Charging dinghy pump battery

Rogershaw said:
Can you just use your dinghy inflator directly from your boat battery bank when reqired.
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Or from your car cigar lighter

I have a powerful pump that cap take 20 amps (at 12V) but blows a 3 meter dinghy up very quickley If you extend the cables make sure you have decent cable size if leading it all the way to the bows to blow up.
 
I used to have very long cables on it but had to remove the companionway steps to access the battery, also with the dinghy on the pontoon its amazing how far a way the inside of a boat is, particularly when rafted out.
 
Either put your gel battery onto your solar reg in place of your boat battery or parallel it to your boat battery.
You say you have to remove the companionway steps to access the boat battery to connect your inflator, do you not have a cigarette lighter socket installed? If not, I would fit a combined lighter socket and usb charge point. I would have thought that it's almost a must have facility these days. The usb sockets even come with a battery voltage display.
 
I have a small 12v Solar panel trickle job that charges the 7AH SLA in my speedboat ... it powers my auto bilge pump and lights.

I have two others for model starter / flight box use ... they get charged by my Programmable Charger that does all types of batterys.

Its not a good idea to charge an SLA same as your Wet Cell batterys ... the charge rate can be too high and in the case of one I did it with ... the case swelled as it charged ...

You can buy DC 12v adaptors to plug in regulate the charge to an SLA and then you are sure plugging in to boat or car is fine.
 
wiggy said:
I used to have very long cables on it but had to remove the companionway steps to access the battery, also with the dinghy on the pontoon its amazing how far a way the inside of a boat is, particularly when rafted out.
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Like Chris said fit a cig socket ome where convenient like inside your cockpit lockers

You could use a water hose to extend the output from the inflator to your dinghy. It could be the same hose you use to fill your water tanks of wash down your deck with suitable adaptor .
 
Rogershaw said:
Like Chris said fit a cig socket ome where convenient like inside your cockpit lockers

You could use a water hose to extend the output from the inflator to your dinghy. It could be the same hose you use to fill your water tanks of wash down your deck with suitable adaptor .
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I converted my battery inflator to a wandering lead 12v ciggy socket job. Best thing I did ... the battery it had was only good for half inflation before it died ....

To be honest there are so many battery powered tools that can be saved by doing that ...

I have my doubts about extending the hose ... they already are operating at their limit when close coupled !
 
Refueler said:
I converted my battery inflator to a wandering lead 12v ciggy socket job. Best thing I did ... the battery it had was only good for half inflation before it died ....

To be honest there are so many battery powered tools that can be saved by doing that ...
Click to expand...

I have done that to lots of mine.

I even converted one of my old battery drill to an electric outboard amd ued another to a screw jack to lift my wheelhouse / saloon steps.

Refueler said:
I have my doubts about extending the hose ... they already are operating at their limit when close coupled !
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Depends on the length and diameter of the hoze and of cause the pressure output of the inflator.
 
To charge the small SLA battery as said you risk damaging it with a rapid heavy charge that you might get if you connect it directly to the ships 12v battery. A simple resistor is series with the battery will limit current but will extend the time taken to recharge the SLA. All this depends on if the ships battery is at 14+ volts with engine running or is down around 12.5 volts after a time with no charge. So SLA charge current to be safe should be around 3/4 amp for a 12hr aprox charge time from flat.
This can be acheived with a resistror around 3 ohms. This will limit max charge current at max ships battery voltage based on the SLA at about 12v so more current into SLA at first then tapering off. At 12.5 v ships battery you will get just a small charge into the SLA so give it time. Of course these numbers are only a guess and you really need a milliamp/ amp meter to measure what is going in to SLA . That will give you an idea of actual charge rate. Obviously all this applies to charging from the car. ol'will
 
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