battery help

[RIN]

Can anyone help with a battery problem?

Boat out of the water - big tub around the starboard leg full of fresh water (and antifreeze) to flush engine - tried to start engine and no power at all - batteries flat

left batteries on charge for 5 hours tried again no power at all.

Brought all three batteries home (100A/H) and charged the 2 lesiure batteries - would hold no charge at all - electrolyte levels ok

looked at starter battery - appeared to have no electrolyte at all - and the cell caps were blackened.

Now since I have all the batteries connected all the time, is it possible that the problems with the starter battery could have caused failure of the leisure batteries?

I never isolate the batteries and always leave the battery charger on when staying on the boat Is this right? Could I have ruined all three doing this?

Lastly anyone know of a good place for marine batteries in the Poole (ish) area?

Any help greatly appreciated

 

[halcyon]

Had the same problem years ago on a Sealine, traced it down to a faulty battery, one cell was shorting out, effectively making it a 10 volt battery.
If you have had a similar fault, the battery charger would have been running at around 12,5 volt and boiling the engine battery, hence no electrolyte and black top. The service batteries would have been running at a low voltage and took no charge, and may have died from sulphation.
Check battery charger incase it has suffered damage before fitting new batteries or straight away.


Brian

 

[Talbot]

recommend that you get the domestic batteries from a caravan shop (abt £50 for 110 amp/hr) and macro for engine start