Hi I'm John Eichelsheim from Boating New Zealand Magazine. We're at Haines Hunter where we've got the Boating New Zealand Haines Hunter 660 photo boat. We've got in the workshop today and we've decided that we were going to fit a a Pro Mariner battery charger. Now I'm with Liam and Tim from Pro Mariner and BEP and I'd like to ask the guys why you would go to the trouble of fitting a battery charger – a permanently fitted battery charger to a trailer boat like this. Tim, what are some of the reasons for putting a battery charger like this in a boat of the size? The main reason is to make sure that you've maintained your optimum batteries to a hundred percent.
So on your next trip out you know one hundred percent that you're good to go. The batteries are quite an expensive thing to replace. You want to get maximum lifespan out of them. By keeping a maintenance voltage charged on them, you'll guarantee that you'll get as much as you can out of the batteries. [JOHN] So how does keeping a battery topped up or maintained extend its life? OK, you should never really keep a lead acid battery in a discharged state. The Lead plates inside will sulfate and you will lose capacity. The next time you use the boat you'll suddenly find that you can't run things for as long as you used to. Maybe you couldn't start your engines. So it's it's very important that once you get back …
And you can't just walk away from the boat – you should theoretically make sure that your batteries are at 100% so you know for the next time you go out you've got good healthy batteries. So Liam – I guess one of the things that we see more and more of these days- is that boats have a lot more kit on them, a lot more electronics and so on … I guess that impacts on how much power they need or how much they draw from their batteries? Yeah absolutely. I mean obviously with the amount of electronics and stuff we're putting on boats these days screens are getting bigger. We're putting multimedia set ups and stuff on the vessels.
We've got a lot more draw, and a lot more demand on … often an infrastructure which isn't really thought about or improved. We're relying on the alternator from the outboard to be able to supply the recharging capacity that we need to keep that battery fully charged. Often times that alternator may not be able to keep up, so having something like a battery charger that is able to ensure that that battery is topped up that it is in a reconditioned condition, and that it's maintained over a long period of time allows you to not think about it and to really trust that the system is going to be there and it's going to be in a good working order when you need it and then it's not going to catch you out. [JOHN] Fantastic, so with this particular unit we saw that it's pretty easy to install it doesn't take very long, so if you were to use this now you bring your boat back at the end of the day what's the story …? What do you do? [LIAM] Once the systems all set up and hooked up properly to what's on board it's purely a process of coming back putting the boat away as you're cleaning it down just like you normally would with a general shut down, and then plug it into your AC mains in your garage or your carport.
And then it's a process of 'forget it', and the battery charger will maintain that system, it will keep it healthy, and it'll be there when you need it next time. [JOHN] Finally, are there any sort of other things that are specific to this unit that make it special? It's a pretty rugged sort of unit – it certainly looks rugged! Yeah absolutely, so it's designed for the Marine environment, it's significantly lighter than a lot of other ones you'll find in the marketplace as well. The real kind of key thing is that it's waterproof, and it's been salt water tested. [JOHN] Something that I notice straightaway it doesn't have any fans. A lot of battery charges will have interior exterior fans to allow heat flow transfer. Where this one here handles all of that within the case design itself. It's not designed to sit on your workbench at home, it's actually designed to be in the vessel and to withstand the kind of environment that you're going to be putting it through out there on the water.
That's brilliant well thank you guys. So here we are we've got it installed, we're confident that every time we take this boat out from here on in the battery's going to be in perfect condition. John Eichelsheim from Boating New Zealand Thanks for watching. If you'd like to see more of these videos – please subscribe to our Channel! Subtitles by BBGroup NZ.
