Disconnecting Battery terminals

[Guardamar]

I will be going away from the boat for upto 8 months, and although I have a frined who will try to connect her to the shore power to get the charger working ever so often, it will be at best once a month.

The charger uses the batteries normal negative wires, and its own specific positive wire. I realise people say take off the negative wire, but I obviously can't. So can I remove the positive wires safely (2 batteries)?

Why do they usually say remove the negative wire?

Thanks

 

[prv]

What are you trying to achieve? On any sensible system, turning off the master switch(es) will isolate anything that might consume power, so there's no need to disconnect at the battery. Only exception might be a bilge pump wired before the switch - but I assume you'll want that to work if it needs to!

Pete

 

[VicS]

Do people say take off the negative wire ?

Opening the isolator as PRV suggests should be adequate provided everything is wired through it.

Personally I would disconnect the positive battery lead just leaving the battery charger connected ... It is fused I take it ?

 

[nigelmercier]

Opening the isolator as PRV suggests should be adequate provided everything is wired through it...

+1

 

[Guardamar]

Everything is wired through the iscolator.

Thanks

 

[GrahamM376]

As already mentioned, assuming you have one you need the electric bilge pump connected so that's the only thing except for a few milliamperes to the radio, which should drain batteries if master switch is off.

Why not fit a small solar panel to keep the batteries topped up while you're away?

(I was talking about standby to car radio, not VHF)

 

[lw395]

....
Why do they usually say remove the negative wire?

Thanks

It's from cars, where you remove the negative first, so that if you touch the bodywork with the spanner, no harm is done.

 

[bigwow]

It's from cars, where you remove the negative first, so that if you touch the bodywork with the spanner, no harm is done.

Spot on you could get this

 

[fireball]

If the boat is left in the water then disconnecting the negative could mean isolating the Electrical earth with any anodes that are connected to the system ...