3rd battery addition on 2017 242 Limited SE

[TSX1017]

Just recently finished up our stereo build on our 17 242 SE. We have the normal 2 battery set up with Deka batteries. We are wanting to add a third battery to add some more play time to our set up. We are running 3 amps total (1000 watt power series Rockford Fostage, 400 watt power series RF, and a 400 watt RF power series). We are also running RGB through all of our speakers. We were wondering how to add a third battery, and still get the benefits of our solar panels. Also what brand is recommended, and can we keep our batteries that we have now since they are somewhat new.

 

[Maxdog21]

I replaced my house battery with 2 matched batteries. There was space right beside the existing house battery so I put a tray there and tied the batteries in parallel. Been running for 2+ seasons and it's great. I do put a NOCO charger/maintainer on them and disconnect them from each other in off months.

I've only been able to measure 20-25 Watt coming from the solar panel. At 25W you will only get about 1.375 Amp-hours of charge per day on an good sunny day. There are a lot of variables when it comes to solar charging but I have over 200 amp-hours house and with 160 of that useable if we were to drain it completely it would theoretically take at least 17 weeks for the solar to catch up. I think the solar is more as a maintainer. I put a charger on the house when not in use. We have a lot of float time and since we added the second battery never have any issues. The big issue we had at first with battery drain was the bilge but once I figured out how to properly seat the cheap drain plug situation that stopped and it never runs.