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s this happening all right

everybody hey it looks like we're live

with no technical glitches this morning

well done teamwork well it's a rainy day

in vancouver but uh even better day to

be talking about our

boats and jeff has some exciting news

coming up

about talking with people in the

industry about boats why don't you tell

us about that first of all good morning

jeff how are you

good morning melissa good morning hello

everyone thanks for being here today

uh happy saturday so yeah i just want to

share a little bit of the news uh

we've been uh working with a lot of

different people folks in the industry

and we're gonna start our own

podcast uh conversation called doc talk

with jeff cote

um just sharing my passion i get to the

opportunity to speak to a lot of people

that

have a lot of different experiences and

or sort of

i guess in-depth knowledge um and so our

first one is actually going to be with

the president of actisense

uh we're going to be doing a talk on

nmea

and enemy 0183 and all the different

sort of trends that are happening in the

integration world between

old and new and the digitization of our

boats

and so yeah it's a little bit sort of a

little bit more geeking out really

um and understanding why we do what we

do on our boats

um and so we're going to be launching

that podcast uh in the first part of may

pretty excited about that

anyways let's get with questions we are

looking forward to it well paul was in

uh early this morning he's got the cool

first question paul from toronto

and he has an inverted question i have

a master volt 12 2000 120

i ordered it to hardwire into my

beneteau oceanis

however was shocked to see the av output

was

2 gvci 120 outlets

i call tech support and they do not

offer an adapter

however the rep suggested i plug a

spliced power cord and

hardwire the power cord would you

suggest this oh good question

uh so um i'm gonna basically talk paul

and i'm not sure i understood completely

your question so if you

tell missy as i'm answering if i'm going

in the right direction or not

it's not uncommon to have inverter

chargers

that actually have the output of the

inverter

be directly instead of being a bunch of

wires that you have to plug

in and you know terminal strips which is

common

some inverters literally have like an ac

outlet like you would have in um

in our bathrooms uh with a gfci so two

15 amp outlets

coming out of an inverter and that's

common even xantrax makes that product

that's an option on their xc2000 and

xc3000

line of inverters chargers as well

so yeah sometimes you if the inverter

that you purchase

only has that output then yeah you could

literally plug in

um an ac 15 amp outlet

and then energize some circuits from

there obviously

maybe that's why your question most of

us that hardwire

our inverters into our boats would

rather have the ac output

actually be on a 30 amp circuit right

because a 15 amp circuit is what you're

going to get from a gfci

and so you're going to be limited on the

amount of

output amps that you can draw from your

inverter

with that sort of setup so it's not

uncommon it happens generally we will do

that on boats that don't want to

integrate the panel some folks

right say hey jeff i want an inverter on

my boat but i want it to be stand alone

i want it to be under the chart table

i don't want to integrate into my panel

my panel's too complicated i don't want

to go there

i just want to plug in what i need

on this inverter and i did this on my

own boat like i actually have two

inverters on my boat

i have a small little 300 watt inverter

and i have a 3000 watt inverter

and the little 300 watt inverter is

basically

has a power bar connected to it and i

plug in all different sort of little

gadgets uh plug into that and then my

3001 inverter is the one that energizes

the all the ac circuits on my boat

except the hot water tank of course and

uh so there's

depends on what you do and how

integrated you want to do your install

and that's why there's two sorts of

products products that are either

hardwired

or products that actually uh inverters

that actually output

um ac120 on a gfci outlet

so there you go paul all right good

question

uh we have a returning guest the uh mv

semi-retired and i just found out here

they're from port can

uh canaveral florida oh wow isn't that

great man watch this

channel hope to make it up to the

seattle boat show and see you

wondering if you can talk about charging

lithium

batteries with alternators it's such a

hot topic right now

yeah good question um lithium is

you know the concept of a drop in

lithium replacement

is more sort of wishful thinking than

reality if it was easy we wouldn't be

talking about it right

um the challenge is at one point

your lithium battery might say enough

and

enough means that the bms for whatever

reason is going to say i can't take more

charging

voltage and the ensuing amps and i can't

do it anymore so i'm going to disconnect

myself from whatever's connected to the

battery and

on the more budget batteries they only

have one positive post

meaning there's no different distinction

between what's called a charging

circuits

and load circuits your your battery

might simply disconnect itself and at

that point your house battery is

offline disconnecting a battery as we

know

from an alternator while the alternator

is running is going to damage your

alternator

an alternator can never suddenly be well

not suddenly be running and suddenly be

disconnected

from a battery and you can't do that via

battery switches that's why all the

battery switches say at the bottom

never turn engine uh switch to off while

engine is running they have a disclaimer

on pretty much even the purchase

switches the blue c switches

and so you never want your alternator to

ever ever be disconnected

from a battery or the only battery

connected

to the alternator while it's running so

this is where

things get complicated and where

some of us are installing these maybe

either battery isolators so we're going

to put a battery isolator on the output

of the alternator so the alternator is

actually going to two places

the lithium battery bank and maybe an

engine

start battery and so even if the lithium

battery bank

disconnects itself because of over

charging at least your alternator still

has a path to an engine battery

so that's one way or another way is

common two is

actually have the alternator go only to

the engine battery

and then have what are called dc to dc

charging converters

uh sharing the charging voltage from the

engine battery to the house battery

so those are the two most common sort of

setups

either battery isolators or dc to dc

charging

and that's all in the purpose of

wandering or worrying

about what happens if ever my bms on my

lithium battery says

enough and they disconnect the positive

posts and if that happens when the

alternator is running

you need to make sure that that

alternator is connected to a battery

and that's why it's a big hot topic but

there are solutions to that you just

have to be careful

and thorough in doing it good question

all right next up

scott from london ontario he said his

boat hasn't seen the water

didn't see the water last year and he

doesn't have solar he has a flooded uh

lead acid battery bank charged to full

every two and a half months then self

just

discharges to 65 rinse and repeat

is there long term damage yeah well

okay so first of all let's put this into

context a great question

uh scott uh i went to school just near

there in waterloo ontario

fond memories uh of my schooling days

there

when i was buried in my books um so

first of all every time we use a battery

we damage it

so the extent is to what extent right so

using

a battery or you know even having a

battery not being used and not

being charged is also damaging a battery

