On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:21:07 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:14:25 -0500, "Flying Pig"
wrote:

As such, as our practice had been to have the switch on "both" all the time,
it's possible that the early death of the starter battery was due to
frequent deep (-er than designed for) discharge. We're working on training
ourselves to switch to "house" only when we're not in a charging mode, but
we're not there yet!

It's important to get into the routine, preferably as soon as possible
after engine shutdown. We were losing starting batteries
prematurely for a while because of exactly that same situation. Ours
weigh about 160 pounds and are wedged in behind the engines so I had
an extra incentive to keep them alive longer.

Having a formal checklist for certain procedures like startup and
shutdown can be useful. It's easy enough to maintain them on the
computer.


There are several methods of separating battery banks for use and
connect them for charging. You can use diodes, which take some special
wiring of the regulator to fully charge the batteries, or an automatic
relay system that doesn't.

Cheers,

Bruce