truckman
I was wondering what the advantage of running the wire directly from the alternator to the house battery bank was.
Paul the benefits are;
1- No more worries about fried diodes.
2- Accurate voltage sensing.
However you should NOT wire directly to the house battery unless you have either a VSR/ACR (voltage sensitive relay/ automatic charging relay) or a unit like the Echo Charger or Balmar Duo Charger.
Follow me on this one. If you sense/wire directly to the house bank, bank 1, but do not have an ACR or Echo type unit installed this means you can select the battery being used via the 1/2/BOTH/OFF switch.
If you select bank two as your source and the alt is connected to bank 1 you will draw down bank two and not replenish it unless the ALL function is selected. In short without an ACR or Echo type charger I would not wire directly to the house bank and instead would leave it wired through the common post of the battery switch..
With an ACR/Echo you can still select bank 2 but it will automatically be getting charged via the combiner or Echo even with the house bank being direct wired...