but that's we got to quantify it's like

like our bodies are also being used and

damaged and they're not going to last

forever nothing

really lasts forever um

and so i would say yeah if i had a boat

like yours

um i would suggest having solar as a way

to not have the batteries

go so much down to 65 because flooded

lead acid batteries and lead acid

batteries even agm

like to be sort of what's called float

charged or at the very least

float drift you know maybe to 12 5

12 6 on a 12 volt battery and then

brought back to float right sort of a

cycle of on off

and a solar controller is a great thing

to do that because the sun

basically turns off at night right it's

no longer there so it's a great sort of

you don't even need a lot of

sophistication the sun's shining in the

day

your batteries go you know they try to

get as full charge as possible overnight

they might discharge a little bit

and then again it repeats so i would

suggest that

some form of solar would be a good way

to maintain your battery's life for

longer right so that they don't sulfate

because the challenge is when our

batteries go

in a state of discharge over the longer

period that is right

the battery is going to sulfate which is

kind of a word to say that it's going to

age

and it's going to be hard for you to

re-energize portions of the battery

plates

that have sulfated and that's where some

people equalize

but that's a separate topic so good

question scott thanks for asking

all right shout out to kit she calls us

raincover

and yes it is raining it is today it is

of course

oh it's also raining in heidegger shout

out to robin taylor how

are you hi robin thanks for joining us

we also have drew in victoria hey drew

good morning look at all these people

this is fantastic

all right here we go question oh estonia

someone's visiting from estonia

i have installed a three output victron

battery isolator however there's also a

need to charge the fourth

battery individually on the go i plan to

use the victron

cyrix battery combiner okay comment

yeah battery combiners are good um it's

a way of basically forcing a parallel

between one battery and the other

battery right

um and it's you know a hot topic we've

got lots of articles on our website i

probably have over

300 articles on battery combiners on our

website

um there's also another product that's

worth considering would be the dc to dc

charging converter and victron makes

those as well

and the great thing about those is that

you can actually have

you're actually going from a dc to ddc

so they can actually use

a battery's energy right at dc

and they're going to convert it and

they're not sharing that voltage so if

that battery is at 12

4 12 8 13 1 they're not actually putting

12 8

onto the other battery they're modifying

that voltage and they're going to give

the other battery a three-stage

charging what at whatever chemistry that

battery is so if that chemistry of that

battery is an agm or maybe it's a gel

maybe it's a firefly battery maybe it's

a lithium battery

you can actually have that battery not

simply be combined

and both living the same thing at the

same time but you could have the other

battery go through its own three

charging circuit and you can do that

instead of a battery compartment you can

do that with a dc to dc charging

converter

and i believe the name from it's called

orion

from victron and it's a really popular

product not too big it's not

expensive it's probably about similar

price probably to a battery combiner

and that's one of our most popular

products these days is these orion dc to

dc charging converters and so i would

invite you to consider that either way

is going to work

um and maybe you'll find one of the two

is better suited to your application

thanks for asking

all right we have john who's boating in

west michigan

he says two batteries in parallel

should the positive to the house be

attached to one battery and the negative

to the other battery

or does it make any difference

yeah this is a great question and

there's a lot of opinion on this matter

so

i am not giving you like the

authoritative

answer i'm going to tell you my

preference um

and the way that we've done it on my

boat and on thousands of other boats but

by the way if you look up this sort of

question

there's a lot of different opinions on

the matter

um and some folks are basically chasing

perfection and they're going to go

further than my setup and there's really

good arguments for that but i'm sort of

going

a compromise between too complicated and

good enough okay so yes if i had two

batteries

in parallel i would have the positive

lead on

one battery and the negative lead on

another

uh certainly there's i think this is

true um

it's relatively unanimous within the

field

that if you have a large battery bank

and take an example

four or six or eight of these batteries

in parallel which is not uncommon

you should not have the positive and

negative

right for both charging and loads

regardless

be connected to only one battery and the

other six or seven or eight batteries

just be at the other side so you

what we normally do is we'll put the

positive on one end of the battery and

we'll put the negative

at the other side of the battery so

whatever how big the battery bank is

what we're trying to do is we're trying

to make sure that we have

the current that is going either as a

load or as a charge is going through all

the batteries

so we're looking for one path only in

the battery bank and we're

making sure that every single battery is

forced to help

as opposed to if we put the positive and

negative wire on one battery

then what would happen is the other

batteries the current could

just go through one battery and the

other batteries are there more on a

support roll

and yeah sure once it's fine twice is

fine but over time that exasperates

the battery and it causes an uneven

wear and tear of your battery bank so if

you want your batteries to evenly charge

and discharge

over time and that they have a similar

life right

then you want to have the positive and

negative

connections to that battery bank to be

at opposite ends and by the way i also

have

pretty long detailed articles on this

subject matter at

on our website at which you can see down

below pacificoutsystems.ca or

pysystems.ca

all right good question thanks for

asking um i'm going to just skip over

this lightning question for one second

because we have a question that is just

related to what you're talking about uh

when having both 12 volt and 20 full

volt batteries on board should all

negatives be together

when i have both 12 volt and 24 volt

alternators

um the short answer is yes um

all battery banks even if it's a 24 or

12

um all battery banks should need to be

common

they need to be connected together on

the dc negative side

right so the the differential

between a positive and negative post you

don't have to worry about the foundation

right so one battery might be

12 volts the other one is 24 volts

but they both because remember the

difference between a negative and a

positive

that's a differential but a battery

negative

is not ground right if you hold a aaa

battery or double a battery in your hand

or even a golf cart battery and we put

it

car battery put it right here there is

no ground on that battery

there's a dc negative and a dc positive

and there's a voltage differential

between those two posts

the only way for that battery to be

grounded

is to that battery to be connected to

all other batteries

and those batteries to be connected to

most likely an engine block which is

connected to a transmission

which is in in turn connected to a

propeller shaft which is connected to

the water and that makes everything at a

common

reference point of ground of zero and

then you might have one at 12 and then

you might have one at 24.

