Mischief Managed
Guru
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2018
- Messages
- 707
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Mischief Managed II
- Vessel Make
- 1992 Tollycraft 44 CPMY
My boat has 8 batteries in 4 banks. I have a 3000 watt inverter/150 amp charger for the house bank, and a 3 bank 50 amp charger for the main starting, genset starting and Mathers throttle/shifters batteries. The boat has a diode-based 4 bank battery isolator between the batteries and the alternators. The boat also has combiner switches to connect any of the other three batteries to the house bank if needed.
I plan to replace the two OEM 51 amp alternators on my engine with two 90 amp Leece Nevilles and add a Balmar MC-614 external regulator. I was going to replace the diode-based isolator and combiner switches with ACRs, but a post on here got me thinking that I would be better off keeping the switches, dumping the isolator, using the alternators to charge only the house bank, and charging the other three banks with the AC powered 3 bank charger I have now. The charger would have to be powered by the inverter, but I have it running whenever we are off shore power anyway.
Seems like a pretty simple solution and would make the best use of all the hardware I already have. Any reason not to do this? I can always manually combine the batteries if I have a charger failure.
I plan to replace the two OEM 51 amp alternators on my engine with two 90 amp Leece Nevilles and add a Balmar MC-614 external regulator. I was going to replace the diode-based isolator and combiner switches with ACRs, but a post on here got me thinking that I would be better off keeping the switches, dumping the isolator, using the alternators to charge only the house bank, and charging the other three banks with the AC powered 3 bank charger I have now. The charger would have to be powered by the inverter, but I have it running whenever we are off shore power anyway.
Seems like a pretty simple solution and would make the best use of all the hardware I already have. Any reason not to do this? I can always manually combine the batteries if I have a charger failure.