Electric Advice Required

[Salty Sealine]

I have just had my first weekend on my Sealine F33 and need to be reassured about the battery set up and 240v power.

I assume there are seperate batteries for the engines and for 12v boat essential items/domestic stuff. Presumably the engines charge up the engine batteries first and then the other batteries. If I only potter along at 4 knots (River Thames) is this sufficent to charge up the batteries?

I have an inverter for the 240v appliances, ie TV. How will I know when the domestic batteries are about to go flat? I would not want the fridge to die due to lack of battery power.

On the main switch panel there is an Amp and Volt gauge, I assume these are for the engine batteries. Incidentially would anything else be connected to these batteries apart from the engines?

I am guessing that the upshot of all this is that I will need to buy a genie.....

 

[BobA]

A "genie" will certainly tell you when your batteries are going flat ------- now, for my other two wishes?

 

[Wiggo]

I can't guarantee to be accurate for the F33, but from emmory an F33 owner told me...

3 batteries, each of 85Ah capacity. One for port engine starting, the other two for domestics and starboard starting.

The meters on the panel relate to the starboard/domestic batteries.

The port engine only charges the port battery, starboard engine does the starboard/domestic batteries. The 240v battey charger has two separate outputs.

At 4 knots, you will only be charging at a very low rate (if at all) so you need to watch out for that. The fridge and inverter are both going to be fed from the starboard bank and the voltage on the big voltmeter will show their state of charge. The inverter will alomst certainly switch off when the input voltage is too low, as will the fridge. If you've knackered the starboard bank, start the port engine first (it has its own battery) and then hold the Link switch (on the main switch panel - it temproarily links both battery banks) while starting the starboard engine.

I'd also expect that the starboard batteries will be standard cranking batteries not leisure batetries, and as such will almost certainly be shot to hell anyway. In general, the battery arrangements are a bit poo, but can be put right easily enough.

 

[kashurst]

If only going at 4 knots try running on one engine on the way out and the other engine on the way back. this will increase engine revs and help with your charging. many invertors have an automatic cut out when the battery voltage gets to @ 11V. this may be a bit low for your fridge but will stop disaster. Do you have a battery link switch so you can temporarily join the p and s batteries together? If so dont worry too much if the starboard /domestic batteries go a bit low as you can always start the port engine first then link batteries and start the starboard engine.