so yes absolutely super important to

have all your

grounds be common you don't want to have

voltage differential between one is at

zero and the other one is floating

and then when you connect and then

there's a differential between the two

so you want them all to be the same

so good question all right i'm gonna go

back to arson

who said how easy is it to install a

lightning rod

does it require special expertise

that's a good question that i don't even

know the answer to because in british

columbia where we are based

uh lightning is not a common occurrence

as in many parts of the world

and um so it's not something that we

worry about a lot here on the coast

in british columbia um south let's call

it

south western british columbia places

like florida i heard it's very common

i've

i read articles about it certainly am

concerned

about it if i had a boat over there but

in terms of practical

experience or recommendations i don't

and i doubt that it's too technical

other than reading the instructions

but i would leverage someone who's you

sort of done it you know 100 times or a

thousand times and that person isn't me

because we just don't have those sort of

uh lightning issues as other folks have

throughout the world

so great questions but i don't have that

answer sorry all right here's a question

from

shannon she says i recently purchased

firefly batteries for my solar system

12 group 31 to replace my full river agm

22 kilowatt with a 16.6

kilowatt oasis at 50 dod

should i increase my capacity or lower

my percentage dod

and did i slaughter that question well

first of all

you're definitely bragging i mean you're

like

you're hitting my heartstrings you're

using all the right acronyms

now most people are going what what what

what what

okay so the question is a dod is a term

meaning depth of discharge and i had

this question from another boater

earlier this week

there's this concept of battery capacity

and dod so what's the difference

first of all battery capacity is as you

would expected the floor is zero

and if you have a battery capacity at

let's say 80

you're 80 is here and 100 would be right

here so you're literally going from zero

to 80 and when you say i have my battery

capacity is 80

that means that you actually are 80 of

your battery capacity and you've drawn

it down

20 percent going from 100

down is called dod so if you go from

zero

up that's battery capacity if you go

from the ceiling 100 down

that's dod depth of discharge so you

could have a battery capacity of 80

or an alternative way of saying that is

a dod of 20

right so 80 plus 20 equals a hundred

obviously

battery capacity plus dod gotta have got

to beat a hundred

so when here the question is oh should i

bring my dod

deeper right and the question was 50

yes with firefly batteries depending on

what you're doing for

affecting battery life the further

discharge you go on a battery

yes will affect its life but remember

a firefly battery for example on the

spec sheets will say

something like at 20 depth of discharge

you have like i don't know 1500 or 1700

cycles

so a cycle is taking a battery from 100

bringing all the way down to 20

the moment it's discharged recharging it

and then doing it over again

so the manufacturers are putting on a

spec sheet that you can do that over

like 1500 times

at 20 of capacity so yes if i would and

i do on my boat have firefly batteries

um my dod on my boat is not set to 20

which is still acceptable i go about 30

so i give myself a little a little bit

of barrier so i'm not too close to

the bottom i used to have flooded lead

acid batteries and they were at 50

and now my my dod is 70

my battery capacity is 30 and remember

dod plus battery capacity equals 100.

