Charge house or emergency First?

[Blitz]

One question in the old battery switch debate I never see mentioned I was hoping somone would clarify: If you are using a combiner, with a battery charger with mulitple outputs should you still hook the charger up to the mulitple banks or only hook it up to the house bank and let it spill over from the house to the emergency/starter battery bank?

An alternator in this case is hooked to the house bank dirrectly - right? then let to spill over to the starting bank.

 

[Don S/V ILLusion]

I thin you are confusing the purpose of a battery combiner. Read the attached link which not only describes it's purpose but also explains a number of option for connecting multiple batteries:
http://www.yandina.com/acrobats/C70Manual.pdf

 

[Stu Jackson]

Combiner instructions

for the WM product require the house bank be connected with the "trickle down" to the reserve bank.

The reason is easy: the reserve bank is almost always full -- it takes very little to start an engine, so running all the current that a house bank needs through the reserve bank makes little sense. Plus the wires aren't all that big. See page 4 of Don's link above about alternator output wiring.

Another rarely understood instruction is to install a shutoff switch on the ground leg of the combiner. This allows it to easily be turned off to avoid over charging the reserve ank when motoring for long periods. See page 3 of Don's link above. This could also be done for an echo charger. The difference between the two is that the echo charger is current limiting, while the combiner depends on the battery acceptance only.

 

[Blitz]

Actually an Automatic Charging Relay

I'm actually installing an Automatic Charging Relay by Blue Seas #7610

 

[Stu Jackson]

An ACR

is pretty much the same thing as a combiner - a voltage sensitive relay.