Batteries for the inverter

This past weekend, the Interstate Group 29 battery still hadn't arrived at the boat yard and frankly, it was just as well.  The packed down snow in the driveway was very slippery and our previously dug walkway into the shed where the boat is stored is once again filled with ice and heavy snow.

Instead of working on the boat, we spent some time in a short meeting concerning the Portland Riverside's Spring Sales Flier, which we produce for them each February. With that out of the way, we decided to to stop at Sears and see what they had for marine deep cycle batteries. We ended up buying a Group 27 Deep Cycle Die Hard for $79.95.  Good enough.  We went home, chipped some more ice and then re-did the calculations on the battery power we'd need to power the inverter.

Since all we want the inverter to do when away from the dock is to run the new fridge (75 watts running and we'd guess 150 watt at start-up) and maybe some small stuff like a fan or two, it appeared that we had more than enough battery capacity with one Group 29 and one Group 27 in parallel.

That afternoon, we put together a little mounting tray for the Group 27 Die Hard. Nothing elaborate but it will hold the battery in place while underway. The Group 29 is bigger (and heavier) so we'll have to make a another mounting tray for that one.

Neither of these batteries can be screwed down until all the wiring is in place.  We now have on hand 25-ft. of #4 battery cable.  That's good for 200 amps at a length of 10-feet, well within the distance between the inverter and the two batteries.  It should be fun to connect the battery cables to the inverter, mount it, run the cables to battery #1 and then to battery #2 and once it all looks good, screw everything down.

Next weekend?  We hope so.