Dedicated Electronics battery

[Captned]

Does anyone have a dedicated battery at the helm for your electronics? I am thinking of installing one with a small charger for two reasons. One - safety in case my lower batterys get covered in water, I can still work the VHF and two - I get a lot of interference in my stereo, on the fishfinder screen, etc...

Does anyone have this setup and is it worth doing? what size battery? I was thinking of leaving the radar hooked up the original way, but running the Depth/fish finder / gps / vhf / stereo off of the new battery and installing a 4 postion Guest switch so I could run everything the old way if I had too...

Thanks in advance..

Captned

 

[Angela]

I have that set up. I'll have to go up to the flybridge and look under it to see what the battery and charger is. I do know it's a sealed battery - learned the first time I went around the boat trying to top off the batteries. There is one battery up there that runs that stuff, and it has its own charger. It was like this when I bought the boat. Perhaps Ed can further comment on the pros and cons, though we've really had no discussions about it and no problems with it.

I suspect it may have been installed when the boat was certified for charter - it's definately "newer" - and like you said it would keep the radio working in the event of a flooding of the genny room where the house batteries are. For that reason, I suspect it was a required upgrade during the certification process. Ned, you're close enough that if you want to come over and take a look at it, stop by.

 

[thoward]

We have an 8D that runs the electronics. It also starts one of the generators. It is in the engine room away from the 32V system.

 

[doc g]

Ditto mine also ,8D w/seperate charger for the electronics . It was done for a good source of 12V not for safety reasons.......Pat

 

[Captned]

Thanks, Ang! I will try to stop by. Right now my electronics are run off of my house bank, 10 golf cart batteries (located in the bilge). I would hope I don't need to put a 8D under my helm!

Captned
46 78 CONV.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

When I was boat shopping, I looked at a 1986 53MY that had an 8D stuck under the bridge helm. I thought this was crazy. Why would anyone need an 8D to just run electronics. It's heavy and you don't need the extra weight up there, especially on a MY. I assumed that they did this because the old wiring for the 32v circuit to the bridge was to small to handle the new 12v system that they added when they put in the new genny. This was one of many things that I didn't like about this boat, but that is another story.

I don't really see a need to put a battery up there, but if you do, I don't think you would need anything more than a small deep cycle and charger.

 

[Angela]

It's a small battery up there. Certainly not an 8D!

 

[flydixie1415]

We have a 56 and we also added a 12 volt system to our upper bridge. When we bought it there were not any systems on the bridge and we didn't want to run wires all the way up from the engine room.

We put a marine deep cycle battery with its own battery charge and to date have not had any trouble at all.

Unfortunately our boat was in the Med. as a charter and It has a 24 volt system as well as a 32 volt system. The windlass was wired to the 32 volt system but was only a 24 volt system. The generator is a 24 volt system so we ran the windlass back to the generator batteries since the genny would always be running before we pulled anchor anyway.

 

[luckydave215]

My 12V bank is two 8D's located in the engine room, about three feet above the lowest bilge.
They power all the bridge electronics and start both generators, and have their own smart charger. There is another group 27 12V agm battery mounted high in the engine room dedicated to the Morse controls, it has it's own smart charger and can be parallelled/switched with the 8D bank if needed.
One of these days I'm going to make it possible to tie the 12V finverter battery bank into this system as well, more redundancy is better when you're far from port (on the west coast, ports can be pretty far from each other)

 

[thoward]

It depends on how much you are running. We have 2 8" spotlights, radar(crt), gps/chartplotter, bridge sounder, video sounder(crt), tower sounder, 2 vhfs, radio, Sat. phone, electric reels, intercom, and a couple of other little things. There are times when most of this stuff is in use so add in the long runs up the tower and an 8D is needed in some cases....

 

[luckydave215]

an 8D is needed in some cases....

Exactly. At times I might have one of two autopilots, two radars, three vhf's, single sideband, color sounder, sounders (2), knot logs (3), sea temp, fluxgate, stereo with big amps, bridge fridge, and hailer all running at the same time, while I'm starting one of the generators. I never have any low voltage issues.