so yes i would go deeper on the depth of

discharge great question

i love this name sailing starbuck love

it

if i buy a lithium battery this year can

i

safely add another lithium battery in

two years

or do they have to be the same age

that's a great question i have no idea

the answer to that one

to be honest i've never come across that

situation before

i know certainly where you're coming

from right that is an absolute concern

with flooded or agm lead acid batteries

it's like changing tires you can't have

you know four tires and have one go bad

and and then either your tires are four

or five years old and just buy a brand

new tire you got to change the whole set

so certainly with agm batteries lead

acid batteries

you know the number of cycles that that

battery bank has had it's not so much

the time you own it it's the number of

cycles so

if you don't really use your boat and

you use your boat 10 nights a year or 20

nights a year

sure no problem i can't imagine that

it's going to be a problem

i really can't because lithium remember

has crazy amount of cycles

um so my gut would tell me that it won't

be a problem but i bet there's someone

way smarter than i am right now on this

channel that might want to weigh in and

tell me otherwise

um so power of deduction not a problem

but

certainly a huge problem with flooded

asset batteries so

when i have voters that say jeff i'm

going to spend a little bit of money on

batteries now and i'll spend

i'll do more later i'm like you can't do

that you you

i know you want to but you can't so you

got to do everything now

and then you're not going to be able to

add more batteries well you can add more

batteries later but

you're going to have an imbalance of

battery within a battery bank

and you're going to have your new

batteries constantly helping the weaker

batteries

and so it's going to make these

batteries age faster than they should

have even though they're the newer ones

because they're always picking up the

slack for the weaker ones that were

input in

earlier so when you put in batteries on

your boat they should always be the same

age

same type but with lithium considering

the number of cycles you have and if

you're not a super user meaning you're

not staying on board using your boat 365

days a year and every year you're every

day you're making a cycle

then yeah i think it wouldn't be a

problem with lithium batteries so great

question

all right we have a marine electrician

from malaysia

joining us he loves your videos so

thanks very much jeff

thank you by the way here's a good

question because you know how much i

love my chilled beverages

hi i'm fixing a refrigerator system and

they recommend connecting the system

directly to the battery

to prevent voltage spikes what are your

thoughts

no negative no absolutely not the

voltage spikes are going to happen

everywhere

so okay let's back up bob great question

so the challenge is this every product

manufacturer on a boat

and this is heaters this is everything

when they're looking and they're giving

you advice

they can't integration or doing anything

on a boat is hard

right boats are not there's no even

standard everything is different

what they're doing is they're going oh

my god i don't want to deal with the

panel i don't want to tell the owner how

to deal with the panel

i don't want to tell the owner how to

deal with the dc distribution where is

it what's switch what's on switch i

don't even know

they're just trying to sell a fridge

they're just trying to sell something a

heater

right and so in their little simplified

diagrams they're just showing the

battery

and if i wanted to look the other way

and i was that product manufacturer i'd

look the other way

like hopefully just do the battery and

easy right

but whatever happens that the battery

spikes or drops are gonna happen

everywhere on the circuit remember

they're all connected

right there's no difference so if your

battery's experiencing a voltage spike

of two volts let's say for this really

weird reason

well the whole boat is experiencing two

volts right yes there's going to be a

voltage drop

but if it's actually two volts at the

battery and it's a spike it's going to

be worse at the battery because there's

voltage drop everywhere else so

that argument doesn't hold water

because the voltage spike is going to be

less downstream

than it is at the battery because of

voltage drop

so no i would if i had a fridge i would

make sure that it is on my switch

distribution

and the other thing i would do is i'd

make sure that it's on my panel

because i want the ability to be able to

turn on and off my fridge

without having to go to the battery and

actually pulling a fuse apart so that's

my advice

hey that's a good question thanks for

asking all right we actually have two

questions about steel or aluminum boats

so i'm going to start with

one and think maybe it might answer the

other so here we go ernest

um again it's a steel boat i consider

having the dc

completely isolated from the hull except

when the engine is running

this would separate connect by a high

power

relay what are your thoughts on

isolating dc

yeah that's a world that is not very

familiar to myself

i'm not gonna this is where now i'm

speculating i don't speak from

experience

um so this is just speculation

it's not uncommon for boat builders

aluminum or steel

to have to worry a lot

about uh sort of corrosion or straight

current corrosion

on their halls so they go to great

lengths to isolate and to make sure that

the hall

is if at all grounded it's grounded in

only one specific place

that being said the majority of boats

that we work on here in vancouver and

i'm a fan of by the way of steel boats i

get it

uh there's a lot of great ones out there

they're more

certainly great expedition ones french

make great

uh again steel boats i'm not questioning

it it's just rare

i don't deal with them that much here in

british columbia they

they are they're out there but it's a

very tiny fraction

and i've haven't yet designed an

electrical system

for one of them so i'm not that familiar

with

what the implications of that choice

would be and so

unfortunately i'm not going to be able

to answer that question because i don't

like to bs

no good all right here's the second part

of that steel boat aluminum question

um steel and aluminum boat voltage

leaking

issue from battery negative side is it

possible to fix

i oh yes you know voltage leaking is

you're

you're looking for in this situation

voltage leaking means

you're you're hoping that your battery

is isolated from your hull

and it isn't so where is that connection

happening where's that leak i mean

that's another way of saying

my dc negative is somehow there's

continuity between my hull and my dc

negative

and prior to the other questions i'm

trying to keep it separate

so yeah of course it's now it's like a

lot of things

you know yes doable but might be hard

because you're looking

for a connection someplace and

and if that connection if it shouldn't

be there you're looking maybe for shafe

maybe it's one of your dc cables that

have shaved over time

and now it didn't cause a short to the

hall because it was not a positive cable

but it was a negative cable and so now

your haul is actually connected to your

dc negative and now they're not

isolated anymore so it's extremely time

consuming

to do and then what you would start

doing is disconnect everything on the dc

negative

and then start connect them one at a

time and measure the ohms

right the resistance on that circuit and

as you energize every single circuit

only one at a time you're looking for

the needle in the haystack

the good news is a little bit like

looking for straight current corrosion

you don't want to energize the whole

boat and say where is it well

if all the variables are on the table

which variable

caused your problem hard but if you have

everything off

completely disconnected you should have

no continuity between the hull

and the dc negative and then you start

adding one circuit at a time

you got to be methodical right and as

you do

that eventually one of that circuit is

going to become energized

and then you're going to see continuity

and that's how you know

what circuit is touching the hull in

some way

and then you've got to then look for

that circuit find it and resolve the

problem

so that's how i would go about doing

that all right

here jeff where should i connect my

windlass engine

