Trojan Boat Forum

Where we dock is a small private marina. No shore power. Just bought an F-25 by the way and its pretty nice. I was thinking about having a second bank of deep cycles to run a radio and tv and maybe a fridge. I just bought one of the Marine Maxx 29's from walmart. Will buy another one for sure. So i'll have about 250 Ah's to play with. I was going to buy an inverter as well. Heres the question. Could I run a cord from the inverter output to the breaker box in the boat so that way i have about 5 or 6 live outlets through out the boat to plug into? I know id have to keep the amps fairly low but as you see a small 22" tv and a fridge isnt really over kill. Would it work? My guess is 99% chance it would be successfull but would it be safe? I could either just make a small extension cord that goes from the invert to the shore power outlet or just tap directly into the breaker panel itself.. Which would be better? Has anyone done this before? Again no shore power. What we will probably do is after the weeknd is over we will pull the batteries and just charge them at home over the week on our trickle chargers. There is a new battery charger that came with the boat. We may be able to get an extension cord out the the boat and i could plug that in but thats about as good as it will get. Thanks
Ken

I would not leave the boat with out batteries the bilge pump needs power .

taking the batteries out and home every weekend ,that would get old real fast . boating should be fun why add to the work load ? you will wire a switch to separate shore power from / inverter power in case you ever do plug in to shore power

What would I do ? 1 of 3 things

1) move to a marina with shore power

2) use a 12 volt radio and TV (or battery powered) and Ice in a cooler .

3) live with out the TV and Ice in a cooler .

heres a quote from my invertor manual
"• Both “hot” and “neutral” lines are hot on inverters. Do not ground the neutral line. Do not connect neutral to panels that may have neutral grounded"
i do have shore and gen on my boat. but when anchored i dont really want to run the gen all the time for things i use ocassionaly or tv.you you need to find out if you have the neutral and gnd connections tied togther depending on how your boat is wired.i rewired my panel a bit i am powering the stbd side receptacles on my boat with my invertor and 1 in the galley that i ran seperately. i installed an external switch that i can isolate the invertor receptacles from the rest of the house power panel. the wiring is now isolated from the panel on these receptacles only. it is protected with a breaker, and the invertor safety circuit. the receptacles have no way of being connected but to only 1 source of ac power at a time. thus the mechanical means of the switch. you may find if you hook up your invertor to the ac panel without taking into account the neutral and ground connections you may fry the invertor.
here is link that might be of interest
http://bluesea.com/files/resources/appl ... Panels.pdf

and 1 more
http://www.jaycar.com.au/images_uploaded/inverter.pdf

i once was a at 'good ole' boys' marina where they didnt have much and we ran extention cords...i wouldnt recommend it but i made a shore power cord out of a fat extention cord and a recepticle from homedepot...i would unplug it when i left the marina during the week...my frig is propane so i didnt have that concern

First off, I'm a big fan of the Walmart Maxx29s. I have 2 in parallel for a 250 AH house bank and one for the engine bank. I run them through a Blue Seas ACR which keeps them from running down the start battery if I mistakenly leave the battery switch on "all". BUT, I have shore power so I'm plugged in at the dock.

I've always thought about mounting 8 - 16Watt Solar panel(s) on the roof of the hardtop or on the roof of the cabin. They would run through a monitor and keep the batteries charged without need for shorepower. The cost may be way beyond what you're willing to pay (>$1K) but you'd NEVER be messin around with shorepower. The cost of these is going to keep coming down and there are plenty of solar websites to check out. Between the solar panels and a decent inverter you'd be in AC/DC heaven!

All that still being said, why get the invertor in the first place? The F-25 and F-26 don't have a lot of AC needs, if any, and the biggest DC drain is the Norcold AC/DC fridge, that goes about 8-10 amps (DC) but it's not contantly running. You do need to keep the bilge pump energized, but assume it would not run except in even of a leak (roll of the dice - odds in your favor it won't happen).

At least something for you to think about.

I installed two 180watt solar panels on the hard top of my F-25. It charges into a house bank of three batteries. All our fixtures are twelve volt: refrigerator, tv, faucet and shower pump, fans, lights, stereo, dvd player, tv antenna amplifier. When the house bank goes above 13.5 volts or so from the solar panels, the extra charge then trickles over into the starter batteries.

Given all this, I can be disconnected from shore power indefinitely, or stay anchored until we run out of fresh water. So that's another suggestion for you. Buying the panels used, and Xantrex power management stuff new, it cost about $1,200 total for a setup that can send sufficient energy into the batteries.

Good info. I meant amps instead of watts when I sent my last post. How long have you had the panels operating and any issues mounting them? Father's Day is coming up and ........nahhhhhhh, only dreaming!

Considering a lot of boat projects can get out of hand quick, the solar installation was pretty easy. It took about two hours. I'll take a photo of how they are mounted and post it. I still have to put the heavy feed cable neatly through the hard top with a cable grip, so right now it runs through the pilot side panel window down and into the aft dinette seat compartment. That's where house bank is.

Thanks. I have my house bank under the same area, 2 125ah deep cycles (Wal Mart beauties) in parallel. Engine battery is under the top stair into the cabin.

Sounds like you're all set. You should try and talk yourself into it.

On the list for next year. I talked myself into too many projects this year. Post a picture when you can. I'm thinking the wire routing could still go off the side of the hardtop vs through it and that would give better routing into the cabin, but the F-26 may be set up differently from the F-25.

I'm definitely open to suggestions on sending wires down from the hard top. There isn't any perfect way to do it.

Ken,

Our F#@ has been in the water for 4.5 years with NO shore power whatsoever!

I have solar panels, that lay on the dash in front of the lowe helm - with a direct Southern exposure. They keep each battery (currently 2 mains and a house) charged - and the bilge pumps working fine.

We keep our boat at our house, and have a 450' dock. I just haven't gotten around to running high voltage out there yet, and the solar works great. It also lets us go out and sit on the hook without running the gennie ...

I don't kno whow much I would try to get fancy with inverters and what not, but keeping hr batteries up, using radio at the dock, and powering the bilge pumps work fine wtit solar.

If there is a power outage at the dock (we have hurricanes here), you don; thave to worry, as the sun will come out soon!

Here is a photo of the solar panels on the hard top.