Direct Wiring

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Rich B

The manual suggests that The AB can be wired directly to a battery charger to take the strain off the house batteries. I'm not sure how I would go about doing this. Is there someplace I can go to get technical advice about this.
 
Feb 26, 2004
23,075
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
Rich Not in my manual it doesn't. In fact, it says you could harm the machine by doing just that. In the "old days" when there were just ferroresonant chargers, maybe hooking up directly to a charger wasn't all that bad, because the chargers maybe put out 13.8 violts max, which is still around the range of the A/B unit. These days, with smart chargers doing bulk charging at over 14 volts, why would you want to do that? Float voltage on a good three stage charger is still 13.2 volts. Running the A/B through the batteries is what my 1987 manual says to do. Also, if the charger is on, the batteries are getting charged anyway even if you leave the A/B on when you're not there. So there's no strain on the batteries.
 
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Gary Buttrey

batteries

The control module on your ColdMachine requires clean, "ripple free" current for stable operation and a long service life. Batteries provide clean current, most converters and chargers do not.
 
Dec 2, 1999
15,184
Hunter Vision-36 Rio Vista, CA.
Why?

Rich: Why would you want to do this? The Norcold units are an AC/DC system but I have never figured out the advantage. I suppose if you have an inferior charger and are worried about cooking your batteries this may be a concern. ProMariner makes a battery charger that has a constant 13v circuit that can be used for this purpose. If you do this then you would need some type of a switch that would allow you to change between different 12v sources. We have 2 AGM batteries that are dedicated to just the refrigeration. These have been doing well for a couple of years now and I would never consider switching over to anything else.
 
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Phil Williams

Battery Direct

The Adler/Barbour manual states; "Batteries provide clean, ripple-free DC current. Many battery charges, alternators and AC/DC converters may not. This means that the ColdMachine should not be connected directly to any of these devices, unless a battery in in the circuit." In the circuit means the ColdMachine is wired to the batteries.
 
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