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Old 23-04-2020, 05:53   #31
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

I like the plan of going to 6V but note the others above about series pairs and total Ah. I did this same plan last year when I rewired my boat.

I have (2) 6V in series for 12V and 205Ah as my house bank. I also bought a Group 31 starting battery for engine starting. The starter battery only starts my 44HP Westerbeke and nothing else. All other loads go to house bank. The start battery is connected to house with a Blue Seas ACR for charging purposes (the alternator and solar are fed to house) and I can emergency parallel the banks with the Blue Seas parallel main battery selector.

It required a fair amount of rewiring and I used Maine Sails excellent treatise on wiring as the basis for my conversion.

Before I had a slightly confusing mismatch of group 31s like you do and no clear way to make sense of things. Now my boat has an ON/OFF switch (with emergency parallel) to vastly simplify the decision about what battery I am on, engine never gets started of house bank because I forgot, and charging loads are directly automatically to bank that needs it most (which is always house).
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Old 23-04-2020, 05:58   #32
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hoohaa View Post
Update
I was on board today and had a look at the other 2 batteries in the bank (Bat 4 & 5)
Wouldn't you know it. Bat 4 is showing red as well. I checked the log. I purchased the batteries at the start of 2017, so that makes them almost 3 1/2 years old.

I phoned up the fellow I bought them from. Long storey short, that's about the lifespan.
So. I am know thinking of replacing the Bank with 5*6V, wetcelled 220 amp hour batteries.
(Lithium is too expensive for my needs atm.)
Reasons.
- Lifespan 3.5 to 5 years if I look after them.
- Reasonably priced.
- Increased amp hours 525 upto 880 AH
- The physical dimensions will be a better fit for my boat. If I build a slightly larger battery box, I can get 4 of them in there and the 5th would go under my chart table seat next the start battery.

Any opinions?

Regards Jeff.
Will agree you will need an even number of 6V golf cart batteries to make it work as a 12V system. So you will have either 4 or 6 batteries (440ah or 660ah respectively) in your main house bank.

A quick question, do you need 660ah for how you use your boat? If you are living on your boat w/a decent power draw or like to sit at anchor for a while, then it may be ok. If not you will probably be ok w/the 440 ah for many years.
Do you have solar on your boat? If you have a decent panel set, then you could also probably get away w/only 440ah.
Bang for the buck, the FLA gc batteries are very good and typically have a good lifespan (>8 yrs) if you make certain you top the cells w/distilled water. We do ours every month (beginning of the month) just to keep on a schedule but could do it every 2 months and be fine.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aethelwulffe View Post
I like those Trojan 6V batteries. Thing is, if you don't tend to draw down your battery bank to 30% and charge it back on a pretty regular basis, you have too large of a battery bank.
IMO, I would disagree w/this statement. First off, you don't want to pull FLAs below 50% SOC. The 30% is typically for lithium.

Secondly, I don't really think you can have too big of a battery bank unless you need to consider the amount of weight of the batteries. With the larger battery bank you tend to not draw your batteries down to anywhere near 50% and thus can get many more years out of the bank vs. undersized.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hoohaa View Post
Currently I use the boat most weekends and that is the level displayed when I return to the boat. It's charged with wind and solar.
It rarely gets below 11.8 volts during use.
Maybe you were seeing that low of a V since you had no water in your batteries, too much of a load overnight, but IMO that is way too low. We wake up in the morning typically at 12.6V, while in the Fall w/less solar maybe 12.5V w/normal overnight loads.

Get the GC FLA batteries and you will be much happier w/your house bank performance.
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Old 23-04-2020, 06:24   #33
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Forgot an added thought. When you set up your new house bank,orient your batteries so the cells are port to starboard based on this recommendation:
https://marinehowto.com/installation...ries-on-boats/
I've never done the battery orientation any other way, but based on the explanation in the article, it does make sense to do it side to side.
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Old 23-04-2020, 07:49   #34
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailmonkey View Post
220ah 6v batteries, as previously stated, will need to be installed in series pairs. In other words, even numbers only.
Also, 4 220ah golf cart batteries won’t yield 880ah. You’ll get 440ah. Again this is from the requirement to wire the four batteries in series parallel to get 12 volts. However 4 golf cart batteries will be infinitely better in every regard than those “maintenance free” things.
If you're replacing your house batteries, at a minimum, 6V golf cart batteries are the way to go.

Correction to the above figures- it is true that if you use four 6V 220ah you will have two pairs of 220ah at 12V, or 440ah total. HOWEVER, since you can't draw down your batteries to zero without killing them, the usual guideline for fla and deep cycle is 50%, so your "usable" amp hours in your bank will be 220ah.