or house battery um good question good

question

um it depends it depends on where your

alternator is going

so for example on my own boat i rerouted

my alternator output to go back to my

house battery because the house battery

is what actually needs

most of the charging so

my windlass is connected to my house

battery and it also makes sense because

my house battery is much bigger than my

engine battery so even if my

alternator wasn't working and that's

possible right and i want to lift the

windlass

then or not lift the anchor with the

windlass i mean

i would be able to do that because i've

got six firefly batteries on my boat and

my

starting battery is just one group 27 so

proportionally i have way more house

batteries than i do

have an engine my alternator is going

there so for me it was a no-brainer

larger battery bank

alternator connected to it perfect but

if you have two batteries the same size

right that happens on a lot of boats and

i would go with the where the alternator

is connected

but if you've got a large large battery

bank and it's connected to an alternator

then the windlass should go there

good question all right bob has a

follow-up question about batteries

i have a house set and a starter battery

both flooded lead acid on a xantrex

combiner

charger setup can i buy agm house

batteries and

keep fla for starter yeah

well the short answer is yes but it's

going to be a little bit complicated

right

so you're going to need to have at the

moment you're going to need to have

either a charger on your house and

either put a dc to dc charging converter

to share

a flooded lead asset profile

right because now if the your house

batteries are agm you're not going to

want to charge your flooded lead acid

batteries at the same charge profile so

you could have an inverter charger just

doing the house and then you would

modify

that charging voltage through a dc to dc

converter

to recharge a flooded lead acid battery

so that's one way

and you probably want to think about

that too because you could have two

battery banks flooded in agm

but you're going to have one alternator

and that alternator is going to have can

only output

to one battery chemistry right so you

can either especially if it has an

external regulator

it's going to charge you only one

battery chemistry so it's a compromise

so yes it's doable but it certainly

makes your life much harder

if honestly if i had just one engine

battery in my boat

i would probably sacrifice

that battery and go with an agm battery

it's probably going to be less money to

buy an

agm group 21 a group 24 or 27 or 31

than it is to do all the other things

i'm worried about which is

having an inverter charger only on the

house putting a dc to dc charging

converter all those things get

complicated

so if possible and i know i'm telling

you to spend more of your money

but i think you're going to spend less

money by going with an agm

engine battery than you would by

installing a dc to dc charging converter

and all the associate time

to actually install that as well bob but

we do love spending

money on our votes don't we oh we sure

do guilty

uh eric has a question and i'm not quite

sure let's give this a try

how accessible should my lifo battery

bank be

one minute access five minute

i don't know when you mean okay so

access to me is are you talking about

how quickly you should get to the

battery bank

or i'm not sure what you mean by access

all right eric give us a uh yeah maybe

yeah maybe a clarification we'll come

back yeah i don't know what you mean by

access sorry maybe clarify for me

doug are plastic fuel filler caps safer

than metal ones

oh um now okay that's not

super so you're probably talking about

for actually

literally for for fuel um

i don't think plastic or metal you want

it to be

on my boat they're metal and then when

you do the connection it's also grounded

right so

my metal uh

fuel filler or outlet

or inlet maybe is actually grounded

with a wire to the fuel tank and my fuel

tank is also grounded

to my uh dc common ground which is

common so

there's no chance for a voltage

differential right

i don't know if a plastic one most of

them are

metallic and they might be grounded but

if it's completely plastic

completely everything about it is

plastic then it's probably like a

through-haul right there's going to be

no chance of conductivity or sparks

so i would think that either a metallic

one that is grounded

is safe or a plastic one that is

isolated

and all all plastic would be good

so most boats i seem to around here

seem to be metallic and grounded so good

question and i think it's equal but it's

just got to be done right

yeah all right let's go back to eric's

question about the

accessibility on the batteries he

actually said oops

which i love can i safely install them

in a void behind a plywood veneer behind

a sofa cushion

worried about the urgent inspection or

fire short

accessing the lifo batteries um

yeah well five minutes is a long time if

something goes south eh

i don't know that's that's that would be

pretty that would be a long five minutes

um so if if you did that

um you would want to have the ability

obviously to be able to have maybe a

fire extinguisher hole right like some

engine

bays have right where you just be able

to put a nozzle in and even if you can't

see anything you can just sort of

extinguish a fire so that would be one

thing i would do if

if i couldn't access my battery and

would take over five minutes

and the other thing i would do is make

sure that i could isolate the battery

completely right so from any loads so

the battery switch when i turn that

battery switch off everything is

disconnected from the battery so

isolate the battery and

those would be two ways to alleviate

those concerns but i don't know five

minutes seems like a long

time long time to get to battery and

i would i don't know i that would make

me a little bit nervous

so you may be doable but you can tell

i'm not too excited about five minutes

to get to a battery

on any boat that's a lot of time even

one minute is a lot of time

yeah all right it's kind of a timely

question

because we did a video last week on what

happens when there is a boat fire

on board uh and that is actually airing

tomorrow morning it will be live on

or not live it will be uploaded so

uh good question someone had jeff

answered it we did a video on it

um next question where in the circuit

is the best place to put a converter

from 24 to 12 volt

to run a 12 volt appliance

well the question you know and i always

make this hard i always

have answers with questions in them so

it depends what you're running

on this 12 volts right so your source of

power is 24 and you're going to 12.

if it's non-critical loads right it's

not a bilge pump

and you know it's just a standard loads

it could be navigation equipment

it could be vhf it could be whatever

i would have the dc to dc

converter connected on the

switch side of my house battery bank

distribution

so meaning because remember

this whole switch is a great it's a it's

basically

almost like a i don't know a pull cord

you know like it's sort of like an eject

button seat like it's

something terrible happens on your boat

you have to know where that battery

switch is and the moment you turn that

battery switches

off everything is off on your boat

except a few things

like bilge pumps and maybe carbon

monoxide detectors but for

the most part we're talking most of your

circuits are de-energized

so every time you don't have a circuit

de-energized it's another exception of

like

oh i stopped the switch but i got to

remember about this this this and this

and this

so and for me a dc to dc converter

is always on the switch side of the

distribution i wouldn't put it at the

panel

because it might draw a lot so i would

have it you know when there's a battery

there's two connections to a battery on

the positive there's an unswitched

distribution and a switch distribution

concept that i reiterate all the time on

my website

and all our presentations so i would

connect a dc to dc converter to the

switched

dc distribution of a battery as that's

how i would do it

all right earlier we had a question

about a windlass

and this gentleman said it made me think

uh

where should my 24 volt bow thruster be

connected again house

or starter well

so first thing is the fact that it's 24

volt so some of us have 24 volt

thrusters

but on our boats our house battery bank

is 12.

