"Jeff" wrote

OK. But what's really going on here is that the normal high current
path is from the alternator (or large charger) directly to the large
house bank. It would be foolish to use 6 gauge for this because when
passing 100 Amps the Voltage drop could be 10% (check out the chart in
the West Catalog).

The articles were talking about teh actual combiner leads, not the lead from
the alternator. But, seeing you brought it up , in my case I will actually
use 6 ga. But, I only have a 55A alternator and the return trip run is only
about 10ft. But, do see your point. At present, my alternator feed is via
the 2 ga starter cable but this will change when I go to the House bank.


However, if you want to use the house bank for starting the engine (by
forcing the combiner) then you're getting back into a high current
range where the will be a drop, something you might not want in this
situation!

The Blue Seas two circuit switch I referenced earlier has a manual combine
position - We would use that as we do now with the old switch in the Both
position.


This doesn't make me happy. Or perhaps I should say I feel justified
in switching to the EchoCharge. It also might explain why I've seen
a few combiners fail when the relay are "certified for millions of
cycles"!

True - It seems like there can be problems, but many boats have combiners
and most seem to be happy with them.

Thanks for your input - It is useful!

GBM