Winter Storage of Electronics

colbysmith

colbysmith

Active member
Just wondering how other cold country brats store their electronics in winter?
Currently I leave everything on my boat and keep the battery charger plugged in and on. Some years I have taken the chart plotters off and brought them in the house. I use to bring the batteries into an unheated garage but got tired of that pain. Security is not my concern; temperature is. So far I have not had a problem but still wonder if others leave their electronics in the boat as well. My thought is there are a lot of larger boats laid up for the winter with chart plotters framed in their dash. And many newer cars or aircraft with glass cockpits sit out in the cold as well. Temps here this past week have been as low as minus 14 F. Colby
 
Our much bigger trawler is hauled out on land in Rhode Island where the temps occasionally get down to zero.. Electronics are fine. The only concern will be running down the batteries due to parasitic loads- a CO detector typically. Keeping them on charge will solve that. We use a solar panel on our boat.

David
 
All of my electronics are still on board. But most of them are flush mounted, so taking them off isn't even an option. Hope everything is okay in the spring!

David, this year you're definitely down to zero more than occasionally! Im in Mass. This is the coldest winter I've ever seen.
 
Mine come out when it gets in the 20s. I have a friend whose screen cracked during the winter I'd rather not see mine do that. The batteries stay in the boat disconnected and charged up once. They are agms if I think about I might give them a boost during the winter. I don't let them continually charge.
 
My chart plotter comes out when the boat is not being used. It is easy to remove. My boat is stored on is trailer and I take it out to reduce the temptation for someone to borrow it. All the other electronics stay in place. The batteries get charged before I store it and first thing when I retrieve it. In season my boat gets used about once per month, and is in winter storage Dec through Mar (usually).
 
Our 26-footer's electronics (Garmin, Icom, Furuno, Simrad) have stayed in the boat with the smart charger hooked up for 19 winters with no issues. Often in the teens, occasionally -10.
 
colbysmith":jr5uvs3o said:
Just wondering how other cold country brats store their electronics in winter?
Currently I leave everything on my boat and keep the battery charger plugged in and on. Some years I have taken the chart plotters off and brought them in the house. I use to bring the batteries into an unheated garage but got tired of that pain. Security is not my concern; temperature is. So far I have not had a problem but still wonder if others leave their electronics in the boat as well. My thought is there are a lot of larger boats laid up for the winter with chart plotters framed in their dash. And many newer cars or aircraft with glass cockpits sit out in the cold as well. Temps here this past week have been as low as minus 14 F. Colby
Click to expand...

Mine stay on the boat ready to go! Jan - Mar we will see -40deg.
It was +44deg here yesterday :mrgreen: Thanks to all you lower 48ers for sharing the warm weather :wink:
 
Thanks all. Think I'll just keep doing what I've been doing. And that is usually leaving the electronics alone, on the boat. In the past, I would charge the batteries once a month, even when I kept them in our unheated garage. And bring in all the electronics (Chartplotters and VHF Radios.) It's only been the last few years I've left the electronics on the boat. Just before last winter, I put a new battery charger on the boat that was a bit nicer than the original Guest. (I believe it is the MasterVolt 30 amp). Since it has the float maintainer mode as well, I just left it plugged in and on through the winter. Batteries did fine, and they were older batteries. I replaced both batteries this past season, so I assume they will do great staying on the charger all winter. (Which boils down to about 3 months when the boat is put away.) I figure it's no different than slipped boats that stay on charge all the time as well. Colby
 
I know (and continue to hope) that here on the NW corner of Washington, we don't get into serious cold, (That would be below 32F for more than a few days in a row.) So far, that has been pretty much the program.

My electronics are all on board for the "off" season. The batteries are both aboard and plugged in to each own "Battery Minder" trickle and maintainer chargers. There are 2 Dehumidifier/minimal heaters running full time. They are about 100 watts each. The boat is in a non heated, monitored garage.

The gas tanks are full and is treated with both Stabil and Startron Enzyme.