so and that happens so a lot of times if

it's a 24 volt thruster and we have a 12

volt house

it's a non option you can't run a 24

volt thruster through converters

so you'll need to have a battery bank of

24 volts

near or at the bottom the challenge

running thrusters on house batteries

thrusters draw a crazy amount

of current 24 of course is half of what

it would be at 12 but it's still a lot

so in most of the cases we are

proponents of installing dedicated

thruster battery banks

handle that crazy voltage drop that will

happen

as you apply a thruster load the

challenge is as a battery

gets discharged when you apply that

thruster load especially some of them

are 200 400 amps

800 amps all that current

going from the battery bank will cause a

huge voltage drop on your house battery

now the moment the thruster is

disengaged

it's going to come back up again but

while you're experiencing that

big voltage drop a lot of appliances on

your boat might start alarming or

turning off

like for example your navigation

equipment you know navigation equipment

want generally between 10.5 and maybe

generally that's the minimum and so if

the voltage drops

a little bit below that then all your

screens go blank and generally

when we use thrusters we use thrusters

when we're docking and

generally we want to have our nav system

operating to know

where we are what the water depth is

what maybe the wind is

and to apply a thruster and to see the

whole system shut down and it's going to

take two minutes to reactivate

would be very very stressful so if

possible install

dedicated thruster battery banks and

then have those battery banks

recharge via either battery isolators

which is better

battery combiners less good or dc to dc

charging converters which are okay but i

would go with battery isolators first

all right uh jeff i bought a victron

smart battery monitor does it stay on

all the time or does it go into sleep

mode after a while

i believe it stays on all the time but

it's very very low power draw

so um we've installed a few

all battery monitors that i'm aware of

because they're constantly monitoring

right like there's no time when a

battery can say oh there's not going to

be a discharge

the next second they always got to be

there waiting

and monitoring what the draws are so

even if the battery bank for five

minutes goes dark

if this thing sleeps it's going to miss

the next second when there's going to be

a draw

so it's a nominal draw meaning it's not

a big one but yes it does

uh battery monitors do have a little bit

of draw

even when there's not a lot of current

going in and out of the boat

all right lee has a question how

important is grounding

old sx sterndrive

don't know i've never worked with an sx

sterndrive

and i'm not familiar with that so that's

a again

no bs never never worked with it so good

question but i have no idea

don't know okay we have another

experiential question

all right let's go do you have any

experience with other types of

tinned wire especially some of the new

silicone

insulated tinned wires

nope um we mostly buy

sort of the big brand names like anchor

and probably there's alternatives that

factory it's not just

anchor that buys from that factory in

china

so um we're buying sort of the vanilla

cabling that you're going to find at

your

channel we make sure that different

when you're buying 10 wire know that not

all of them

have the same sort of pliable insulation

some are a lot more rigid than others

right so

there's two basically types of the major

players

types of uh tin marine grade wiring and

some of them are quite flexible

you know if it's a two watt wire you

could actually bend it like this

and the other one that is more stiff

insulation like you it takes it's

very challenging it's almost like you're

flexing your muscles to actually

have a bigger turn radius so no i'm not

familiar with the silicon

marine uh i haven't come across that in

our world yet

so maybe you can post more about it and

why you chose it i'm curious now

but not familiar no all right a question

about an accumulator tank

here goes would installing a high

pressure water pump

connected to a pressure reduction valve

have the same effect as an accumulator

tank

great question but i that is out of my

pay scale or pay range uh

i'm an electrician this is this is

completely different

um this is now you're asking a boater

and i don't know um you know it's not

something that

i ever we ever do professionally and i

used to have an accumulator temp on my

boat but it really didn't work quite

that well with the variable pumps

that i had on my boat at vsr so

i actually ended up removing my

accumulator tank but again it's just

this is

this is from my own personal experience

so this is experience of one

so unfortunately i don't know what to

say to that question because it's not

something that we worry about

ever here because we're electricians and

that is

complicated but not my realm so good

question but don't know the answer

all right i'm going to follow up with

the lithium question i'm just wondering

can it go under a cockpit in a closed

area

are there concerns well

the yeah you

ideally ideally uh your lithium battery

should never ever ever ever uh

be submerged this is not like a normal

battery right like a normal battery if

it's submerged you're gonna have

crazy amount of corrosion but remember

it's still a battery there's no computer

on it

a lithium battery has a computer on top

there's a computer i mean it's you can

call it whatever you want it's a bms

it's like we call our phones just phones

but they're not phones anymore they're

computers right

um so i would

take into consideration and worry

that there is never going to be a

possibility ever

that my battery is going to be submerged

and so having something under the

floorboards

so if i'm putting a lithium battery bank

i'm going to try to raise the batteries

not as high as possible but above a

certain point where at this point if i

get the water you know

at my thigh level or above my knee and

i'm on the on my boat

it's sort of almost game over it's not

game over but it's pretty close right

we're talking about a substantial

amount of water on your boat and that is

going to have

long lasting effects so when we're doing

lithium we're not installing them

too low we're trying to have them at a

place where the water level should never

ever ever ever get to and if it does

well then you're screwed that battery

bank is over

uh but then you've got bigger problems

on your hand and so now your build

puncture is going to stop working all

your electrical system is going to go

working and now you're sort of like

maybe not abandoning the ship but you're

gonna have a ship without an electrical

system

and without uh bilge pumps so

yeah i wouldn't i would try to not have

them i would try to have my lithium

batteries

not installed too low on a boat

yeah all right rick did a bit of a refit

uh he's installed a victron 80 amp

smart charger and he installed six

firefly batteries however the battery

charger was set up for only four

batteries

can the victron app be used to reset the

charger

yes uh if it's a bluetooth enabled one

yeah you should

and the the challenge is

if you have in this case six firefly

