Your Battery Replacement Thoughts . . . ?

[MitchM]

well after 7 years service 6/004 to 9/11 my exide HD gel engine start battery will need to be replaced next haul in. also the 2 large 27 d wet cell house batteries...my house is 400 aH in 2 huge 904's now.

any suggestions ?

some folks like the optima bluetops

others like interstate

the exide HD certainly served well as an engine start...so i'll probably go with another of those.

my neighbor -- who always knows all -- insists that his rolls are the only battery$$$$$$ to have.

previously had bad luck with a 'sears deep discharge' suppposedly rated for marine use , so won't do that again..

what batteries have you liked , and why ?

[David M]

What type of boat do you have and how do you use your boat?

Do you need an efficient system? In other words, is your ability to charge and store energy limited? Will you be living off your stored energy for extended periods? How will you be recharging your batteries?...wind, solar, genset, engine alternator?

What type of electrical loads do you have?

[sailcruiser]

The Rolls are the top of the line. I am in the same mode looking at batteries. What type of charger do you have? Have you looked at 6v? I was told by knowledgable people to choose true deep cycle for house batteries. SC

[David M]

It is not economical to spend big bucks on battery systems that do not need to be efficient. For something like a power boat that has large engines and or a genset, what is most important is reliability. For an offshore cruising sailboat with limited charging abilities from solar or wind or both and periods of time where no engine is to be run then efficient is important.

You may or may not need expensive batteries. The deep cycles they sell at Costco may be good enough.

We need more info about your boat and how you use it in order to answer your questions.

[MitchM]

charger is the mastervolt 3 stage charger with inverter. it has been a great charger. i have looked at changing to the 6 v golf cart style bats but no savings on weight, a mess of electric work, and i have a lovely battery compartment all sized for the 904's. i am thinking gels or agm because us double nickles ( age 55 plus0 dont like unscrewing the heavy floor board to check the h 2 0 in wet cells any more...
the rolls seem to be very expen$$$$$ive... for no additional utility.. ie, a battery is a battery.. i got good service from t he ones i have to be sure...

[David M]

Unless you are going offshore for extended periods I would get regular 12 volt deep cycle lead-acid batteries....if you want to save money. Otherwise, relatively expensive gel cels if you don't want to have to lift the floorboards. You will need a charger which has the correct settings for a gel cell.

[sailcruiser]

Make sure you read Maine Sails thoughts on AGMs. They're apparently fussy with a finicky charging schedule. Why a mess of electrical for 6v? I plan to stick them in a box that combines them. SC

[S/V Alchemy]

Originally Posted by David M

What type of boat do you have and how do you use your boat?

Do you need an efficient system? In other words, is your ability to charge and store energy limited? Will you be living off your stored energy for extended periods? How will you be recharging your batteries?...wind, solar, genset, engine alternator?

What type of electrical loads do you have?

All relevant to the discussion. Figure out your daily amp toll, multiply by three or four and divide by your charge sources/space considerations. While there's no point to having more batteries than you need, particularly if you have many smaller interconnected ones as those are pricey points of failure in potentia, unless you are a racer with a dock, there's no point in having too little capacity, as the cyclical drawdowns will use them up faster.

So the baseline has to be current use plus anticipated use over the lifetime of the batteries, with enough spare capacity to keep your amp reserve in the ideal 50%-80% zone.

[Free Agent]

I installed 4 Optima Blue top M31's. 1000 CCA's to run our TV's and refers.
The 31 size Optimas fit in the 27 size battery holder/rack/boxes BTW. Blue top, lite gray body battery = Marine Deep Cycle.

I'm an insomniac, wife works nights so she can't sleep either when we boat, so we're up watching TV and reading all night long.

The 4 Optimas run 2 refrigerators, the KVH sat dome and the TVs / direct tv receivers for about 6 hours before the generator needs to be started.

In the performance boats forums, the Optima company representative and reputation has been kicked in the Nut Sac and run for creditably issues.

The general consensus is Optimas quality has suffered over the past 2 years since they sold to Interstate and production moved to Mexico.

The biggest critics of Optima are the Canadians who experience the most severe of conditions and seem to be in 100% agreement Optimas quality has tanked.

So far so good with us in the past 4 months of hard use with the 31's, but we have had Optima red tops fail in the past.

