North Australian FISH FINDER forums

maxpower wrote:Gday Buzzdog, I installed a redarc BCDC 1225 in my boat back in Feb. Its been very good so far. On a lot of my trips with extended motoring to and from, I return with my Minnkota battery at 100% even with pretty solid use in the fishing time. Ive been meaning to do up a bit of a post about the setup and I will soon. I set mine up with a changeover relay and can also charge my boat with a solar panel after trips and and during extended trips.

The BCDC itself is a sealed unit and I spray it down with freshwater after use and its fine. I think a BCDC1220 would be better in some ways for me because the alternator I have only puts out a max of 25amps. The redarc is always trying to draw the maximum amps for the minnkota battery so my start battery is missing out when its on the "boost" cycle, this causes it to switch off every few minutes to give the start battery a charge. Im guessing with the 1220 there should be spare 5amps available when cruising to top up the start battery reducing the switching. In anycase it still works very well and charge time is much quicker than it used to be.

maxpower wrote:Buzzdog, I wired my set up in conjunction with a typical marine manual isolation switch (with the OFF, 1, 2, 1+2 positions). If I need to override the bcdc can do it this way. I ended up wiring it in 16mm cable I had lying around.

Redarc are easily contactable and happy to help with tech questions too. I am good mates with the manager in SA so if u get stuck with any of it let me know. I had a fair few questions when I was looking into it too.

maxpower wrote:I dont have a photo mate but I had the VSR system before the redarc and it worked well. These are a pretty normal set up and do great job and fairly inexpensive.

The Redarc is taking it to another level though as its a multi stage charging system. Its designed to keep your battery at 100%. Charge it fast and then maintain it prolonging the battery life. Plenty of info online. One way to look at it is.....it's like having your battery connected to a 25amp multi stage charger (like a C-Tek) while your boat is running. Also you have the ability to see exactly what stage of charge you battery is at. I did a 6 day barra trip in my 4.6m boat recently and by the time I got back to the ramp batteries at 100%. Like nomad said above you rarely need to use any other charger if you do the kms. I plug in a solar panel when boats in storage to maintain the batteries.

Both designed to do slightly different things. Both do their job well.