Although my parasitic load loss is small with battery switch turned off, over a two week period it would drain my battery down 27ah's or 24.5% of my batter life, after 1 month I am down 50%, obviously this starts to cause real issues.
My initial solution was to install another solar panel on top but since I keep it covered this wouldn't help, the second solution was to use a suitcase style solar panel I can set up next to rig to capture sun even with cover on. This would work but not perfect solution.
What I decided to do was simply have a battery kill switch installed that would shut off all load on coach batteries. This would be quick, easy and inexpensive.
Am I missing something?
Chuck
Parasitic load loss fix
Parasitic load loss fix
2001 Concourse XL Lounge model, 6.8L Ford E350 Triton V-10 Chassis.
Re: Parasitic load loss fix
I'm curious what the loads are, but ignoring that for now and just accepting them for the moment:
It's 100% normal to have a main battery switch on a house bank on a boat. You turn it off when you leave the boat. There will often be a "hot bus" for things like bilge pumps (don't need those in your Chinook I hope!) or a battery monitor (then you'd pull the battery monitor fuse if leaving the boat for months at a time but not days or weeks). But other than that planned "hot bus" the battery switch cuts off everything. Bam.
I can't remember if you still have the brown box, but the "tricky" thing about that is that it basically forces the use of the SAME wire for charging power TO the batteries, and loads FROM the batteries. This is why Chinook set up the whole "store" buzzer thingie to remind you to not "store" them when trying to charge (also why they bypassed that with their little solar wire).
That's just something to keep in mind depending on how you want to handle charging while the switch would be in the "OFF" position. You can run the solar wires right to the batteries but if you are shore charging through the brown box that won't happen.
This is my "temporary" system I set up (temporary because I'll be tweaking the layout and also the battery box shape is going to change at some point). The red switch is the main battery cutoff, and the black one is the combiner line. The main positive lead from the house bank comes in stage left through the Class T fuse. The yellow and black thing to the right is the main fuses and distribution. Negative bus and battery monitor shunt are out of view to the right.
It's 100% normal to have a main battery switch on a house bank on a boat. You turn it off when you leave the boat. There will often be a "hot bus" for things like bilge pumps (don't need those in your Chinook I hope!) or a battery monitor (then you'd pull the battery monitor fuse if leaving the boat for months at a time but not days or weeks). But other than that planned "hot bus" the battery switch cuts off everything. Bam.
I can't remember if you still have the brown box, but the "tricky" thing about that is that it basically forces the use of the SAME wire for charging power TO the batteries, and loads FROM the batteries. This is why Chinook set up the whole "store" buzzer thingie to remind you to not "store" them when trying to charge (also why they bypassed that with their little solar wire).
That's just something to keep in mind depending on how you want to handle charging while the switch would be in the "OFF" position. You can run the solar wires right to the batteries but if you are shore charging through the brown box that won't happen.
This is my "temporary" system I set up (temporary because I'll be tweaking the layout and also the battery box shape is going to change at some point). The red switch is the main battery cutoff, and the black one is the combiner line. The main positive lead from the house bank comes in stage left through the Class T fuse. The yellow and black thing to the right is the main fuses and distribution. Negative bus and battery monitor shunt are out of view to the right.
1999 Concourse
Re: Parasitic load loss fix
Pretty work Blue! What gauge are the large red wires you use?...dano
"Jewels" - '02 Chinook Concourse XL
Re: Parasitic load loss fix
Thanks, Dano. I might make some changes now, but isn't that always the way when you look at something you did in the past? If I remember correctly, that's 1/0. The battery jumpers themselves (which you can't see) are 2/0, but I think I stepped down to 1/0 here for the slightly easier workability. I could do that because 1/0 still has the ampacity for the fuse sizes I needed to cover my potential loads (namely self jump starting as my combiner line runs through that main fuse and one of those legs).
It can be easier to stick with larger wire a bit longer rather than step down and have to re-fuse again. Eventually obviously that happens when you get to your load distribution bus and much smaller wires start to happen, but the later the better in terms of convenience and taking up space (not always but often and in this case).
It can be easier to stick with larger wire a bit longer rather than step down and have to re-fuse again. Eventually obviously that happens when you get to your load distribution bus and much smaller wires start to happen, but the later the better in terms of convenience and taking up space (not always but often and in this case).
1999 Concourse