Battery performance and lifespan is more closely related to number of "cycles," which means how many times the battery has been depleted and recharged. When making a buying decision the economics depends upon the number of cycles the battery is rated for.

So I would recommend comparing the deep cycle golf cart batteries with AGM and see which makes the best sense for you.

I've used gold cart batteries in the past for smaller boats, but now as a full time cruiser on a bigger boat, our batteries are high quality AGM and are rated 2000 cycles, which is @10 years based on our use.

Lithium is finally coming down in price and when we replace our house batteries that is what we'll do. The advantage is that Lithium will charge much faster (which makes a big difference when using a generator or solar/wind) and can be depleted to 30% without a problem, so for the same "usable" amp hour capacity you need fewer batteries. They are also much lighter. The cost was the only thing holding us back when we refit our boat 2 years ago for cruising. If we were to replace our battery bank today we would go from six 6V AGMs to two Lithiums, at 1/3 the weight. Can't wait, but gotta save our pennies...
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Old 23-04-2020, 09:44   #35
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill O View Post

IMO, I would disagree w/this statement. First off, you don't want to pull FLAs below 50% SOC. The 30% is typically for lithium.

Secondly, I don't really think you can have too big of a battery bank unless you need to consider the amount of weight of the batteries. With the larger battery bank you tend to not draw your batteries down to anywhere near 50% and thus can get many more years out of the bank vs. undersized.

In practice, if you are getting use out of your batteries for real, and maximizing your charging capacity (i.e. real cruising on a non-megayacht) you are charging between 30% and 70% cycles, as that is the most watt-in-watt-out range. If you are oversized and are taking down your batteries to 90% then charging to 100%, you are using almost four times the amount of input energy. Topping off the last few percent is *very costly*. On the "lasts longer if you don't go below 50%" item, that varies greatly with the battery construction. Lead Acid charging profiles have long noted the 30% as a resistance/sulfation sweet spot, and you see that in generations (many decades) of applied naval engineering texts. On the "bigger is better", I would say that fully utilized small things are far better than underutilized big things. If two batteries solve my need and I kill them in three years, that is better than having 6 batteries that last six years. They are not likely to last longer than that anyway (with normal folks).
If you are looking to have huge capacity available, willing to lug around lots of extra mass backup, and want to take advantage of bulk buy battery purchases, then get your over-done ton of batteries, wire up those cells into lots of isolated banks, and leave them DRY CHARGE. Essentially, if you purchase a bunch of dry charge batteries and you only put electrolyte in some of them, then the others (if sealed with some nitrogen or argon) will be brand new whenever you are ready to put them into service years later as replacements or as an expansion bank.
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Old 23-04-2020, 20:58   #36
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sailah View Post
I like the plan of going to 6V but note the others above about series pairs and total Ah. I did this same plan last year when I rewired my boat.

I have (2) 6V in series for 12V and 205Ah as my house bank. I also bought a Group 31 starting battery for engine starting. The starter battery only starts my 44HP Westerbeke and nothing else. All other loads go to house bank. The start battery is connected to house with a Blue Seas ACR for charging purposes (the alternator and solar are fed to house) and I can emergency parallel the banks with the Blue Seas parallel main battery selector.
I like this idea. I am considering setting mine up the same way.
Thanks for all the great posts. I have been struggling with allot of the terminology and abbreviations but after doing some research I am starting to understand things.
For instance, One of the things I could't get my head around was how 12.8v down to 12.4v is 50% of a bats charge? Penny dropped when I realised a battery is basically flat at 11.9 or 12 volts..
I am learning allot. So! here I am thinking that my existing bank is still motoring along and not showing any real signs of old age. Ignorance is bliss.

I was talking to a friend of mine who has put an electric motor into his yacht, so he knows a bit about batteries.
He has swayed towards the Lithium ion bats.. I originally borked at the price but when you realise that I would probably only need two batteries instead of 4, Then they actually start to make allot of sense.

Sorry for the run around but here are a couple of questions on Lithium.
- Whats a reasonable usable amphour percentage of a lithium battery I could use without damaging the battery over time? 70 - 80%?
- Whats a reasonable usable amphour percentage of a led acid battery I could use without damaging the battery over time? 50%?
- How long do you think the Lithium battery bank would last?

Here is a pic of my Battery and solar management gear. I am pretty shore they will work with the Lithium.
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Old 23-04-2020, 21:11   #37
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Just had another read of the previous couple of posts and realised that the % questions have been answered.
So I just need to get an idea of how long the lithium's will last?

