Battery Isolator Cole Hersee

[jvolpehoo]

Battery-Related Products | Battery Isolators48530 | Cole Hersee - Littelfuse

[jmschmidt]

I guess you could always look at your batteries and if one battery, or one bank is shorting they have new tool called a 5/16 end wrench while disconnect the failed bank. Then you would employ the new technique known as "trouble shooting" to figure out what to do next.

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by jvolpehoo

Wow, thank you all for your input. most of the talk has been about the A/B switches so I'm bringing back to the original question about the cole hersee isolator that I already bought.

I think I'll go with the suggestion for the G24 starting battery and I'll isolate the remaing 4-6v golf cart batteries as a house bank. The cole hersee isolator apparently can be used with any combination of batteries and it does not have the diode voltage issue of older technologies. I wont have to remember to do anything - the starter always gets priority charging, I can drain the house bank accidentally and still have starter. the boat has been working fine on the current setup of 4-6v deep cycle battery bank.

question: 12v batteries are too heavy for me, can I substitute a bank of 2 6v in series? for an 18 hp diesel why don't i use golf cart batteries? Not sure yet whether to connect alternator directly to house bank - I have a lot of reading to do and must integrate with the existing electrical panel which has a Tripp inverter and a 100 watt solar panel.

question: If my house draw increases (extra laptops, tv etc) can I simply switch to a more powerful alternator? The current Hitachi is 35 amp but the fuse buss is rated for 80 amp...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxK...ew?usp=sharing

Thanks again!

I would suggest that you give the house priority charging. Starting duty is a very low AH drain. A group 24 should start your engine many times on a full charge. You will have fewer problems connecting the house bank to the alternator and charging the start battery with the isolator when the house bank comes up in voltage. A 35A alternator is pretty small to charge a 200AH battery bank (4 Trojan T-105). Once you have it working see how long it takes to charge. It would guess it will take a really long time (estimate more than 6 hours from 50% discharged).

[rwidman]

Originally Posted by jmschmidt

I guess you could always look at your batteries and if one battery, or one bank is shorting they have new tool called a 5/16 end wrench while disconnect the failed bank. Then you would employ the new technique known as "trouble shooting" to figure out what to do next.

Cute, but let me ask you just one thing; How do you tell if a battery is shorting by looking at it?

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by jvolpehoo

Battery-Related Products | Battery Isolators48530 | Cole Hersee - Littelfuse

This is a voltage sensitive relay/combiner. Definitely make house the priority bank or you will very likely suffer from relay cycling...

[mitiempo]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

A 35A alternator is pretty small to charge a 200AH battery bank (4 Trojan T-105). Once you have it working see how long it takes to charge. It would guess it will take a really long time (estimate more than 6 hours from 50% discharged).

4 Trojan T-105 batteries in series/parallel to make a 12 volt bank is 440 AH.

All charge sources should go to the house bank.

[btrayfors]

MaineSail and transmitterdan have it right: three simple on-off switches and a voltage follower device (Xantrex EchoCharge or Balmar Duo-Charge) or an ACR will do the trick nicely.

Here are a couple I've done. Simple, clean, avoid chance of error as much as possible.

The switches are Blue Sea Systems #6006. These are inexpensive, small, and very robust.

Bill

[Meriah2]

Isolators can work well, but I do not like them as they drop.5-.6 volts across the diodes. This means, unless you have a Alternator with a external sense line, I would stay away from them. (sometimes there is a sense input connection on the alternator) Personally I prefer to have Battery Switches to control the charging, but this is then a manual approach.

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by Meriah2

Isolators can work well, but I do not like them as they drop.5-.6 volts across the diodes. This means, unless you have a Alternator with a external sense line, I would stay away from them. (sometimes there is a sense input connection on the alternator) Personally I prefer to have Battery Switches to control the charging, but this is then a manual approach.

The OP is not using a diode isolator but rather a voltage sensitive relay otherwise known as a Combiner, ACR or VSR..