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Agreed the Add-A-Battery is a good choice for a switch and is easy to install yourself. The directions that come with it are quite good. Good Luck!The BlueSea "Add A Battery" is very straightforward and incorporates a voltage sensitive relay to enable charging of both batteries under way. Just pay attention to proper fusing and use buss bars where needed.
As an experienced father of two teen girls (now adults) living on a lake and driving the boats a lot, I strongly recommend a second battery and VSR setup like suggested above. Otherwise you'll be getting out the jumper starter on a regular basis.I have a single battery and it does have a battery switch (2012 Bennington). I'm assuming it would be a single switch? I would like to get a second battery, would that make that switch useless, do I need to buy a dual switch? My kids want to use their DVD players on the boat, not sure how much this and the radio will drain the battery. I would like to make sure I don't get stuck on the water. Would I want the same set up as PDX for my purpose? Thanks.
I am not as ambitious as the rest of these fine posters... but in looking at your initial question, I paid the dealer $142.50 for one and a half hours of labor to install a dual battery set-up in my boat before he dropped it in the water last year. I provided the second battery and tie down box and told him where I wanted everything. In addition, he charged me for the switch, wire, and copper lugs on top of that. So, you can do it yourself and save on the labor... lots of guidance online. Or, pay about what I did for the labor. Either way, you have to buy the, battery, tie down, and associated switch/wire/parts. I would have spent much more time than an hour and a half researching how to do it myself, buying parts, worrying if I was doing it right, etc., etc.
I must be getting a good price because I'm getting the dual switch installed along with the battery for $200. I'm handy but figured why not let them do it for a few bucks.I am not as ambitious as the rest of these fine posters... but in looking at your initial question, I paid the dealer $142.50 for one and a half hours of labor to install a dual battery set-up in my boat before he dropped it in the water last year. I provided the second battery and tie down box and told him where I wanted everything. In addition, he charged me for the switch, wire, and copper lugs on top of that. So, you can do it yourself and save on the labor... lots of guidance online. Or, pay about what I did for the labor. Either way, you have to buy the, battery, tie down, and associated switch/wire/parts. I would have spent much more time than an hour and a half researching how to do it myself, buying parts, worrying if I was doing it right, etc., etc.
floves, I would install an additional dual battery switch and make your original switch control everything but the starter. It gives you a way to isolate the extras if you have to switch to battery #2 to start, which hopefully never occurs because #1 has to do nothing but start the motor. Steve
I'm not following the idea of the single switch per the above. If the house load were moved from com to term #2, then you have effectively isolated house and starting systems, with Batt #2 becoming the dedicated House Battery. The stater connection would be controlled by the dual switch - Batt #1 for dedicated starting battery, Batt #2 to start from House system battery, or Both to combine batteries. This part I like. I'd think one would want to keep the dual switch set to Batt #1. If the dual switch were set to Batt #2, Batt #1 would be doing nothing, and the House battery would power all systems. If set to Both it'd be same as no switch. So the single switch would be a house systems 'off switch' to allow more juice to the starter? If so, not sure that would work, as the helm is on the House system, and power to the Helm is needed for start up.Alot of people may not like the idea of the single and dual switch but if I had it I would use it. The best palcement for your single switch would be (looking at the dual diagram)tied to term.#2 with the house load tied to the #2 term. or switched term. of the single switch. Hope this makes sense. The way Bennington's diagram is, you can never isolate the house power when cranking.This might be overly anal but it is how I would do it. The VSR ties to term. #1 and #2 on the dual battery switch. Steve