 

[MicroKap]

I have an 8D under the rear-facing bench on the "back porch" of the flybridge. It has a dedicated battery charger. The sole use for this battery is the electronics. Each generator has it's own 12V battery right next to it in the engine room.

 

[luckydave215]

It sounds like about all of us with 60C's have dedicated electronics batteries. I wonder how Ross McDonald's boat is setup? I've been on the boat, crawled through every inch, but I don't remember.

 

[egaito]

Both Misty and Sanctuary have a battery under the flybridge. In Misty's case, it was definately a safety feature. The battery has it's own charger, and is hooked up to breaker panel with a Perko so that the panel is able to draw from either the house bank, or an engine bank, or the one in the flybridge. Overkill redundancy, but I like it.

Sanctuary's may have been installed as part of the "inspected vessel" routine, or out of convenience. It's hard to tell. There's some 12v stuff up there, but there was also a converter under the helm, so convenience wasn't the only reason.

I like having a battery up there, as I want to be able to yell for help as long as I can if something goes wrong.

 

[Akyla]

Having owned inspected vessels and served on many more I don't believe the separate battery for electronics has anything to do with the status of the vessel as an inspected or un-inspected SPV. But given the independent nature of the various Coast Guard marine safety offices that inspect SPVs it is remotely possible that the owners were told to wire up a special battery for this purpose, however it is not in the CFR governing these boats.

 

[Trojan]

That is the easiest way to get 12 volts on the bridge when your main DC system is 32 volts DC. An 8 D is a big over kill. 8Ds are high amp high load draw batteries. You need a low load long lasting battery like a gel cell or a deep cycle. Not a high current starting battery like the 8 D.


BILL

 

[egaito]

That is the easiest way to get 12 volts on the bridge when your main DC system is 32 volts DC. An 8 D is a big over kill. 8Ds are high amp high load draw batteries. You need a low load long lasting battery like a gel cell or a deep cycle. Not a high current starting battery like the 8 D.


BILL

8D's are available as deep-cycle as well. I use one for my house bank, though I can't imagine hauling one up to the fly bridge.

I could see leaving on a good collection of electronics in some situations, including GPS for the anchor slip alarm, depth sounder for low-water alarm, and radar for proximity monitoring. Then there's the stereo, and possibly a spreader light or two. Would a group 24 or 27 be enough to run all of this?

 

[thoward]

Many times this stuff is on the entire time you are fishing. Swordfishing is done at night while drifting in the gulf stream. You may have all your electronics on for 10 or more hours. While that is not a big deal when you have a charger and a generator running, it does become a big deal if the charger fails. You now need enough battery to power the electronics the 40-50 miles back home(in some cases even further). There is not any group 27 or 31 battery that is going to run the radar, sounders, vhfs, ssb, gps, chartplotter and lights for an extended period of time!

 

[Trojan]

We have been through this many times. The 8D is a high amperage output, with a short cycle time. It was designed for starting large load engines. I may be wrong but I have never herd of a deep cycle 8D. If there is it called something else. There are much better batteries for this application. Like golf cart batteries for one. There is not a very long life cycle for power from an 8D. 4 or 6 smaller deep cycle batteries would work and last a lot longer.

BILL

 

[thoward]

We have been through this many times. The 8D is a high amperage output, with a short cycle time. It was designed for starting large load engines. I may be wrong but I have never herd of a deep cycle 8D. If there is it called something else. There are much better batteries for this application. Like golf cart batteries for one. There is not a very long life cycle for power from an 8D. 4 or 6 smaller deep cycle batteries would work and last a lot longer.

BILL

http://www.semarine.com/store/product.php?productid=42&cat=103&page=1
Here is the one from Rolls. Trojan and others make them too. It all comes down to amps X hours and a couple golf cart batteries are not going to do better than these 8Ds....