Carver Owners Forum

I am a new owner of an 87 Mariner 32 (3297). I'm in Toronto (out of water 6 months a year). I have read the manuals and read what I can on forums and I am still confused about what settings the switches should be on when charging (on shore) and when on the water. It would appear that carver says that shore power should via one bank of power at a time not both. I really don't understand if I should be on both when at shore, with shore power switch on and inverter off, then only inverter turned on the water to either battery bank one or two. Does the switches for 1-2-none-both matter when I am connected to shore power and not on the boat? There is little reference in the manuals as to which switch setting you should be on in different scenarios.

Welcome to the forum....sounds like you may have something extra than OEM , you mentioned an inverter, some more info may help the guys a bit more.The battery switch is just routing 12volt power to the 12volt panel from whatever #1 or #2 is connected to....both would be #1 and #2 combined......off should be all 12volt power to the panel off.

Are you saying you have an inverter charger set up ??

The OEM charger if wired in right should charge both batteries at the same time no matter where the battery selector switch is pointing. I always ran my batteries on both when underway, if not alternator was only charging the battery the selector was on. Now I never had a house battery or house bank of batteries so I always switched to a single battery when at anchor. Now that we have a genny I make it a habit to run the genny to exercise it and thus charging the batteries at the same time. If not running the genny I switch to a single battery to keep one battery fully charged to restart engines after being on the hook. Works for me!

It doesn't m

Iguana wrote:Source of the post...Does the switches for 1-2-none-both matter when I am connected to shore power and not on the boat?.....

Yes it matters. I turn mine to "off" when away from the boat. Regardless of the position you leave the switch in, the charger will charge your batteries as it's either hooked up directly to the batteries or to the source side of the selector switch unless a previous owner made some changes. DON'T leave the switch on "Both" as this will combine banks and render your charger's bank isolation useless. That is a good way to shorten battery life, and if one battery is bad, you'll toast all of them because you've combined them all in the "Both" position.