On Board Charge hookup and ACR

[tdog_2005]

I have a dual battery setup with the switch/acr blue sea add a battery setup any ways I am having trouble trying to search and find the exact answer I am looking for with regards to charging with a onboard charger. If I was to go with a dual bank charger I would assume that I would have to have a disconnect switch to the ground of the acr to disable it when charging. If I was to go with a single bank charger I would assume I would connect the charger to the house battery which would be used the most? how effect is the charging going to be this way as I am thinking as batterys are going to be discharged different example house discharged more because of stereo. How does everybody hookup there onboard charger with a ACR? I would prefer to run a single bank charger but would like to here some peoples thoughts on this.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: On Board Charge hookup and ACR

What I did was move the ACR connections to the load side of the switch. That way, when the battery switch is off, the ACR won't connect when your dual onboard charger is on because it is disconnected from the batteries.

 

[UncleWillie]

Re: On Board Charge hookup and ACR

What I did was move the ACR connections to the load side of the switch. That way, when the battery switch is off, the ACR won't connect when your dual on-board charger is on because it is disconnected from the batteries.

+1
That is a good option if you are using the double pole switch that comes with the ACR Kit.
If you kept the 1/2/Both Switch it isn't an option.

If you want to use a single Bank charger, attach it to the weaker (House?) battery.
The ACR Will not combine until the first battery gets above 13v.

Charging two batteries in parallel is perfectly fine even if they are significantly different in capacity.
The chemistry of each battery will determine how much of the available current it will accept.

The Amp rating of the charger is its MAX available current.
It has nothing to do with how much current a battery will actually use at any point in the charge other than at the beginning. Getting a bigger charger does not necessarily mean the Batteries will charge any faster.
It is quite reasonable the in the middle of a charge cycle with a 15 amp charger attached to two batteries in parallel. One battery may draw 2 Amps while the other one is drawing 6A, for 8A total, and with both batteries at the same voltage.

Once a smart charger detects that both batteries combined are no longer drawing significant current,
The charger will go into maintenance mode and keep both batteries "Maintained".