Adding a 115V outlet

[Crusty Ol Salt]

Crusty,
Is this your first boat? Are you day sailing? Will you be plugging into shore power on a regular basis?
If yes, nothing wrong with getting a more basic, lower cost battery charger and putting the dollars saved into other projects. The difference may be your batteries last 3-4 years instead of 5-7 years or longer. If your batteries are standard flooded lead acid and not expensive AGMs or other premium battery types, the payback of a higher quality charger may not be realized in your sailing scenario.

It's a 28' hunter. Its a day cruiser. It has 2 batteries. It will be on shore power 5 days a week and in between runs on the bay. The onboard electronics draws less the the onboard electronics and trolling motor of my bass boat. There is a 40 minute one way trip from the marina to the bay. The batteries should fully charge every time I return to the marina. Key word is should.

The only thing that could and should operate while in the slip is the bilge pump.

I am not a gambling men, but if I was I bet I could pull this off with a solar trickle charge.

Heck the last owner just carried a portable jump starter down every Saturday in case the batteries were low to start the yanmar. I am guessing he has done that for years.

That all said I just want to drop in a plug and play replacement for what was there for now. 20 amps serving 2 batteries. If it comes with a plug drop in and outlet. No plug direct wire it easy peazy.

Big picture. In my mind I would like to do a complete solar conversion. What is stopping me from the solar conversion? By my calculations, I am not sure if I have the necessary surface area to mount the solar panels that are required. I just need to spend some with a tape measure, note pad and a calculator and crunch the numbers.

As far as my first boat, no that was the USS Gato SSN-615 some 40+ years back. Then there was a destroyer, a sub tender and 2 aircraft carriers and many recreational boat including a bass boat and a jon boat currently in the driveway. I have work on everything mechanical outside the main machinery spaces including small boats. All that said, this is my first sailboat and I must say they are unique.

 

[Crusty Ol Salt]

This isn't complicated. If your battery charger comes with a plug, plug it in. Just be sure the receptacle is a GFI. If the charger is meant to be hardwired, hardwire it. FWIW, all the chargers on my boat came with plugs.

I agree

 

[Ward H]

Reading your use, I gotta agree. Go for simple install.

 

[BigEasy]

Marcus,
Agree with you also. When my xantrex 40 amp charger failed after 10 years, I replaced it with a new Xantex. Same footprint & connections; simple hard wire install. There are many who dislike Xantrex; however, it is a decent price point & works for me.

 

[shemandr]

...Heck the last owner just carried a portable jump starter down every Saturday in case the batteries were low to start the yanmar...

I'm surprised more of us don't do this. You could wire that starting battery into your house bank and forget about maintaining a separate starting battery. The house bank would be happier. You would have the starter battery available if needed and it is easy to re-charge. I have one in my car instead of jumper cables and it rarely needs recharging.

 

[Benny17441]

You can either plug it in or hardwire it, it is just that the hardwiring makes for a better connection and less maintenance for not having to periodically inspect and clean the receptacle and plug. Do not worry about having 3 output leads, if you have 2 batteries you could connect one set of leads to one battery and the other two sets to the second battery, or you could leave the 3rd set of leads off and make sure the connectors are capped. The charger will automatically distribute power as needed to the two remaining set of leads.

 

[Hello Below]

There is a 40 minute one way trip from the marina to the bay. The batteries should fully charge every time I return to the marina. Key word is should.

Probably not as FLA batteries take a long time to put back the last 15% or 10% or even 5% SOC. That would be in the order of 6 to 18 hours to fully charge your batteries back to 100% SOC no matter how large your alternator is. .

 

[Stu Jackson]

Probably not as FLA batteries take a long time to put back the last 15% or 10% or even 5% SOC. That would be in the order of 6 to 18 hours to fully charge your batteries back to 100% SOC no matter how large your alternator is. .

Hello Below is quite right.
This is from a thread I wrote about Battery Acceptance some years ago:
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We've had some discussions about battery acceptance (search on "acceptance") in the past. I thought it might be helpful to describe just what happens, step-by-step when charging after, say, a simple day sail.

The battery acceptance drops off the ability to recharge, to an incredibly low rate of charge as the bank gets fuller and nearest to full. Many times, now based on my Link 2000 experiences, it takes almost overnight to fully recharge a bank.

What goes OUT of your house bank becomes easy to learn from the Energy Budget previously discussed and posted. It's what goes back IN that most people are missing, and relates to the state of charge of your house bank in a very direct manner.

What I've seen, for example is this, from our Link 2000:

--- Return from a day sail, bank is down 15 amp hours, plug into shore power with our 75 amp charger, batteries will only ACCEPT 15 amps (360 AH house bank, they're pretty fully charged if only 15 ah down)

--- Most people will then assume that it will take an hour to replace the 15 amp hours at 15 amps of charge

--- NOT!

--- As the batteries absorb that 15 amp charge, they get fuller

--- The charge RATE goes down to 10 amps after 15 or 20 minutes and the bank is now down to 10 amp hours down

--- Now, it should only take another hour to charge those minus 10 amp hours at 10 amps -- wrong assumption again; we're now up to an hour and twenty minutes to fully charge, right?

--- NOT again, because this keeps recurring

That's why a full charge takes a LOT longer that most people expect.

What goes OUT is easy, what goes BACK takes MUCH, MUCH longer. That last 15% to 20% takes a long time because of the REALITY of battery acceptance.

Please believe me, folks, because I see this all the time now that I have the Link 2000 installed and working.

Please note that this true with alternators as well as shorepower chargers. Battery acceptance usually "rules" the charging regimen, so even with 100A alternators or shorepower chargers in excess of 40 A, the battery acceptance will determine the amount of charge that can go back into a house bank, usually around a max of 50A for a 400 ah bank. And it "tapers off" as the bank gets fuller as noted above.

This is why people say the BEST investment for un-knowledgeable and knowledgeable skippers alike is to buy a battery monitor FIRST. Wish I did, because I'd been chronically UNDERCHARGING my house bank, even after all the spouting I do here and on other forums!

Please, believe it!

For a parallel discussion of how much comes OUT, please see the Energy Budget topic, here: Energy Budget

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For everyone installing a battery monitor: The "Gotcha Algorithm" thread, a "MUST READ"

Link-series Charging Algorithms -- The "Gotcha" Factor!

DEFAULTS are factory settings that are made to be modified to suit your setup.

 

[dlochner]

The following article is about charging AGMs not FLA batteries, but the issue is the same. The closer the battery gets to being fully charged, the less charge it can accept.

Recharging a battery from a 50% SOC to 100% will take 5 to 6 hours with a smart charger or regulator. If the alternator is internally regulated or the external regulator is incorrectly programmed, it will take much longer.

A good battery monitor is essential to getting the most life out of a battery. Not all battery monitors are the same, some are better than others.

How Fast Can an AGM Battery be Charged? - Marine How To

TEST EQUIPMENT USED IN THIS ARTICLE BUY MHT RECOMMENDED TEST EQUIPMENT - AMAZON Baseline Discharge 49.3% SOC PREFACE: This article looks at the *charging times & achieved state of charge of an AGM battery

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