Hi everyone, we haven't been here for a while, and are now owners of a Catalina 470 but when we owned our 42, this forum had such good information that I
occasionally return to read and seek advice on things of similar concern. This is one of those cases.
I'm not so good at battery maintenance. So once again due to age (5 years), the previous owners undisclosed sins which include inattention to electrolyte levels, and with considerable help from the slip neighbors diver who does bottom cleaning and disconnects my power to plug in his compressor and forgets to plug it back in - the 8d exide batteries in the house bank are toast. I was hoping to get one more season out of them because I am planning a upgrade next winter to add solar and a genset and wanted to do it all at once. Alas this is not possible.
So - I have decided that for my application (and to be completely honest due to my shared characteristics with the previous owner of inattention to electrolyte levels) on 6v AGM's in series/parallel to replace the house bank and a single 12v group 27 AGM as a starting battery in the other "bank". The charger/inverter is a xantrex link 1000 which I'll keep which echo charges the starting battery.
Question: any experience positive or negative with specific battery brands? The various sailing and battery discussion boards I have researched seem to indicate that "lifeline" batteries have more than one episode of premature failure. Aside from that the choices are staggering. Tiffany's (West M) has 6v AGM's that would fit into the current 8d location with no modification, but I figure I'd probably pay double what I could find elsewhere. On my previous boat, I converted to Trojan T-105's and had good luck, but once again they are wetted batteries and I have concluded the low maintenance and increased ah availability of AGM's is worth the $$. Now which ones?
Experiences??
I'm not so good at battery maintenance. So once again due to age (5 years), the previous owners undisclosed sins which include inattention to electrolyte levels, and with considerable help from the slip neighbors diver who does bottom cleaning and disconnects my power to plug in his compressor and forgets to plug it back in - the 8d exide batteries in the house bank are toast. I was hoping to get one more season out of them because I am planning a upgrade next winter to add solar and a genset and wanted to do it all at once. Alas this is not possible.
So - I have decided that for my application (and to be completely honest due to my shared characteristics with the previous owner of inattention to electrolyte levels) on 6v AGM's in series/parallel to replace the house bank and a single 12v group 27 AGM as a starting battery in the other "bank". The charger/inverter is a xantrex link 1000 which I'll keep which echo charges the starting battery.
Question: any experience positive or negative with specific battery brands? The various sailing and battery discussion boards I have researched seem to indicate that "lifeline" batteries have more than one episode of premature failure. Aside from that the choices are staggering. Tiffany's (West M) has 6v AGM's that would fit into the current 8d location with no modification, but I figure I'd probably pay double what I could find elsewhere. On my previous boat, I converted to Trojan T-105's and had good luck, but once again they are wetted batteries and I have concluded the low maintenance and increased ah availability of AGM's is worth the $$. Now which ones?
Experiences??