And any recommendations for good quality lithium batteries down here in OZ.
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Old 24-04-2020, 06:07   #38
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Suggest this as some excellent reading. This is what convinced me to go this direction of ACR and Blue Seas battery switch. It also convinced me about bus bars, good grounding etc. My boat had decent wiring to start but you know how things go over various owners and 30 years. What started off as a simple "oh let's just add an ACR" turned into basically rewiring everything on the battery side of the panel.

Once I decided to do the entire job, I set out to find an explanation and schematic that made sense. The below article (and the excellent schematic) just clicked for me so I followed it. The one difference was that I only used 1 Blue Seas parallel battery switch instead of the 3 that are shown in schematic. I wanted to keep my panel clean and only 1 fit. I did add an ON/OFF switch to the house bank so I coud disconnect it.

What I like about it after using it for 1 year is that I walk on my boat and turn 1 switch to ON. And when I do that, both Start and House banks are on. Since the start bank only literally cranks the engine starter, I don't worry about draining it. And when I start the engine, I never have to remember if I'm on the House or Start bank. The ACR automatically parallels the banks whenever a charge voltage (I think it's 12.75V but I forget) is present so if Solar or Alternator is on, I'm charging both.

I took extra steps to run new heavy gauge tinned marine cable exactly as shown in schematic all the way back to bus bars vs using engine block ground (although that still has new cable back to bus bar).

I got some excellent advice from other members about how they did clean and tidy wiring

https://marinehowto.com/automatic-charging-relays/

The schematic makes sense the more you study it, at least it did to me. But I basically followed it exactly except for the 1 vs 3 battery switch, but mine does almost the same thing and comes as part of the Blue Seas "Add a battery" package.
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Old 24-04-2020, 07:00   #39
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hoohaa View Post
Just had another read of the previous couple of posts and realised that the % questions have been answered.
So I just need to get an idea of how long the lithium's will last?

And any recommendations for good quality lithium batteries down here in OZ.

I guess the question you will need to ask yourself, is how long do you intend to keep the boat? Lithium will be ~$1K (US)/100 ah if you get the drop in smart batteries, so maybe $2K for you. Not sure if anyone really knows how long they will last, but depending on use the figures I've seen maybe 10-15 yrs.

Don't get me wrong, I really like lithium to reduce weight and all the other virtues associated w/them, but you can easily get 8 yrs or more w/a good quality 6V gc battery set up and not break the bank (~$375 for 420-440ah). The FLAs are the best bang for the buck and the only real down side is adding water every once in a while. If the batteries aren't accessible to add water then would go for the more expensive AGMs.IMO this would be a good set up for a weekend warrior.
Did you ever calculate your daily ah usage? What appliances do you normally run when on the hook? With your wind/solar charging I'm doubting you'd ever come close to getting to 50% SOC w/a 400ah house bank.
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Old 24-04-2020, 14:10   #40
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sailah View Post
Suggest this as some excellent reading. This is what convinced me to go this direction of ACR and Blue Seas battery switch. It also convinced me about bus bars, good grounding etc. My boat had decent wiring to start but you know how things go over various owners and 30 years. What started off as a simple "oh let's just add an ACR" turned into basically rewiring everything on the battery side of the panel.

Once I decided to do the entire job, I set out to find an explanation and schematic that made sense. The below article (and the excellent schematic) just clicked for me so I followed it. The one difference was that I only used 1 Blue Seas parallel battery switch instead of the 3 that are shown in schematic. I wanted to keep my panel clean and only 1 fit. I did add an ON/OFF switch to the house bank so I coud disconnect it.

What I like about it after using it for 1 year is that I walk on my boat and turn 1 switch to ON. And when I do that, both Start and House banks are on. Since the start bank only literally cranks the engine starter, I don't worry about draining it. And when I start the engine, I never have to remember if I'm on the House or Start bank. The ACR automatically parallels the banks whenever a charge voltage (I think it's 12.75V but I forget) is present so if Solar or Alternator is on, I'm charging both.

I took extra steps to run new heavy gauge tinned marine cable exactly as shown in schematic all the way back to bus bars vs using engine block ground (although that still has new cable back to bus bar).

