Blue Sea ACR install

I have been following Tom Larkin's blog with interest. Tom is building a slightly modified Devlin Godzilla tug which he has called Coot, and is close now to having the boat finished and ready for the first splash. Most of the woodwork is finished and he is at the point of installing hardware and finishing off the electrical installation.

Very sensibly he is installing a Blue Sea ACR which very cleverly charges both the house and the engine start battery at the same time when the engine is running but as soon as the relay senses that there is no charge coming from the alternator, such as when the engine is shut down, it opens isolating the two batteries from each other. Thus as the house loads are drawn from the house battery the engine start battery is left undisturbed so no matter how much the house batteries are drained you are always sure to have a fully topped up battery to start the motor.

Because the system is fully automatic with no switches to flip, or forget for that matter it is the almost perfect solution to avoiding waking up in the morning and finding that the engine start battery has insufficient power to crank over the engine.

In the past the nearest thing to this arrangement was the use of blocking diodes and although they did sterling service in many applications they are very inefficient and can lead to chronic undercharging of batteries which are sure to shorten their life.

I tend to agree with Tom that the schematic wiring diagram that comes with the ACR can be difficult to follow and I know that there  was some head scratching on my part when I installed one last year. Faced with similar issues Tom has come up with one of the best diagrams that I have seen that shows the relationship between all the on board components.

You can click on it to make it larger but I especially like the way that he has shown those parts that will be hidden below the cabin sole and those such as the main switch panel etc that will be readily accessible adjacent to the helm. It sure beats the sketch that I did on the back of a corn flake packet when I did my install.

Comments

[smithsamanta]

This is that very information I searched for. Thank you very much!