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The other night when the batteries were on charge from being fairly low the CO alarm went off and the consensus of experts was that I had a duff cell or battery. A while back I had also smelled the telltale eggy smell too. But we have just tested batteries and got the following readings Batteries charging at 14.06v from engine. Immediately on switching off - starter battery 13.7v, bank of 4 domestics 13.6v Hydrometer testing of all domestic battery cells had them all borderline in the green, tho with one cell in each battery borderline in the white. Nothing dramatically out of line from the others. Two cells on the difficult to access battery were too low to test (doesn't mean they were dry, just not full enough for the hydrometer tube to bend in to the cell and pick up). All cells looked clean - no deposits or blackness. After one hour of all batteries being disconnected and separated - starter read 13.65, the 4 domestics between 13.36 and 13.38 After a second hour of rest - starter read 13.27, 4 domestics all between 12.87 and 12.90. So even if I was worried about those two lower cells, there was no difference in the charge held by that battery and the others. So all seems to be fine and healthy enough to me with my limited knowledge, and all four batteries in my bank are equal. Do these readings look OK to those of you in the know? We have now topped up the two cells which were lower. What I suspect is that I had put the Victron Multi on 'charge only' rather than 'inverter' and this pumps a lot of charge in very fast, which may have been a bit much for the batteries and caused them to gas even though otherwise they are sound. Does this sound likely? It seems strange that a unit could be designed to fast-charge batteries enough to make them potentially dangerous. After the CO alarm incident I unplugged overnight then left myself plugged in for 24 hours on 'inverter' setting with no adverse readings on the CO meter, and no nasty smells. I am therefore hoping we have healthy (enough) happy (enough) batteries and thus can stop my credit card cowering in fear....

Hi all We bought our narrowboat about 2 months ago with what look like fairly new batteries - in fact, a engineer who recently looked at the engine commented on that. However, my wife noticed when charging her laptop that it would stop charging unless the engine was running at the time. I checked voltage at the battery after the last couple of engine runs and found the domestics looked well-charged. The last time I checked the multimeter read 13V immediately after running the engine, but checking it again less than an hour later it had dropped to 12.4V. This morning, 12 hours later, it was 11.7. We don't use a lot of electrics. We have a 12V fridge, LED lights, water and shower pumps, and a thermostat for the central heating/water heating. The laptop gets charged about once or twice a day. Before I jump to the conclusion that the batteries are kaput, I was wondering if there are any other potential causes for the drop in voltage. I'm concerned that if there's an underlying problem, that new batteries will end up in the same situation soon after. Thanks for any help folks can offer!

Hi, I have a twin alternator set up (with a Merlin battery management system) to charge 1x110a starter and 3x110a domestic batteries. The alternators are sometimes charging (14.05ish volts on the multi-meter for both) and sometimes not (12.5 - 12.8ish volts for both). Any ideas on what would cause them both to stop charging while the engine is running?