Another Dead Battery

[Beowulf]

I have been having problems with the house battery on my 32. I just discovered that the battery is dead after only one week out of the water. This is the third time the house battery has failed. I replaced it last spring and it looks like this one has gone bad also. Any ideas as to what is causing this premature battery failure. I always leave the charger on at the dock so I would not have noticed it failing during the season.

Steve 2005 CC-32 out of Cape May

[Bix]

Dead Battery

Had the problem last year, in order to find out what was draining the battery, attached one side of a multi meter to the neg terminal of the battery and the other to the neg wire ( so the ground is flowing through the meter), and set the mulit meter to mili amps, There should be a very slight drain on the battery with nothing drawing.. approx .01- .02 ma, if the mulit meter is reading more, then start pullling fuses until you get it to drop to the acceptable levels. When I tested mine, I was at .07ma, it would kill the battery in about a week, turned out I had installed a Raymarine DS600 fishfinder which does not have a on/off switch, nor is it turned off from the display, which I asumed ( also found this in fine print in the manual) Hope this helps
Jon

[TwinFin]

ideas

any chance your fridge has been running without you realizing it? I had my battery run down on my 28 when my yard neglected to put me on shore power as promised. The fridge is about the only thing that will run continuously even with the main switch off. It has to be turned off at the breaker box.

Also - there was an interesting thread on here a while back about Volvo engine computers draining the battery if the key switches were not turned all the way left when the engines were shut off.

[lrc]

Dead Batteries

Here's the thread Steve is referring to.

http://www.carolinaclassicboatowners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=894&highlight=volvo

It was an issue that I raised with Mac after repeated dead batteries. I'm sure you don't have Volvo but the situation could be similar on other ignition /engine designs. It drove me crazy for quite a while.