batteries is that right what i

remember yeah so six firefly batteries

if

now are they the four 450 uh lark amp

hours are they the 12 volts or four volt

batteries

it doesn't say okay so they're most

likely 12 volts um

if they're 12 volts they're about 110

amp hours each

and that's about 660 amp hours at 12

volts

you need a minimum of uh 20

of capacity as a charge rate so 20

of 660 is about 132 so you need 122 amps

of charge rate

as a minimum to charge that battery bank

properly

so i would say that

an 80 amp charger is going to

chronically under charge those batteries

it's not a factor of two but it's a

factor of one and a half

and so yes you would definitely want to

do a custom

charge profile to firefly so that's 14 4

for float

13 5 for uh 14 4 for bulk absorption

voltage

and 13 5 for float and that's what i

would do but it sounds like you have a

bigger battery bank than your charger

and

over time uh that's going to be a

problem with the firefly battery bank

you need a minimum of 20

of battery capacity as a charge rate

uh rick just said 12. yeah so yeah yeah

so then

you need a larger charger so that

charger is going to do

is going to help but if you want to meet

the minimum charge requirements you're

going to need to have a charger that is

at least 130

amps 132 to be precise

um and so that you're you're way off the

mark

so i would probably consider a secondary

charger or a large inverter charger to

provide that uh high charging amperage

all right we've got just over 10 minutes

to go and i always have to get in an

outboard question all right let's do it

okay uh i have

twin outboards with separate start

batteries

and i want to add a separate house bank

can i put battery combiners between both

start batteries

and the house bank to charge the house

faster

yes yes absolutely 100 it's a common

way so you know um this happens on a lot

of boats like pursuit

that they come like that uh boston

whalers have these problems all these

boats i mean there's so many boats that

have outboards these days

uh so you're gonna have and it doesn't

matter if you had one engine two engine

like we're working on a boat that has

three outboards right so we want

either outboard to be able to recharge

the house battery so we're literally

having

three outboards all of them are

basically sharing their charging voltage

with the house battery bank via

combiners

and if your alternators aren't too big

because your outboards are not too big

you might want to consider a dc to dc

charging converter

as opposed to a battery combiner it's

probably going to be better

but dc to dc charging converters are

maxed out about 30 amps so if your

alternator is 200 amps

and it's going to your engine battery

and you want a big portion of that to go

to your house

a dc to dc charging converter is only

going to give you 30. you could run

multiple in parallel

which we've also done but a battery

combiner would be a more

cost effective way of sharing a charging

voltage from your engine batteries to

your house

so yes definitely doable and we do that

all the time

all right jeff i've noticed that my 24

volt

boat has a 32 volt to 12 volt converter

instead of a 24 volt to 12 volt

converter

for the helm electronics and it's

outputting 13.2 volts

when on shore power question mark

so the input range is not a problem

right

that's actually a good thing that means

that this device will take whatever

input you have

right and you want a big range so that's

okay to have a big input range

the output is 12 but on your case it's

13

2. 13.2 is actually a really good

float charging voltage so it what the

advantage of

dc to dc converters is that you can have

an

output voltage that is higher than 12

volt and that helps offset the voltage

drop that's going to happen

between the output of the converter and

whatever your loads are which might be

your navigation equipment

so it's not a it's not an issue to have

a big range of input that's actually a

good thing that means whatever you throw

at me on the input

i'll always make sure that the output is

thirteen two good

um and thirteen two is better than

twelve eight or twelve six because

the higher that you don't want 14 for as

a charging converter but generally power

supplies are going to be or converters

are going to be around for a 12 volt

battery bank

around 13 2 13 3 to maybe 13 5

and at that voltage the

12 volt appliances are gonna have

probably

more reliable use because it doesn't

matter how low your 24 volt battery bank

goes doesn't matter those the converters

always outputting 13 2 always and so it

provides a more stable

sort of electrical environment for

whatever loads are powered by your

converter

all right and this is a follow-up

question um regarding the dc converter

location

should it be closer to the switch and

battery or closer to the chart plotter

on the fly bridge

oh that's a really good one um

it it i would probably because it's 24

now in most installations the converter

is actually installed as close to the

batteries as possible

in most situations um and that's how

most builders do it

but it's a great question and i've done

it the way you're maybe suggesting

i would i often end up running again

because the voltage drop is going to be

minimized on a 24 volt circuit over a 12

volt

it's all about proportionality voltage

drop is the same but proportionally that

voltage drop is not as much

an effect on 24 as 12. so i would

probably have 24 going to the fly bridge

or whatever the helm is and then i would

convert

the 24 to 12 locally and then have

reasonable size wires going to all my

different electronics

on that boat uh for the that knee 12

from 24. so i put the converter

at the f at the helm that being said

most builders do not do it that way and

they'll have the converter close to the

batteries

so either way you got to make sure that

you size the wire but

yeah we i like to have those converters

close to the electronics

all right thanks for all your great

information jeff

how are we going to convince you to set

up across the border

i'm considering it how about that

it's it's i've got a 10-year plan a

three-year plan

a one-year plan a q3 plan

uh it's it's on our horizon yeah it's on

horizon and it's not 10 years so it's

closer to three years

so yes it's part of uh it's part of the

dream

absolutely all right so it's a firefly

day i think today okay all right let's

do it can you explain the difference

between

the c10 rating versus the c20

rating okay and what do you recommend

for firefly

okay good question so

when we think about battery capacity

battery capacity is always a function of

time and a way that i describe that is

very similar to drinking

alcohol the rate at which you

take drinks is going to affect your

ability to process alcohol

so you could have one drink every two

hours

and maybe you won't get drunk or a drink

every three hours maybe you will never

get drunk but if you have

five drinks in five minutes you know for

some of us

we're certainly gonna get drunk so the

rate at which you are

processing alcohol or drinking alcohol

is gonna greatly affect

your ability to withstand the effects

batteries are the same you know if you

take a 100 amp hour battery

for example firefly 110 but let's call

it 100.

