Automatic battery chargers and circuit breakers

[Sharphooks]

I've had a Blue Sea 7610 ACR sitting in my basement for a couple of months. Really didn't feel like fooling with boat wiring! Then yesterday i learned all about what the term "amp hours" means in a battery---while running to my fishing spot through the fog (radar on, GPS on, radio on, depth sounder on---all wired to my house battery (the one NOT being charged by the Honda BF150 alternator due to battery isolation switches) my GPS suddenly went nuts, flickering on and off, making some scary noises. WFT? At first I thought it was a loose wire, but then it dawned on me-- all that time I spent in my driveway fiddling with my new electronics, then tacking on a 1 1/2 hour boat ride with no charging source to the battery powering all those electronics, my house battery puked on me.

Luckily, I'd arrived to the fishing spot. Once I fired up the Honda BF9.9 (nice heavy duty alternator on that one) my house battery got back into shape and the GPS and radar was fine.

But that little situation was all the impetus I needed to get off my arse and install the Blue Sea ACR unit. Spent the day doing just that.

I know that ABYC stipulates that all wires coming off a battery require circuit breakers. Easily siad and done on a 50 ft yacht with a huge engine room!

How in hell am I going to run a 7" cable off two batteries, and then hook those cables into the ACR unit? No space, no way.

I'm embarrassed to relate that I've never had circuit breakers on a boat before. Piles and piles of in-line fuses, but never a true circuit breaker within 7" of my batteries (to satisfy ABYC standards). How about you guys? What's the trick for placement?


Here's the beginning stages of the install---cable everywhere!:

Managed to get one circuit breaker in to my house wire (powers all my nav lights and marine electronics)


But once everything was buttoned back up, where the hell do I put circuit breakers to protect the wires coming off the battery to the ACR unit?

 

[Foxsea]

Managed to get one circuit breaker in to my house wire (powers all my nav lights and marine electronics)

But once everything was buttoned back up, where the hell do I put circuit breakers to protect the wires coming off the battery to the ACR unit?

Blue Seas makes a terminal fuse block and marine rated battery fuse that bolts to the battery post, protects main distribution and complies with the ABYC rule:

http://bluesea.com/application/2/12

It could do the job for you in that tight space.

 

[AlK]

I wired mine a little different and did not use the circuit breakers. Just an observation, in your case when you turn the switch to the 'Off" position, it appears to me that the ACR is not "Off". This means a small amount of power is continuously utilized by the ACR while it is monitoring the batteries.

 

[Sharphooks]

Thanks for the tip about the Breaker on the terminal fuse block, Foxsea. I'll research.

Hey Alk, you're right--the ACR is a "parasite" --- but in order to do the job, it has to be upstream of the isolation switch. All the more reason for me to find a circuit breaker solution---I could just trip the switch when not using the boat.

Man, it never stops with these things...