Hi again Brian,
If your
batteries were still under load with a reading of 12.29 after that amount of drawdown I would say you do not have a problem.
I find that the fridge is now the biggest
power user on the
boat and I am in the process of converting mine from continuous cycling to eutectic with
water cooled condenser - I spend a lot of time in the tropics and the air cooled condenser is not very effective and puts a lot of heat into the
boat.
I tried out the eutectic thing by putting a false floor in my fridge box then with about 3" of
water under it, which turned into a big ice block, I could hold over for 3 - 4 days without cycling.
I then installed a 7 day timer so that the fridge did not turn on until about 10am in the morning and then turned off about 4pm if the thermostat did not turn it off sooner. The
refrigerator was also connected to the load terminal on one of my
solar regulators and the on voltage was set for about 12.5 volts.
Anyway the system worked quiet well and the
refrigerator pretty well always ran from
current drawn from the
solar panels and not the batteries. My oldest Trojan lasted 7 years and it had been worked pretty hard during it's first couple of years in the boat.
The only downside was that the compressor ran very hot and they have a limited duty cycle. The re-installation now has a
cooling fan blowing from under the compressor and hopefully it will now run cooler - if this does not do the job I will put heat pipes on it.
I have 4 banks of 2 X 6V batteries 3 banks of which are Trojan. I run a zapper which is supposed to prevent sulphating and which I rotate around the batteries about a month at a time - don't know if it works but it makes me feel better about things anyway.
I have tried the drawdown test thing and have come to the conclusion that each bank needs to be treated as an individual and now have two smart regulators one of which I will use as a test
regulator - it records
current in and out and voltage and I can download the monthly data to a spreadsheet. The
battery isolation and recollection is carried out with a sort of cross bar assigner which I have built from 1/2" by 3/32 brass bar, connections are made or broken by screwing in or out a brass screw.
I am not sure if any of this will be worth it but anyway I am engaging in firstly trying minimize the daily voltage drawdown of the batteries therefor extending their lives, and secondly, trying to gain an understanding of what is happening regarding
storage efficiency with each bank and hopefully I will be able to optimize their useful lives.
And in any event it all helps fill my days.