Any tricks to find the short?

[JuiceClark]

I did so much stuff in the ER over the past week, I must've bumped something. Well, now the port battery bank is being drained significantly overnight. Just last night, the port bank, which is the House and port engine, was at 32.0 when I shut everything down for the night. This morning, it was already down to 29.7 with nothing running. Not even a light on - and that's 8 8v batteries!

I was cleaning and painting back in that corner and might have disturbed a cable for the battery bank while crawling over the boxes? Hardly anything is even live...the heads and bilge pumps and lights which are only on if switched used for a moment. Most breakers are off.

I need to get this figured out tomorrow. So, I'll turn off the House rotary switch ... and then what? Start checking everything with the multi-meter from the battery bank outward??

There's gotta be a neato trick to save a bunch of hours, right??

[Salty lady]

It’s not really a short it’s a draw on the battery’s. A down and dirty way is on the battery that has the draw you loosen the positive clamp and remove it . If you have a large draw there should be a pretty good arc when you remove it. Then shut off the battery master switch and touch the cable to the battery. You should not get a arc a all. If you do I would be looking at the bilge pump circuits. If no draw shutoff every 32DC circuit breaker you can find and test again. If no draw it’s a long process by turning each breaker on one at a time and check the draw. Good luck

[Captain Ralph]

Also check CO and smoke detectors, indicator lights, DC to DC converters, ships monitor and enough of them on; Nav Lights.

[JuiceClark]

It’s not really a short it’s a draw on the battery’s. A down and dirty way is on the battery that has the draw you loosen the positive clamp and remove it . If you have a large draw there should be a pretty good arc when you remove it. Then shut off the battery master switch and touch the cable to the battery. You should not get a arc a all. If you do I would be looking at the bilge pump circuits. If no draw shutoff every 32DC circuit breaker you can find and test again. If no draw it’s a long process by turning each breaker on one at a time and check the draw. Good luck

That sounds like a great plan...will do just that tomorrow.

The high water alarm circuit is one of the last things I haven't gotten to before the big survey. If anything is grounding the system down, it could be that last rat's nest. I turned off the House tonight after reading your post. If it's been drained again in the morning, that bilge circuit will be the very likely culprit.

[JuiceClark]

Also check CO and smoke detectors, indicator lights, DC to DC converters, ships monitor and enough of them on; Nav Lights.

There's so much...if it's not the 1st few guesses made. And the boat was just in a yard for a month. The ER saw a lot of visitors with de-coupling the shafts and adding dripless seals and all sorts of things.

I need to call Sams on Tuesday and ask for a new Systems Monitor panel. It's a mess and a PO put 5200 on the panel - so, I can't get it off! I put it off because it's going to be a PITA.

[Bob Bradley]

It's not a coincidence that PO also stands for Pissed Off. I'm still suffering with the expanding foam that some PO blew into the top of the wire chase up on the bridge. Ughh.

[Eddieclemons]

I can't imagine tracking this down without a DC amps clamp. A must have to see what's really flowing down those wire. Keep us updated.

[cww]

My boat is equipped with a DC amp draw gauge so this is easy, turn everything in the boat off at the lamp, etc. Then just turn off the circuit breakers one by one while watching the gauge and the one that drops the gauge is the circuit that has the draw on it. That will immediately narrow it down to just a few things, this is why that gauge is there. If you don’t have the gauge take the dc panel off the wall and take your multimeter to the wires feeding the panel with the charger off and do the same process.

[Captain Ralph]

Also, could you have a bad battery cell?

[Briankinley2004]

Also, could you have a bad battery cell?

That was my initial thought. I got a "new" battery from NAPA that had actually been on the shelf over 2 years, I later found out. It had low voltage but I installed it thinking the charger would bring it up. Went out there a day or two later and it was so hot I couldn't touch it. The water was literally boiling but only in that battery. The bad cell tricked the charger into thinking the voltage is low thus inducing more charge. I would check all the cells with a hydrometer before concluding there is a current drain.