charger advice please

[crosser]

i only have 1 leisure battery on my boat and wanted a charger that i can leave on all the time plugged into the shoreline to keep it topped up...  i have found this on ebay and wondered what peeps think...   i know its chinese but as funds are tight i thought it might be ok for a couple of years...    is it worth a try for the money?  

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/183371437798?ssPageName=STRK:MESINDXX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1436.l2649

[alan_fincher]

I realise you say unds are tight, but I would have thought that something you intend to leave plugged in and running on a 24H x 7 basis whilst the boat is unattended is the one thing you would want to be comfortable would not go up in flames.

I know some cheap Chinese kit can be OK, but when something costs £28, rather than £100 plus, I wouldn't want to rely on it, personally.

[WotEver]

I wonder what voltage it charges at. It doesn’t appear to say. 

[crosser]

i think i might buy one and take it apart and look at the quality...  i know its probably not so good but worth a look..

 

[alan_fincher]

48 minutes ago, crosser said:

i think i might buy one and take it apart and look at the quality...  i know its probably not so good but worth a look..

 

Without being funny, but are you experienced in electronics design, and specifically whether components used in something are sufficiently over-specced to ensure no failures?

A circuit board may look tidy, pretty even, with immaculate soldering, but if corners are cut, may still catch fire - do you want that occurring on your boat?

 

[Boater Sam]

How about this, good pedigree

Halfords Smart Charger Plus 

I have used an earlier version of this constantly when on a land line for 19 years.

[Sea Dog]

Buy yourself a Ctek multi stage charger for not a helluva lot more money but a huge amount more peace of mind.  Bear in mind that if you just want it to keep your battery happy whilst you're away (i.e. you're mooring up with reasonably well charged batteries and therefore you're not expecting it to charge your battery from a heavily discharged state quickly) you don't need a big one. A single 110Ah battery would be slowly charged and kept floating quite happily by either their 3.8 or 5.0 amp chargers.  When my main 100 amp charger went U/S, my Ctek 5.0 amp charger maintained my 440 Amp Hour domestic bank. It wasn't enough to run the fridge though, so I now have something else, but one of those will be fine if you don't need it as a power supply.  If you also need to supply a fridge whilst you're away, then we need something else.