290 Batteries
Eric, We got rid of the Group 24 battery that was suppplied and got three Group 27 AGM's. We put one back where it was under the Starboard seat and made it the starter battery. We put the other two under the port seat ahead of the refrigeration unit. They are installed long side parrellel with the fron of the seat and we did build a battery box to hold them. We routed each of the house batteries to a new battery switch mounted in the front panel of that seat near the sink cabinet. We ran the common back to the original battery switch #2 position. We are able to isolate each battery if we desire. We then seperated the legs of the battery charger and added the third leg so that one leg runs to Battery switch post #1 (starter battery), and leg 2 runs to house battery switch leg #1 and leg 3 runs to house battery switch #2. In this situation all batteries get recharged off the charger no matter what the switch position is. Remember that these wires need to be fused within 7" of their connection to the battery switch terminals. On out boat, Hunter fused them on the charger side....while we think that leaving the charger side fuse does not hurt anything, it seems backwards to us and incorrect that they did not fuse close to the battery connection. You do have to remember to turn on all batteries if you want to recharge them all off the alternator. We completed the installtion by installing a Heart Link 20 to monitor everything. It can monitor two banks and we use the two Group 27's on the port side as a house bank and do not general seperate them for normal use. I just wanted to be able to do that in case one of them developed a problem. The link 20 works great by the way. The other thing to be aware of is that if you install additional batteries on the starboard side you will probably develop a pretty good list to that side. The dealer originally installed all the batteries in that same side. Makes for shorter runs but we were sitting at the dock with a 3-5 degree list. We did all the corrective work ourselves. Although I think anyone with reasonbly skills can do this job, it will take a few days effort. It took a full day to build the battery box (a combination of plywood and fiberglassing skills). It took another day to remove the starter battery, route wires, and install the Heart Interface. We are not sure how anyone can get anymore capacity in a Hunter 290 without using golf cart batteries. We have 184 amp hours on the house side, and another 92 amp hours on the starter. We recently put it to the test at anchor overnight. We ran lights, anchor light all night, refrigerator all night, gps chart plotter anchor alarm and radar in periodic sweep mode (all night) and we used up about 60 amp hours in 11 hours (we were not trying to conserve so that we could put a good test on the system). That is right in the usage zone you want to shoot for before recharging. We think we can now anchor out at will, for multiple days without having to run the engine more than about 1.5 hours per day. We need that much to heat water and perhaps to find a different anchorage. Let us know what you decide to do. Dan Jonas (S/V Feije)
