low battery warning after 3-5 hours?

[mraz72]

SO I had the boat in the driveway today with the stereo on, I was streaming from my phone. After about 3 hours of so I started to hear a low beep, it was a low voltage alarm. According to connext the batteries were around 9.5 v each

I am pretty sure these were close to fully charged, I had them trickle charging all winter. They have been in the boat for a week probably with the bildge on, so maybe without charging that is to be expected?

I had both battery switches turned on

 

[Matt Phillips]

The bike pump cycles every 3-4 minutes looking for water. That's 450-500 times each 24 hours period. It won't take long to kill a battery. I use a group 31 battery for my house and a solar charger when not in use

 

[sysinu]

Sounds like you have something else chewing at your power or one of the two is a bad battery. Did each battery have its own trickle or did you throw them in parallel and trickle them both? If they were in parallel then my money is on one of the two batteries being bad.

 

[Julian]

The stock back pressure bilge will drain a battery in 2-3 weeks. Was the boat under cover? I ask because you have an E-Series boat with solar panels, those should replenish any loss from the bilge pump running. Were you cranking the stereo loudly while in the driveway? I ended up putting in an additional battery switch between the amps and the batteries (they are connected directly to the batteries) as my stereo was drawing power for some reason. With the additional switch, that stopped that.

 

[Bill D]

All solid state devices will have some leakage current. It's a function of their construction. Granted, it's a very small amount, but it's constant so it'll add up.

Everything digital (i.e. not a mechanical switch) should be able to be isolated from the battery to avoid battery drain.

 

[mraz72]

I had the stereo thumping for 3 hours straight. It was sunny out and the boat was uncovered. It may be that the batteries were partially drained before the start of the day, I didn 't check. I was just surprised that the drained that quickly, I thought the solar panels would have kept them going longer.

Do you think the extra switch is needed on all 242 x boats? Maybe the amps drain on all of our boats? How did you determine that was an issue?

 

[mraz72]

After overnight trickle charging the voltage reads 12.5 on both today. I'm just concerned that while at anchor, I may want the stereo on for 3 hours fairly loud, I wouldn't want a situation where I couldn't start the boat. I guess the beeping kicks in enough to annoy you to turn off the music.

Quick question about the voltage reading in connext, fully charged appears to read around 12.5 and the alarm goes off around ~9.8, what voltage is the minimal to start the motors? I know it's a rough guess, but is it 0v or is it more like 8v.