Trojan Boat Forum

I have a 300 watt inverter connected to a deep cycle 12v on my blow boat and I don't have a charger . I have used it to brew coffee , run the 19" plasma and dvd AND surround sound , normally no more then 2-3 days and Ive never had the batt drain. Now on the Trojan the plan was to install a 700 watt inverter and somehow wire it to the main breaker panel, any ideas on howto do it ? pics?

To wire it into the main system , you would need to have a switch to go from shore power to inverter power and to prevent both shore power and inverter power from powering the boat at the same time . Same as you would with a gen set


like this
http://www.bluesea.com/products/6337/AC ... 20V_AC_30A

or http://www.bluesea.com/products/9010

There are others and the one need would depend on if you have single or dual 30amp shore power .

you would wire it like a gen set . I asume you don't have a gen set installed

no Gen in Bobs boat but looks like he can now run a small town off of battery power!

http://s1170.photobucket.com/user/A8CT/ ... t=3&page=1

Ok, here are some pics along with a couple of other cabin shots. Here are a couple of youtube videos too. A little shaky, it never prompted me to autocorrect when I uploaded.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnFeTdvarnE Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywEK-pZadgo Part 2


Bob

Pretty amazing run times considering when a 1500 watt inverter is running, it is drawing 150 amps at 12VDC if it 85% efficient.

It will only draw that much near full load .

Hi Bob,
Would love to see video if possible. Thinking of adding an inverter myself and could use some direction.
Thanks, George

George, take a look a few threads up, I posted a couple of YouTube clips. Not a how to but will give you general layout. One tool that's worth buying is the hydraulic battery crimping set from Harbor Freight. You can get cables made up but I don't see how you could figure out the lengths (in advance) and get it right. I added two batteries so that made it a little more involved... Lots of crimping.

Bob

That's a sweet setup

tool that's worth buying is the hydraulic battery crimping set from Harbor Freight

The right tool for the job will make a huge difference. So will buying your terminals in bulk in advance from Amazon or Ebay. Have you shopped terminals at We$t Marine???? Ouch!

Bob,

I just got caught up on this thread.

Thanks for the video you posted !

This kind of support is one of the reasons why our orphaned BRAND remains so popular, even after being out of production for 20 years.

RWS

Thanks for the compliments, glad to help!

hi this is just my 2 cents of what I have learned about battery power and draws
you should never draw your deep cycle batteries down past 60-70% of full capacity and charge them often to train them (first 150 charges or so)and you should get 800-1000 or more re charges with little fade on the performance of the batteries, considering what you will spend for a good house battery system (I have 6 Trojan 6v 225 ah batteries giving me 725 ah of power $800 or so )
if you only have batteries for power away from shore you should calculate your total power usage over the time away from shore and only consume a max of 40% of usable amp hours to keep happy and healthy batteries.
heres a quick example of power draw over 1 hour for a coffee maker

1500/120=12.5ah
watts divided by volts equals amps
other items have the rating of amps and you can count that as you see fit
a/c units are approximately 1 amp per 1000 btu's

having a generator will extend that when you fire it up for cooking as needed and have it wired to your chargers, or having a secondary charging generator on the engines to top up the batteries while underway (one of my next year projects)hate running the generator unless I have to.

hope this sheds some light for all (or correct me if im wrong as I am still learning myself)

cheers paul

Bob,

I'll have to check out the crimper

I had my cables made up. I used string to model the lengths and added 2". They worked out great.