Electrical problems

tyanna

.
Oct 18, 2017
1
Hunter 33.5' Blank
Hi I have a 1989 33.5 hunter sailboat. The other day I was changing one of three batteries on board. I have one battery that is only for the use of starting the engine. The other two are used for running the electrical system on the boat. The engine battery is on the #1 setting on the battery switch and the other two are on the # 2 setting. After installing the new battery for the use of the electrical on the boat. I get no power to the panel when it is set on #2. Nothing on board works. If I switch it to #1 on the battery setting everything works on board. But using the battery that starts the engine will wear that battery down to a point that I may not be able to start the engine. I also have a control unit that regulates the power to the batteries from the solar panels on board. Not sure if that maybe stopping the power from getting from the batteries to the panel. Not sure if there is some kind of reset button or main fuse on board that I need to check to get it to work ? If someone can help me out that would be great. Thx Don





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Jan 7, 2011
4,727
Oday 322 East Chicago, IN
Got to be something with the wires.

Check the ground wire. How are the 2 house batts connected to the ground?

On mine, the 2 house batts share 1 ground, and the 2 batts have to have a jumper ground between the 2.

If the only thing you did is pull the old batts and out new ones in their place, has to be something with how you hooked them up.

Or maybe your batt switch went bad, but unlikely.

Greg
 
Jun 11, 2011
1,243
Hunter 41 Lewes
Don, I am assuming it worked before you changed the battery which I am also assuming was one of the two that feed the boat panel. If that is true it would mean that you wired something incorrectly. Can you give any further information or pictures?
 
Dec 25, 2000
5,704
Hunter Passage 42 Shelter Bay, WA
If someone can help me out that would be great.
Hi Don, not much help here. Without knowing more about how your system is set up, difficult to chime in.

Our boat has a starter bank (one group 24) and a house bank (two 8D AGMs). The main battery switch has always been kept on, "Both". Never has been an issue since taking ownership in 2002, except when one of the batteries reached their end of life. Whether that has created the problem in your situation, hard to say.

Maybe some other H33.5 owner can lend more experience or insight.
 
Aug 22, 2017
1,609
Hunter 26.5 West Palm Beach
You put a new battery in the house bank & now the house bank puts out nothing. Perhaps you got a bad battery. Perhaps you got a dry battery that needs to be filled with acid. Perhaps you have a bad connection at the battery. Perhaps there is a fuse or breaker blown, as you suspect. If the new battery was wired backwards, that certainly would blow a fuse or breaker.

I would start with a volt meter at the new battery & then follow the cables, checking voltage before & after every termination that I can get access to.
 
Oct 24, 2010
2,405
Hunter 30 Everett, WA
Start with a multimeter set to DC volts. Start at the batteries and verify there is voltage. Next move to the switch. Eventually, you will find missing voltage or a missing ground. (Remember that a ground is also just another conductor.) This isn't difficult.

If you don't have a multimeter on the boat, you should have. I've even seen them on free coupons from Harbor Freight tools.

Ken
 
Feb 6, 1998
11,667
Canadian Sailcraft 36T Casco Bay, ME
The most common cause of this is forgetting a negative or positive parallel, series or ships negative bus connection. All battery negatives, start and house bank, are common to the ships negative distribution bus.. Only the positives are isolated/separated by the switching & system wiring....
 
Feb 14, 2014
7,400
Hunter 430 Waveland, MS
What is the type/model of "on board" battery charger you have?

I had same problem and forgot to push the "charge" button "ON" to make it alive and using the "house bank".
If your on board charger is like mine, engine start is isolated from house bank. They use different charging systems.
Jim...