um if you discharge that battery over a

20 hour period

so 100 divided by 20 5 amps so you put a

5

amp load that battery is gonna give you

a battery capacity

that's called the c20 rating so when

firefly says they have a battery

capacity of 110

amp hours that is 110 amp hours if you

discharge that battery

at over 20 hours right so that would be

5.5 amp discharge over 20 hour period

now if you're using your battery and

you're discharging it more quickly than

that

right then you should consider the c10

reading

so that is battery capacity over 10

hours

there's even some manufacturers will

even give you a battery capacity over

five hours

so c20 rating c10 rating c5 rating

so when you're buying a battery make

sure you're always looking at the

nominal

which is c20 most battery manufacturers

if they're being

fair are going to give us the c20 rating

so that we're always comparing apples to

apples

now if they give you a c40 or even more

they're

actually misleading us a little bit

because they're extrapolating the rate

at which you're discharging your battery

and they're

actually sort of faking it right they're

saying my battery's gonna last but

they're saying well

the amperage on the battery is

proportionally so small that would take

so much longer c20 is a good one right

it's

about a day 20 hours and so

on most of our boats you know if we're

thinking that the battery bank is going

to be discharged in about a day

then we'll use the c20 rating for its

capacity

on some boats where they're just

charging the whole battery bank in six

hours or even 10 hours right so some

power boaters are going really hard

between

you know generator to generator run

runtime and they're discharging the

whole battery bank

in 10 hours then what we might consider

is we might look at battery capacity as

a

c10 rating so c10 c20 really depends how

quickly you're going to discharge the

battery

and the 10 or 20 or hours so that's what

that is that's a good question

all right we've got five minutes left

are ready oh

let's do an electronics question that

went fast didn't it

very fast yeah oh listen this gentleman

has a 52 foot hatteras

such a beautiful boat big fan i'm

installing a garmin autopilot

the hydraulic pump is 12 volt to 24 volt

input

my 30 to 12 volt converter is rated at

25

amps you're wondering if it's going to

be enough to power that

pump yeah oh

i don't know well if you're running it

yeah i probably gonna be fine

but that's a small converter i by the

way you've got a big boat

right in the in our world uh

i would probably increase my uh

converter because remember that

converter's probably doing other things

so the pump is not the only thing that's

going to be running so

you know i might look at bringing that

converter up doubling it

you don't want the converter to be

strained uh and remember those hydraulic

pumps especially in confused or

following c's are working really hard

and you don't want the electronics of

your converter

to be working so hard at line rate right

that eventually it overheats because

that hydraulic pump might be working on

a long passage for

you know days on end so i would probably

increase the size of my converter

which means that you're probably gonna

have to increase the size of the ace the

dc wiring

going to it maybe not on the output uh

depending on

what the distribution is like but yeah i

think that's

i i'm i always like to side on a little

bit of caution right i don't like

unpleasant surprises on boats uh so i

would go with a larger converter

uh to put that garmin autopilot pump on

yeah

very nice comment from john he said you

have saved my boat and

life awesome and all that i've learned

from your videos that i've watched

during this off season

now i know that i've made mistakes to be

fixed thank you jeff

you're welcome and by the way we all

make mistakes

testify um you know i

we make mistakes all the time the most

important thing here and i mean it's

it's great because a boat is actually

such a representation of life

you've got to learn from them and strive

to be better it's cheesy but

it's uh our vessels our boats are

microcosm of the world

and so we just have to constantly

improve and get it better and

learn from our mistakes and it's a

journey you know i've been doing this

for

15 years now and honestly

in 15 years from now i'm probably gonna

know so much more than i know now again

because

i'm curious right so curiosity and

learning is everything

so kudos on you to actually a be humble

and remind us

all of us that we all make mistakes

that's really important there's no such

thing as perfection

we're chasing it but there's no such

thing as perfection

uh steve says great tech talk as always

thanks from the uk

hey steve thank you and eric wants you

to come to houston oh

love it oh my god

we need some warmth we're going to go

with our last question here from the uk

all right let's do it when installing an

anchor windlass

would you install the battery close to

the windlass and run long wires to

charge battery or run

long power wires from the battery at the

stern

yeah i would given a choice for windlass

i would install the battery for the

windlass near the windlass as close as

possible

because the larger the the most amount

of current is going to be on the short

wire and then having that battery bank

the windlass battery be charged over a

long distance

because whatever charging current you're

going to put back into the windlass

is probably going to be most likely less

than the load from the windlass to the

battery so have the battery as close to

the windlass as possible

and then have long wires for recharging

the windlass battery

make sure that also you have the

windlass charge when the engine is

running

right so it's not only charged via

battery chargers which only work with a

generator or shore

but it would also work when the

alternator is uh

outputting so if your alternator outputs

you want that alternate output to make

it to the windlass battery

so that you know i always start the

engine rev my engine to about

i have a diesel let's say call it 1100

1200 rpm

enough so that as i'm raising

my anchor with the windlass the

alternator is really helping

supplement and keep that voltage as high

as possible because

dc motors like starters thrusters

winlesses

will die prematurely if they're on

their run with lower voltage so a high

reasonable high voltage like 13 14 volts

while the alternator is operating is

really good for the windlass

that is actually going to extend your

windlass life so make sure that your

alternator is definitely charging that

battery bank

when you're using the win list to lift

the anchor

yeah all right well that's it for today

and some absolutely wonderful comments

skagit please come to washington state

oh you guys are awesome don from

portland thanks again

uh someone looking for an office in the

east coast of canada

we're not there yet but one day yeah

thank you everyone for joining us jeff

last words before we sign out all right

it's almost boating season

in the northern part of this hemisphere

right so to all of you out there

hopefully an amazing we're all dreaming

about boating and it's coming closer and

closer to reality especially here in

british columbia

so be safe and always be curious uh

life is full of lessons it's awesome

thanks for watching

appreciate it take care everyone have a

wonderful day all right

joining us bye

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