Dedicated Starting Battery

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chief14326

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Jun 4, 2004
122
- - Long Beach, NY
I am looking for an easy, failsafe way to add a dedicated starting battery to a 89 Catalina 30, with a Universal M25XP. I believe most of the house wiring is standard and I currently have the traditional Perko off/1/all/2 position switch. I also have two Group 27 AGM batteries. Currently I have at least 3 positive wires attatched to each battery on both the positive and negative posts. I know this is not a safe situation. This is how I purchased the boat over 5 years ago. I have never gotten caught with a dead battery and have the ability to charge at the dock. There, I use a Xantrex Trucharge 20 Plus. If anyone had read some ealier posts I had intended to have a new 70 Amp alternator installed this week with a Balmar External Regulator. I decided to hire a Marine Electrician to do the work who had come highly reccomended. I had explained to the guy that if he did the alternator to my satisfaction, then I would have him return and do the decicated starting battery. As it turns out he had no clue what he was doing. After he installed the new alternator and regulator he called me at work and told me it did not work, despite everything he had tried. I told him to call Balmar as they had attempted to talk me through the job earlier. He just scoffed at the idea. In the end I wound up paying an alternator shop to convert back to internal regulation and it was a 1-2-3 job to re-install. A simple job that I could have easily done. When he called me to tell me how much I owed, I was ready for a $1,000 bill as he had spent a lot of time at the boat. As it turns out he only charged me $200.00 in labor and the Alterntor Shop charged $75.00 to convert back to internal regulation. The only issue remaining is the Tach is off. What really killed me is that he had told me the Alternator Shop had told him that when the new alternator was modified for external regulation (I had asked the shop to mark the posts, as I had intended to do the work myself) the posts were incorrectly labeled. Why, I asked him did he not have the Alternator Shop just re-label the posts to the correct purposes and re-insall, I got the response "well you just said to go back to internal regulation". I am therefore finished with thie guy and his partner. I am just grateful that he realized he could not charge me for the actual amount of hours he put into the job, because he was not able to actually complete the job he had been hired to accomplish. Now, I am back to square one, but at least I have a brand new alternator. Now I want to do the dedicated starting battery, but have no professional to do the work. Where I live there are very few sailboats, and even fewer mechanics who want to even touch them. I am very good in doing wiring, in fact I do the work for most of my dockmates. Here we are talking about making simple waterproof connections. When it comes to reading schematics or using my Multimeter for anything other than reading voltages I am lost. When I pick up Nigel Calder's fine bible on Marine Electronics it is like reading greek. I also have a hard time following Stu Jackson's fine posts. In doing some research I liked the Blue Sea Systems "Dual Circuit Plus" product. It replaces the current Perko Switch and replaces it and also adds a ACR. It seems pretty simple, it only allows power to flow to the House, from the House Battery bank, and power only to the Engine from the engine Battery. In the event the engine battery fails, you can then go to Combine, and get power from both banks to get an engine started. No more having to switch to 1 or 2 after the engine is shut down. Has anyone used this system? Is it as good as it sounds? More important can a novice install it on their own without being able to read complicated schematics. Also, should I use Bus Bars to route all of the positive and negative wires to a common termination point and get them off of the battery posts? If anyone has pictures (not schematics) of their set-ups I would like to take a look. I can be reached at jaffew@welchallyn.com. It is obvious I am on my own here. Sorry for the long explanation.
 
Tom J

Tom J

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Sep 30, 2008
2,325
Catalina 310 Quincy, MA
I installed the Dual Circuit and ACR system in my Catalina 310, and it works great. The actual layout of the circuit is not complicated, but you must follow the schematic to get the sensing circuit for the ACR right. My starting battery is always fully charged, and I don't touch the battery switch, except to turn it off at the dock.
Yes, the only wires you want on the batteries are the heavy charging/starting cables. Everything else should be routed to a fuse/circuit breaker panel and the negative bus bar.
 
Don Guillette

Don Guillette

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May 17, 2004
2,110
Other Catalina 30 Tucson, AZ
I had a 3 batt bank individual stand alone system that was designed by C30 sailor ( i think he has a C42 now) from RI. Listers from the old C30 list many years ago on sailnet would remember him - Norm Bernstein. This sytem was really slick. I had a stand alone start batt and 2 stand alone house batts. I was never out of house juice or had to worry about a start batt. The way it worked was I would obviously start the boat with the start batt and after the engine put back the starting charge I'd switched to the house batts either on ALL or one at a time. At anchor I never touched the start batt. I used #1 house on odd days and #2 on even. In a worse case, I could start the boat with all 3.

If you pop on over to the C30 National web site I think someone there could provide you with Norm's wiring diagram. Look it over. I think you'd like it. Regardless of your boat size the stand alone system beats the parrallel setup - in my opinion.
 
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