We've got juice

Today it was finally warm enough to visit the marina.  The road is still one lane between all the boats being stored for the winter but we arrived early and found a spot to park right in front of our shed.  Getting into the shed involved climbing a snow pile and then ducking under the cable that holds that curtain in place. Not pleasant when you have stuff to unload.

As previously mentioned, we fought off cabin fever during evenings this last week by making mounting trays for the two batteries that will power the inverter. We're glad we took the time to do that since the space under the salon floor doesn't have much overhead.

Carrying the two batteries from the trunk of the car up and across the snow pile was a challenge to say the least and our right arm is now several inches longer than the left. The Group 24 Diehard Battery weighs about 50 lbs and the Group 29 Interstate is 79 lbs according to the spec sheet.  The difficult part was picking them up and putting them on the swim platform.  We may have to order a new gonad or two some time soon. Luckily we have Google to point us to a source. Perhaps www.ballsareus.com or maybe even scrotumrepairs.com?

It took longer than we had anticipated to mount the inverter.  We had it completely bolted in place before we realized that we'd have to attach the battery cables to it first. So, we dismounted it, cut some battery cable, added terminals at the ends and attached them to the inverter and once again mounted it on the wall.

The two batteries were left on their new trays, unmounted, so we could move them around a little as we wired them up.

The final installation is nice and neat, with the batteries positioned to maximize the storage space under the salon. Here's the second of the two batteries trucked away in a corner.

Here's the first battery, which is closest to the inverter.

We managed to keep the cable run between the batteries quite short.

The inverter gets 110-volt AC power from a duplex outlet that was already there.  It originally powered the old refrigerator so it is protected by a circuit breaker.  After everything was mounted, we fired the inverter up and everything worked as expected.  We even tested it with an electric drill on inverter (battery) power and that worked too..

On Sunday, we returned to wire a duplex GFI outlet to the inverter and mount the outlet somewhere on the starboard side of the salon, where Silverton didn't provide any AC outlets. We began by running a length of 12-3 cable from the inverter around the edge of the storage area to a spot directly under the cabinet where we have the AM-FM and VHF radios.   There was an existing access hole there in the floor for antenna and speaker cables.  Then we located a surface mount outlet box down near the floor and drilled a 3/4-inch hole through the back of the box and the plywood behind it. Luck was with us when we put a snake (a length of #12 electrical wire) through the hole in the back of the outlet box.  With a little fishing, we pulled the snake out through the hole in the floor.  Then it was only a matter of pulling our inverter cable up with the snake, cutting it to length and attaching the GFI outlet.

The GFI outlet looks like it was always there.

For anyone interested in the electrical specs for this installation, we wired the inverter to two new 12-volt marine deep cycles batteries, wired in parallel.  We used #4 battery cable and copper compression ring terminals. #4 battery cable is good for 200 amps at a length of 10 feet.  Our longest cable is less than 48 inches so the DC round trip is 8 feet or less.

The inverter is advertised to provide 2,000 watts or 2,200 for short periods.  Our primary load is a compact refrigerator with a draw of 75 watts.  To start the compressor, we estimated 150 watts. The 110-volt GFI duplex outlet in the salon is connected to the inverter so that small AC accessories can be used while underway.

The inverter has a built-in transfer switch so it will come on line as soon as our shore cord is disconnected. It also has a built-in battery charger that will recharge the two inverter batteries once dockside power is reconnected.

We did not design this so that the inverter battery bank would be recharged by one of the engine alternators while underway.  A typical cruise for us probably won't ever exceed 8 hours and with that much battery power available, the inverter should be able to support the refrigerator and even some other small appliance or a laptop computer for that length of time. Also, the inverter system is not tied to the boat/engine grounds and we'd have to make that connection if we wanted to have one of the engine alternators recharge the inverter system.