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Adding Batteries to a Bank

Dan Baron

New Member
I have a 1989 38-200 in Ventura, CA and I do frequent trips out to the Northern Channel Islands. I am running the original 2 Group 27 wet-cell setup and would like to add 2 batteries to the house bank, so I have 3 on the house and 1 for starting. Do I need to upgrade the alternator on the Univeral M40? Any other sage advice?
 

u079721

Contributing Partner
This is a HUGE topic, and I would say get a book or two by Nigel Calder and start reading. You'll get at least as many opinions here as there are sailors on this board. One point you might not appreciate is that you should not combine old and new batteries in one bank, so it wouldn't be a good idea to simply add one new 27 to your two existing ones to form a house bank. Beyond that you need to start by adding up your daily power needs, and only after that will you be in a position to evaluate battery and alternator capacity.

In our case we had two group 31, 130 AH batteries as our house bank that we also used for engine starting, with a separate engine back up battery just in case. But we never ran our fridge, and didn't have RADAR, so our power needs were quite modest, so the existing alternator worked for us.
 
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