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Old 12-10-2008, 03:18 AM   #2
Jim Spence
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City: Full time cruiser
Vessel Name: Sea Eagle
Vessel Model: Californian 50' Cockpit M/V
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 180
RE: Shore Power Charging - turn it OFF?

I can give you my experience, I bought Sea Eagle in June 2002 and moved aboard in Dec 2002. I replaced 4 of the 5 8D batteries aboard in the first 3 months. At that time the batteries were charged with a Xantrax 2500 using a Heart 2000 interface. After about 3 years I had an AC power surge at the dock that took out the Xantrax and replaced it with a 3000 watt xantrax inverter/charger. In February of this year I replaced all 5 batteries. None had a problem that I know of. I was planing on full time cruising and did not want to start with batteries that were over 5 year old. In all that time all I did was top off the water every other month and equalized the batteries every 6 months.

Living aboard and now full time cruising gives the batteries a lot of use. Most of my lighting both heads, Lectra scan systems, Nav equipment, radios etc are all 12V. When the engines are running the inverter is running the Refer and Ice Maker. I changed my maintenance schedule to monthly now that I'm cruising.

During all this time my charger has run 24/7 with maybe an hours maintenace a month on the batteries. I also equalize the batteries about every 6 months.
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