[btrayfors]

Originally Posted by MitchM

charger is the mastervolt 3 stage charger with inverter. it has been a great charger. i have looked at changing to the 6 v golf cart style bats but no savings on weight, a mess of electric work, and i have a lovely battery compartment all sized for the 904's. i am thinking gels or agm because us double nickles ( age 55 plus0 dont like unscrewing the heavy floor board to check the h 2 0 in wet cells any more...
the rolls seem to be very expen$$$$$ive... for no additional utility.. ie, a battery is a battery.. i got good service from t he ones i have to be sure...

What's a "904"? Never heard of that size before.

Rolls are the best choice for longevity in flooded lead-acid batteries. Most users easily get 10-15 years service. However, for many, they're overkill and they DO require good maintenance.

For many boaters, golf-cart size gels are a good way to go. They're a bit more pricey than AGMs and quite a bit more than flooded batteries, but if you want batteries which require very little periodic care and have an excellent track record for longevity, they're a good investment. As was noted above, you need a charger which can handle gels.

Six-volt golf-cart batteries in deep-cycle service will last longer than their 12V cousins, because they have significantly heavier plates. Also, series connection of two 6V batteries involves one less jumper than does parallelling two 12V batteries.

Bill

[nonam]

I am surprised no one has mentioned Lifeline AGM.A few months ago I changed out a battery bank of 9 lifeline batteries.The batteries were still performing but they were ten years old and the wealthy owner wanted new ones.The day after I disconnected them I checked the voltages.One was at 12.7.The rest were 12.8.They had been maintained by the standard Charles battery charger installed in Island Packet yachts.

[Vasco]

Originally Posted by nonam

I am surprised no one has mentioned Lifeline AGM.A few months ago I changed out a battery bank of 9 lifeline batteries.The batteries were still performing but they were ten years old and the wealthy owner wanted new ones.The day after I disconnected them I checked the voltages.One was at 12.7.The rest were 12.8.They had been maintained by the standard Charles battery charger installed in Island Packet yachts.

AGM's are not very good for cruising. I found out the hard way. Just do a search and you'll find out why. They're ok if you're tied to the dock.

[zeehag]

i have 4 of the 6 volt golf cart batts equivalent to t-105s bought in costco with a 10 yr warantee, and a 8d. i wanna change out that 3 man and a boy battery to 2 group 27s..... that is starter bank. the 6v bank is my house bank.

[rrranch]

Optimas are weird now I agree. I've had the same pair in my diesel pickup for 7 years now. Actually this set came out of my wifes truck that she totaled and are now in mine. Those are lasting for ever and in some pretty extremes of temps and hard use with an invertor powered welder quite often. The one in my tractor though is on the third replacement in two years. I use it several times a month and it's charging fine and no drain at all so can't understand it. It's just a much newer battery is the only difference.
I need to replace the pair of batteries in my boat now and really unsure if I want to buy optimas again. I have to upgrade the charger on it too. We just bought the boat and still sorting things out. The charger is really old, 1974 vintage I'm sure. I'm making up all new cables for the batteries this weekend too. We have a lot of new electronics running off them and no solar or wind generator yet. I'll be watching this thread for ideas. My slide in camper is solar powered and has only a single old optima in it and we can watch our little old 12 volt tv all day and night while charging phones, ipad, etc if we are running the fridge on propane. I hope to get my boat that efficient.
Question, I'm considering adding two more batteries. Our boat is a ranger 29 and is already tail heavy so I was thinking about putting them up front in the forward most little space there with a pair of 4 gauge cables run back to the engine compartment where the other two are. They would be house batteries and not for starting. Anyone see a problem with putting them there?

[MitchM]

if you have the space up front you still have to compute the voltage drop for those #4cables running an extra ?20 feet or so to receive the charge from your engine alternator then distribute the voltage to your house system. i think the boat was designed to have house bat's in the r ear so i doubt that i would change the house bat's locations... imho just a lot of work for minimal boat performanceimprovment..


after a lot of research we decided to go with the 2 lifeline agm's as our house batteries, which w e found at a very good price at annapolis boat show. as for engine start we'll be going with the HD Exide which has lasted 7 years and is still holding a great charge, in fact so great that we wont have to replace that one this year.. we are now hauled out so new house bat's wil go in this spring. a mastervolt 3 stage charger came with the boat and seems to be doing a good job....i note that our 04 roadtrek van still has an hd exide as its engine start battery AND the thing is still working faultlessly.. 04 to 11 is 7 years ... pretty good performance i'd say.. we also have a 3 stage charger in the van which charges the engine start bat when we are camping etc....

thanks for the optima observations , and good luck on your projects...