Question about adding a second battery to a houseboat

[atfritz217]

Tried doing numerous searches but couldn't find an answer that helped me on this one. I have a 43' steel hull houseboat that I was interested in adding a box amp to. All of my batteries are in the back engine compartment as most boats and I wanted to put the amplifier and subwoofers under the front deck where I spend most of my time and in order to pretty much turn my big steel front deck into a subwoofer.

My question pertains to the battery wiring. What I was thinking about doing was putting a deep cycle, the amplifier, the subwoofer, and a standard battery charger/maintainer under the front deck. I have a old double 12" subwoofer I was going to wire directly to the negative and the positive of the deep cycle. I am using 4 gauge wires and have it fused. My two questions are do I need to ground the battery? Also since I dont want to have to climb under the deck every time to hook up the charger can I just leave the charger wired to the battery and have the plug in out in the open or will the amp not work if I have the charger hooked up at the same time I use the amplifier? I was going to run the remote switch through a accessible toggle so that I can turn the amp on and off. How many amps can the remote on switch from the head unit run just in case I want to add another amp to power other speakers?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and once again I apologize for what is most likely a stupid set of questions.

 

[Splat]

Re: Question about adding a second battery to a houseboat

DO NOT GROUND THE BATTERY TO THE HULL. EVER. bad juju.

Sure you can leave the charger attached to the battery and plug it in at the end of the day. The amp will work fine. You say it's a maintainer tho, is it a charger or a maintainer? A maintainer won't bring the batteries back to full charge as they are only a trickle charger. A dual purpose charger/maintainer should work fine. If you want a super clean install, install a charger plug somewhere so you only need plug a extension cord into it at night.

Trying to run the amp while the the charger is actively charging may damage the charger, and will almost certainly create a noticeable hum in the amp output.

Bill

 

[atfritz217]

Re: Question about adding a second battery to a houseboat

Well heck. I should've checked back last night, I didnt expect an answer to my question so unbelievably quick.

The charger is a charger/maintainer so I should be alright there. I think it was either a 10 amp or 15 amp charger so it should bring it up quite easily overnight.

So if you say I have no need to ground to the hull I can do Charger negative to negative/ positive to positive to the battery and then negative to negative/positive to positive from the battery to the amplifier with no need for grounding? If so that will make things incredibly easy for me.