Battery Combiner versus Echo Charger.

[jviss]

An Echo Charger follows the charge source voltage with a cap of 14.4V (does not float start independently of house)

Thank you for pointing that out. I was under the mistaken impression that it did what you say about the Sterling B2B. I guess I should have read the manual! That piece of information renders my question moot, I guess. I was concerned about holding the start battery at 14.4 for 40 or so minutes every day, while cruising. I guess this will do no harm? And if so, would the ACR be better, just from a reliability perspective?

 

[Maine Sail]

Thank you for pointing that out. I was under the mistaken impression that it did what you say about the Sterling B2B. I guess I should have read the manual! That piece of information renders my question moot, I guess. I was concerned about holding the start battery at 14.4 for 40 or so minutes every day, while cruising. I guess this will do no harm? And if so, would the ACR be better, just from a reliability perspective?

In over 20+ years and many hundreds of these devices I have seen only three failures of Echo Chargers. I have seen zero Blue Sea ML ACR or 7610SI ACR failures.

Again this article explains it all:
https://marinehowto.com/automatic-charging-relays/

Even the 7610SI ACR I found yesterday, hidden in a bilge, mounted inside an engine stringer & directly under a 370HP Yanmar 6LYA still works. Yep it's corroded but the darn thing still works. It had definitely been submerged at least once, maybe twice...

It had not been working because someone apparently did not know that "yellow" is also DC negative and connected the ACR negative to the alternator B+ terminal. D'oh..... A fuse blew and that is why it was non-operational. Replaced the fuse, cleaned it, relocated it and it's now working fine.

 

[jviss]

I've had two echo charger failures, one soft and one hard. The soft one was a blown fuse, with no apparent reason; engine battery gradually drained. Hard failure was a blown diode inside - I mean, literally exploded.

I had a Pathmaker combiner for many years, but the remote control which I relied upon failed, as as a potted assembly was not repairable. I had decided at that point to go to house plus start without splitting the house, and using the echo charger.

Maybe next time I need to address this I'll use a combiner.