Battery Charging

[Mrwooley]

G'Day all,

I've recently purchased two new batteries for the boat and would like some ideas on keeping them fully charged. Both are currently connected via a manual selection switch which I rotate on each outing ( if I remember ). In summer the boat gets used nearly every fortnight, so keeping the charge up is not a problem, but in winter and on other occasions when it doesn't get used for 5-6 weeks, I am concerned that by not being in a fully charged state I'm reducing their reliability and longevity. Am I being overly concerned or anal about them?

Other than continuing to remove these two 130A very heavy batteries to charge them on my big auto charger, I was thinking of fitting two auto 1600mv trickle chargers permanently in the boat. Will this work and keep these batteries at full charge, and would it be safe. I am a little concerned about leaving two chargers working close to an underfloor fuel tank? ( anal again? )

If this is the way to go, could I permanently connect each charger directly to each battery without causing damage to the chargers when using the boat, or would I need to connect them when required? Is there a better method?

All advice gladly received.

Regards,

Barry.

[squizzytaylor]

Barry, after having battery dramas recently myself I am lead to believe that trickle chargers are a generally bad idea as they will not stop the charge to the battery and can result in deposits of lead sulphate stuffing up the battery. A charger with a "float" charge will regulate the charge and only supply enough charge to keep the battery in tip top condition. Deep cycle batteries should never be let run down and left in a discharged state and a multi stage switch mode charger (minn-kota, c-tek etc) are ideal for this purpose, but yet again be carefull in your choice of chargers for gel cell batteries.

Geoff

[Chris 55]

I was told not to use a wet cell battery charger on a gel type battery

as they need a different charge rate and charge style as per Sqizzy's post

Chris

[strewth]

Get a purpose-built onboard charger - Guest and MinnKota are two that are available in Oz. These come in models with one, tow or even three banks that can charge multiple batteries at the same time. Just plug into 240V mains and leave on all the time, as they are smart chargers that reduce the amps to alomst zero once the battery is fully charged. I have a Guest model 2620-230 on a Hornet 445 which has two banks and a max of 10amps per bank. Will charge both wet cells and gels. I have one bank connected to my 100AH trolling motor battery and the other connected to my cranking battery. I get about 5 years of heavy use out of my batteries with this setup and never have to worry about flat betteries. Heard that the MK charger only does wet cells, but have not verified this.

Hard to know why these things aren't standard on all serious fishing boats.

Cheers

Strewth