Zaffiro 34 Battery Switch Information please

[Sunway]

Hi All
Still in my first season with the Cranchi Zaffiro 34 & gradually finding my way around her. Unfortunately every bit of tech information I have is in Italian.

The battery isolator switch has several positions: Both on, both off, left on, right on. I guess this refers to the battery banks on either side. My question is if I put the switch to just one side on and use the 12v domestic stuff on the boat & flatten those batteries, will I still have enough power on the other side to start engines?

I haven't ventured into the engine bay yet, so I'm not sure if the generator has its own battery or uses the main batteries.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[BB1]

Where ever the battery switch is, that battery will only drain or be charged, it will be connected to domestics and engine.
So normally when the engine is running have it on both, evening tine use batt 1 or 2, it you want to charge 1 battery quickly select that number.
Never put it to off with engine running.

If you discharge batt 1 overnight select batt 2 to start the engine in the morning.

 

[ChromeDome]

deepl.com for better translations. Can upload pfd documents for a full trans also.

 

[PaulRainbow]

Switching to both for normal use is a very bad idea. A single battery failure could wipe out all of the batteries. Forgetting to change back to 1 or 2 could flatten all of the batteries.

Perhaps the charging charges all batteries without setting it to both ?

Without knowing what the switch actually does and what the charging actually does, it's not possible to reliably answer the question.

Even with a schematic from when the boat was built it's not reliable, who knows what has been changed since the boat was built.

 

[ChromeDome]

Do a search on this forum for "Zaffiro" to find previous posts. Quite a few of them.

 

[alt]

It's a very simple set-up which works well, provided the captain remembers!

I have same as you: OFF - 1 - BOTH - 2

I use 1 for starter - 1 x 130Ah battery
I use for for domestice - 2 x 120Ah battery

If I am going to be gone overnight with no shorepower, change over to '2' for domestics. If these do run down, just switch over to '1' for starting and then back to 'both'.

However, i'm cautious about my battery usage. Sometimes I even forget to switch to '1' when starting the next morning and never had an issue. Likewise, sometimes I stay on 'both' when at anchor (I have a generator) but never been a problem.

 

[Sunway]

Brilliant, thanks for all your replies. I am now sure what to do.

Just one other question for now, does the inbuilt generator have its own battery?