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Old 04-15-2019, 04:11 PM   #3
boater3
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City: Z
Vessel Model: tbd
Join Date: Mar 2017
Posts: 1,027
Quote:
Originally Posted by YellowPiper View Post
I have a question. New to power boating (ownership)

Boat we purchased is a small 31 foot pocket trawler the we intend to spend most weekends, lots of weeks and upto 28 day on her at a time. We like being on the hook.

She has a good size house bank, a 3.5kw gen set, and a xantrex true charger when plugged in.
She does not have an inverter.

We are sailors so come from the world of no genset but rather charge our batteries with the engine (our gen) and the run off of the inverter to get our 120 volts we seem to need for the small chargers, coffee maker or toaster oven.

Do most boaters with a generator have an inverter for the low current items rather than firing up the gen.
If so how does it hook into the system.

Thanks in advance for you input
Colin
Toronto ON
what is a "good size" house bank? what type of batts? some batteries you will not want to go below 60% SoC so more than half the battery capacity is unusable

we have a couple dozen batteries on-board. our house bank is 880 ah. inverters are not efficient and power hungry. we get down to 60% SoC in about three days with normal usage and only 1 of 3 fridges running. i prefer not running genset and we only use it for hot water or to charge the house bank or for hvac on very hot days. our cooking appliances are propane. i wish the inverter was 3k watt instead of 2k. we hit the max on it quite often especially when trying to use a small appliance.
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