Len,
AFAIK, there are no maintenance free deep cycle batteries because of
the need to replace water lost by normal deep discharges and recharges.
There may be some batteries labeled deep cycle, but the important
information is how many cycles they can live with. If your batteries were
the ones with removable caps, I would recommend that you run an
equalization cycle on them. I don't think that's practical in your case.
Float voltage depends on temperature of the batteries and the type of
batteries. If your batteries are cool, then I think your float voltage is
too low. I would think that it would take a temperature over 90 degrees
for that float voltage to work.
Golf Cart batteries are an inexpensive way to get a good compromise on
storage and maintenance. The temperature compensated charger should give
you some pretty good control during temperature swings. Add equalizing
charges once every month or two, and you should get some pretty good
results.
Many people have trouble when trying to run heating or cooling loads
because the power consumed is more than their systems are tuned to. Have
you converted the 120 volt amperage to the required DC amperage to verify
your loads? For example, our RV refer takes nearly 400 watts when running,
which is only 3.5 amps on AC, but it's eleven times that(38.5 amps) when
run on our 12 volt inverter.
I hope that you can make use of some of this.
Tom Caffrey
M/V Prince
On Thu, 06 May 2004 08:23:17 +0200, Len wrote:
I experience a very short battery-life and I want to know the cause
before I install anything new.
The fridge / freezer and other consumers constantly draw power
(between 4 and 11 amp)
I have a 3-stage 120 amp charger (bulk at 14,4,absorption at 13,6 and
float at 13,0)
My batteries are 18 months old. 6 x 180 Ah. They were called
"Maintenance-free". As I understand now that means you can't add
destilled water later on, don't see any advantage of that.
At present my battery-capacity is very low. As I look at it now I'm
confronted with replacing my batteries after 18 months.
Anyone familiar with such problems that (maybe) arise from using the
charger as a power supply during float-charging?
Do I bourdon my batteries by creating a lot of small
discarge/charge-cycles?
Any advice is welcomed for this (surely not unique?) liveaboard-
stuation with 220AC shore-power and use of 12-v appliances.
Thanks in advance, Len.
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