Battery size for different equipment

[Hunter Freeman]

I am wondering what size battery is needed to run this equipment for about 5-6 hours while on the water. I am wanting to run a fish finder/ gps, a light (rear of boat for nighttime, and a live well pump (keeping about 10-12 spot sized fish). Would a 20ah battery be far too much over kill?

[Capt C-Hawk]

I've only experienced usage of a ff/gps. I bought the Cabelas 12v - 8ah w\charger. It runs a Lowrance elite4 dsi for 3 full days without needing a charge.

[tufnik]

You can figure it out. Look at the specs of all the equipment. Add up all the amp draws. Let's say the total is 3000 ma or 3 amps. To run the equipment for 6 hours, you need an 18 amp hr battery (3 X 6 = 18). I assume they are all 12 volts. The 8 amp hr batt from Cabelas is not enough. You don't want to drain the batt down to zero. For this example, I'd say you need a battery or batteries that gives you about 26 amp hr.

[HOUSE]

I'm running a Humminbird 597 which draws 0.615amps and an LED light which draws 0.020amps, so I usually usually guesstimate my usage @ just under 1amp per hour just to be safe. I have a 7.5mA battery from Chrome (sold on Amazon) which works great for 5+ hour trips. They sell a 10.5mA battery as well which only runs about $25 which might work for you since you have a bilge pump. I don't run one in my kayak but the 800GPH bilge in my boat runs about 2.5amps. I can't imagine your setup would run the bilge for very long, so I think a small motorcycle type battery like this would handle the load. If you really wanted some extra juice, you could probably run two of them in series for under 50 bucks which would be much cheaper than a $100/big/heavy deep cycle.

I'm new here so I'm not sure what this site's rules are on linking to product websites, but here's the Amazon battery that I was referring to. Please feel free to remove the link if there's any issue.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008D5W94O/...I1A6OK7FWE9ZXN

[ComeOnFish]

I am happy with all SLA batteries whether I paid $10-40. I use only one FF at a time so I can't say battery size. But I had issues with some battery chargers. I charge three SLA batteries (5-9ah) at a time (for three kayaks).

I learned that I should pay a bit more for the chargers with safety features for the batteries and human. Chargers did go bad. For example, Cabela's chargers went bad in 3 months. The Cabela's battery is still good. several times I thought the batteries went bad. But batteries weren't the problem.

Joe

[toyomo]

Question is a little too vague. Depending on the exact equipment you can determine the requirement like was already stated. Lowrance elite 5 manual states typical draw is .75 amps whereas the 4 says .25 amps so you can see there is a pretty significant difference depending on what you have, screen size etc. Once you figure out the exact loads you can get a pretty good idea of how long your battery should last in theory.

[vballbach]

Quick question for you all...

I am planning on mounting a FF on the yak and connect the power source directly to the 12V battery I have for the trolling motor. Do I need some sort of breaker in between or can I just connect straight to the terminal?

Thanks in advance.

[tufnik]

Depends on how much risk you're willing to take. Check each equipment and see if there is a fuse or circuit breaker. If none, you may want to install one. I had a Minn Kota trolling motor with no circuit breaker so I bought a waterproof 40 amp breaker. Turned out it saved my motor several times. Once I was running through shallow water with lots of weeds. The weeds overloaded the motor and the breaker kicked in to shut down the motor. After several seconds, the breaker reset automatically and the motor resumed. The overload happened several times going across the river, so the breaker worked well.