not including the genny battery). One bank of batteries starts the port engine. The other bank not only starts the starboard engine but also provides power for the "house". Every time change my batteries, (after the batteries have been disconnected), I check the charger to make sure it is putting out the correct voltage to charge the system. This time, I checked inside the charger instead of checking at the cable ends. I discovered was that my charger has 4 positive 12 volt charging posts which means that it can charge 4 separate batteries or banks of batteries at the same time. I guess this type charger is rare and most chargers have less than 4 posts. Anyway, the 2 main banks were connected to 2 of the posts, the genny was connected to 1 post and the other post was not being used.
Where am I going with this you ask – as each of my main battery banks are used to start one of the CAT engines, I do not have a battery that only operates the "house". So when I start each engine, it pulls all the voltage away from everything else because the engines draw so much power from the batteries. So every time I start the engines, my sat dish dies and re-starts because of the voltage drop. It can take up to 10 minutes to find a signal, sometimes even longer. So, with the vacant charging post available, I decided to buy a small 12 volt battery to separately feed to sat dish. The battery could be connected to the spare post on the charger so it wouldn't lose its charge. I also installed a small UPS so the Direct TV receiver doesn't re-start when I switch from shore power to generator. That can take 10-15 minutes to re-start too.
Nick helped with the fuses, block and connections and we set it all up. It works like a charm. Like I said, I'm sure most of the boats out there don't have that problem but it was aggravating to go through that process every time I went to use the boat.
Thanks for listening