Catalina 350 International Association

I'm planning to install a battery monitor. Our boat has golf cart batteries, in series and then parallel for a single bank house system. ( I have separate starting battery).
My question is: where have others installed the shunt. I only intend to monitor the house bank and understand i need to put the shunt in the negative side in a place that will pick up all the loads on the house bank. Where exactly is the best place? I notice there are two negative cables behind the DC panel that are combined before being connected to the negative bus for the DC panel. Would this be the best spot and would it pick up all loads including windlass etc?

Thanks in advance for any input.

I mounted mine right in with the batteries. I have wooden braces to hold the batteries from moving. I bolted the shunt to one of the braces.

Thanks Ralph, I'll look into that option. Not much room in that area but if yours is mounted there then I should be able to squeeze mine in that space too.

Just a belated update to my battery monitor installation, thanks to Ralph for the good idea to locate the shunt in the battery box area. That worked well for me. The Victron is better than the Xantrex I installed on my last boat (C320) because it only needs one communication cable from the shunt to the panel display. Makes it easy to install.

I also got the Bluetooth dongle from Victron which allows me to see the battery monitor as well as my newly installed solar panels from my iPhone or iPad from anywhere on board.
I purchased a Victron solar panel smart charge controller, model MPPT 75-15 to handle the input from the 2x120Watt panels and to provide smart charging to my 450A-Hr golf cart house batteries. - the solar panels provide up to 12 amps depending on weather-clouds etc, even at my 49deg north location in WA state.

Get the Victron app from the appstore for free and it not only communicates with the devices, it also automatically updates the firmware in both devices whenever there is an update from Victron. Very neat and easy.

I'm thinking I need a switch for the solar panels/ solar MPPT charger in order to turn the system off if needed. Has anyone installed a switch? I haven't seen much on this issue on-line but i'm considering the best location for the switch. Is it best located between the panels and the controller OR between the controller and the house batteries. Or is there any other way to switch it?

Anyone who has done this please let me know how you did it and how its working. Thanks

Kirk

Kirk, there was a post on the C34 web site about a solar install and one of the images showed a switch on the positive lead that appears to be between the controller and the battery. I'm sure they could answer any questions you have. http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,9734.0.html

Kirk,

Yes I installed a switch between my solar controller and the batteries. I mounted it on the back wall of the settee under the chart table so I could easily get to it if needed. I found that it is needed at times because the solar controller can take the battery voltage up to 14.2 volts and the alternator has a cut off somewhere around 14.1 volts. So if the batteries are fully charged on a nice sunny day and I happen to be motoring along, the tachometer quits working when the alternator shuts down at 14.1 volts.

I also installed the victron shunt inside the battery box in roughly the same location.

I added a quick disconnect to be able to unplug the panels (+/-) near the house battery bank which seems to work pretty well...

Thanks Ken, Gary and Geoff for your responses. I'll go with a 25A switch which I'll mount next to the controller and will switch the positive side of the output to the batteries.
I've located the controller inside the nav station cabinet. I have the old style cabinet made for a TV so lots of room in there for the Victron 175V/15A controller.