I got some excellent advice from other members about how they did clean and tidy wiring

https://marinehowto.com/automatic-charging-relays/

The schematic makes sense the more you study it, at least it did to me. But I basically followed it exactly except for the 1 vs 3 battery switch, but mine does almost the same thing and comes as part of the Blue Seas "Add a battery" package.
Thanks. Definitely taking a good long look at this.
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Old 24-04-2020, 14:55   #41
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Thanks Bill
I have been looking online at 130ah Lithium PO4 batteries at around $600 au and others at $1000. I havn't worked out the differences yet. I am well aware that you get what you pay for but their is also allot of talk around about Lithium getting cheaper. So is this what I am seeing here?
Here is a link to what I have seen.
https://www.extremebattery.com.au/pr...RoC2LMQAvD_BwE
If I can get a suitable battery for around $600, then I am all in. But if it turns out that these batteries are rubbish and in fact you do need to spend $1000 pluss. I wll be going the 6v led acid path.
So what I really need to know is if anyone has bought and is using these cheaper batteries?
What is the difference between these cheap batteries and the more expensive batteries?
I already know that they have probably been made in China but, is there something else that technically make them inferior to the more expensive batteries?

Regarding power usage.
My power drain onboard varies. Currently I will run a fridge freezer too keep beer and food cold 24/7. Lights, music radio, Cpap machine for 8 hours and charge phones ect.
In about a year we hope to start coastal cruising a bit (a couple of months at a time). So we would probably do an 80 mile passage up or down the coast and need to run our Auto pilot, AIS and chart plotter.
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Old 24-04-2020, 15:26   #42
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Sailha
I am not shore about Earthing to the Bus. Wouldn't the bus bar need to be grounded to the engine block?
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Old 25-04-2020, 05:36   #43
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Yes the engine is also grounded to the bus bar. In the schematic, the engine starter is shown with a ground wire back to neg bus bar. In reality, engine starters do not have a neg stud on them usually so your ground is some tapped hole on the engine block. Mine had this already, but the lug was corroded so I replaced it entirely as the cable run was pretty short to the neg bus bar.

Steps that I took to upgrade where I was previously:

-DC panel had a cable that ran to the engine block. Which was then grounded to batteries. I ran a fresh cable from panel directly to bus bar and did the same for engine block.
-Alternator had a short jumper cable from ground post to engine block. I redid this to bring the ground from alternator directly to bus bar. The concept of this is to reduce voltage drop as much as possible.
-All existing cable was cut at the lug and inspected. If shiny and bright, I recrimped a new lug with heat shrink. If suspect, I cut back until it was too short and replaced it or I found shiny (by shiny I mean good tinned not bare copper)
-I debated about the high amperage loads like the windlass going to the starter vs house. In the end, I decided to follow schematic and run ALL loads to house except the engine starter. All charging loads also go to the house.
-This way I could use the Balmar battery monitor on the house and know exactly what the loads were. Starting an engine requires minimal energy for 2 secs so I never even worry about the starter. I did run the extra voltage sense wires from the battery monitor to the engine start battery so I can read the voltage on the starter bank.
-I was extremely limited in space where I wanted to do these battery improvements so I acquired all my components and made a plywood mockup to fit. I then spent a fair amount of time laying everything out and securing to plywood, predoing the short cable runs on my desk. Then I installed the plywood after painting and just made the connections.
-I bought many of my components from industrial wiring suppliers as they are substantially less expensive vs the marine store. Buy 3x more than you need.
-I used industrial fuse holders and made my own copper bars as I was limited on space. Labeled everything with a cheap Brother label maker and then used clear heat shrink over the regular adhesive shrink to make sure I knew what all cables are.
-So far it's worked great and really cleaned up my wiring. I know where everything is. Was a lot of work and investment in tools (like the lug crimper) but I feel was worth it. Probably more than you wanted to do vs just replacing batteries but I always try to find excuses to improve and buy new tools!!
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Old 25-04-2020, 19:01   #44
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

Quote:
but you can easily get 8 yrs or more w/a good quality 6V gc battery set up and not break the bank (~$375 for 420-440ah).
Bill, sadly down here in Oz Trojan T105s run nearly that per each! I replaced my four last November in the Sydney area, getting "mate's rates", and it was nearly 1200 AUD. No Sams Club deals here!

And we've never achieved 8 years from ours... more like 3-4 typically. But they are still likely best value in cumulative Ah/$.

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Old 25-04-2020, 19:08   #45
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Re: 5 batteries one red.

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Bill, sadly down here in Oz Trojan T105s run nearly that per each! I replaced my four last November in the Sydney area, getting "mate's rates", and it was nearly 1200 AUD. No Sams Club deals here!

And we've never achieved 8 years from ours... more like 3-4 typically. But they are still likely best value in cumulative Ah/$.

Jim
Yes indeed, I have 3 pairs of supercharge 6 volt GC batteries installed in early 2014, still going strong but who knows for how much longer, and they were A$1200.00 then! But they don't get the use that your's do Jim.
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