Have done the same for 10 years, and had no problems. The boat has set for between 3 months and 8 months (one time). Most years, rare to be more than 3 months.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

IMGP6319.thumb.jpg
 
Hey Harvey, Happy New Year. I go back and forth as far as storing the boat empty of fuel or full of fuel. The last two years I stored it full (stabilized of course, and with non-ethanol!), as fuel was relatively cheap when I put it away for the winter. This year, fuel seemed to creep up some, and I expect my first outing will be the St. John's gathering in March. Fuel is fairly inexpensive going down through Alabama, so I siphoned every little bit of fuel that was left in the boat, and put it away dry. I will probably put about 5 gallons or so in it when I get it out for the trip south on March 1st, just so I can run it and make sure all is ready to go before we leave here. Then finish topping it off when we get to the cheaper gas. :D
 
Colby, I forgot to say my gas is "non Ethanol" as well. My mechanic says to store that, filled and treated for no gas problems so, that is what I do. It's worked. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, except I do PM too.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

IMGP6689.highlight.jpg
 
I store with non-ethanol, but no problems running with regular (10% ethanol) during the season. I just start putting non-ethanol in towards the end of the season, so if I end up storing it full, there's no ethanol sitting in it. I know lots of debate, but the operating manuals say 10% is fine, and I've continued to run it without issue. No reason to pay the extra bucks. Especially when it's sometimes hard to find the no-ethanol stuff. Colby
 
Mine gets stored with whatever it's left in the tanks. I don't pay much attention to the ethanol/non-ethanol business.

If I remember, I put stabilizer in it.
 
I would highly encourage anyone to NOT fire up their electronics when you are in the sub freezing, say, below 25 degrees. The quick warm up from those temps to normal operating temps can damage plastics, glass, and some components. Yes, 90% of the time you will get away with it okay. But, resist the temptation to get on the boat in those frigid temps and show off to the neighbor or to put in some new software.

Just some wisdom from launching rockets out of poker flats and Shemya Alaska. Even orbiting spacecraft carry on-board heaters to assure minimum warm on their electronics when the electronics are powered off. Of course they are protecting from the cold of space, but once you get to zero F on good old earth, if there is to be any damage to your electronics being fired up, it matters not whether you are firing them up at 0 or 40 below.

Spoken as a rocket scientist and worth both cents.
 
potter water":oio667l1 said:
I would highly encourage anyone to NOT fire up their electronics when you are in the sub freezing, say, below 25 degrees. The quick warm up from those temps to normal operating temps can damage plastics, glass, and some components. Yes, 90% of the time you will get away with it okay. But, resist the temptation to get on the boat in those frigid temps and show off to the neighbor or to put in some new software.

Just some wisdom from launching rockets out of poker flats and Shemya Alaska. Even orbiting spacecraft carry on-board heaters to assure minimum warm on their electronics when the electronics are powered off. Of course they are protecting from the cold of space, but once you get to zero F on good old earth, if there is to be any damage to your electronics being fired up, it matters not whether you are firing them up at 0 or 40 below.

Spoken as a rocket scientist and worth both cents.
Click to expand...



:roll: Yup Sure. :wink: >10deg and flat water, I go fishing!
does it ever get windy on Shemya?
 
A cold, windy and miserable place to be during peak aurora season which is the time you want to launch suborbital rockets to sense the chemistry and physics of aurora.
 
Have never removed them/it. I put an oil heater (on low) along with a fan inside all winter. Doubt they raise the temps enough but they keep the air "dry" and no mold problem. I have never seen it get below the teens here anyway. I have heard of LCD's freezing but only "heard" it; don't even know if it's possible as a fact. I imagine anything can freeze if it gets cold enough or at least logic says so.
 
Thanks for that advice Potter Water. Makes sense to me. Too damn cold to go out, crawl under the full enclosure cover, anyway! On warmer winter days in the past, I have turned them on to install software updates. But not until the Webasto heater had ran for a bit. Actually, how does that affect them, or bringing them inside during the middle of winter? Doesn't take the Webast too long to warm the boat up, but going inside is walking from freezing or below, into 66 or above instanaeously... Colby
 
What it all comes down to is differential of expansion in non similar materials. Rapid changes in temperature can cause some materials to expand faster under shock warming (turning the equipment on) than other materials, even at the microscopic level of todays microcircuits. But, how real the problem would be in our typical boating seasons and climates, there is no real statistical data. But, a good practice would be to warm up the static temps as much as reasonable before slapping the power switch on in sophisticated devices.

I suspect that there have been a number of boaters asking themselves why an electronic device has mysteriously failed during turn on at the first of boating season. One of the possible candidates would be having exposed the devices to sub zero temps. Or turning them on in temps well below freezing one time or several times during layup.
 
I also had a screen crack on a depth sounder when the temp was only 24* in Pensacola. I take mine off the boat for the winter. No use tempting fate. I have heard of a number of others having issues. I don't know the percentage of damage.
 
Back
Top