I have 5 batteries on the house bank because the boat had an inverter/charger a couple years ago. They went from 3 to 5 batteries at this time. This past spring I had to replace all 5 batteries because one went bad and the charger "cooked" the 4 good ones trying to charge up a batterie that was not going to charge.
My question is why not purchase one or two larger batteries to do the same work but reduce the number of batteries so if one fails the others will not over charge and be ruined? Has anyone done this and if so what did they select to replace the large number of batteries on the house side?
I have a 2000 Tiara with a Charles charger and 2 banks of batteries, 3 batts on house, 2 on engine start. I don't understand how 1 battery fried all the other batteries especially the ones on another bank as this bank would have nothing to do with the other bank. They are separate. Were your batteries gel, AGM or wet cell. IF wet cell, did they all have water and have you done maintenance on them as this would make sense. One battery burns up due to lack of water and others may have as well. Love my AGM batteries for the simple reason of no maintenance, no water etc. Charles chargers and regulators have many settings and can be customized so shut off due to heat for example. On replacing it with one big battery, that would be one very large battery and I would not think access to install or remove would be available plus one big battery would weight a ton.
Before you go to ONE big battery, go to a battery store and try to lift an 8D. You really just want ampere-hours. The sailboat crowd uses 6 volt golf cart batteries in series / parallel. Capt. George
The 5 are on the house bank side and there are two more to crank the engines when starting. One on the house side failed and the other 4 that were still good were "cooked" and so had to be replaced with the one failed battery. With going to a single battery I would hope to avoid the same problem in the future. Now that all 5 house batteries are the same age I would hope to get several good years from them. When they do fail I'm thinking about one large battery to do the work of the 5. Know it will be heavy and large but do not want to waste money again. Thanks for the input!
If you place 5 temp sensors, one on each battery, then the battery charger sense excessive heat it will shut down the charger. I don't think your looking at this quite correctly though. You lost a cell probably due to lack of water which then the charger tired to overcharge. Well, if you don't fill one cell on the ONE battery guess what, the charger will still try to overcharge the battery and this time if you have a problem with one battery you only have one so it will have to be replaced. At least with 5 batteries if you catch it in time you can just take it out of the loop and you are good to go.
I wired 3 total banks: port engine, starboard engine and house. Engine batts are 1000's, but my house is (4) 6v golf car batts by Interstate, hooked in series/parrallel. I get more power and far more recharge cycles than the same space worth of 8d's. I run a 2500/5000 inverter which will power the a/c unit for almost 5 hours. That's enough for the few times I'm at anchor and have to actually run the a/c. I charge them through a Guest 10/10/10 auto charger, and a 2 alternator x 3 bank isolator.(I wired in the isolator since I do a lot of 1 engine trolling) Three seasons so far, no probs!
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