24V BATTERY ISOLATOR RELAY TESTING MANUAL

The job of these devices is to charge both house battery and the engine battery, yet to keep the batteries separate or isolated from each other so you will not deplete your engine battery if you run your house battery too low (and vise versa).

Alternator power flows normally through an isolator or a separator. Your alternator will charge both your engine battery and your house battery. The easiest and fastest way to charge your battery is to drive. If you camp without electrical hookups it is important that you keep your batteries in good condition and that they get charged. Battery SeparatorД«atteries are vital to RVers. Or you can spend a lot more on a more versatile multimeter. A basic multimeter from Harbor Freight can do what you need for $5.99. Your will need a multimeter (sometimes called a VOM or Volt Ohm Meter). It is important to be able to do some basic troubleshooting yourself to fix the problem. Note that even if you have two (or more) house batteries we will use the single term battery in this article.

24V BATTERY ISOLATOR RELAY TESTING MANUAL

I've tried to illustrate this in the chicken scratch drawing attached to the post - the upper battery being the main battery, the lower battery the auxiliary, the left relay being the heavy-duty isolator, the left switch being a manual override, the right switch representing the ignition-controlled circuits that also provide power to other circuit devices, and the heavily scribbled line showing the effect of closing the manual override switch energizing the trigger post of the heavy-duty isolator, and also energizing the line connecting the isolator to one of the secondary posts of the smaller relay, but not continuing on to the 'other circuits' connected to the ignition-switched circuit.Nearly every motorhome owner will at sometime experience a charging problem with their house battery. This would allow me to wire a second manual switch in parallel to the smaller relay, which when closed would not energize the other devices on the 12v vehicle running circuit. What I thought would solve this problem was to use a second, smaller relay which would use the 12v vehicle running line as a trigger, and would have the secondary side connecting the main battery to the 12v trigger post of the isolator. Then I realized that doing so would also energize the 12v line that's normally on when the vehicle is running, possibly providing power to other devices on the same circuit. At first I thought I could simply wire a switch in parallel to the existing trigger, that would connect the main battery to the 12v trigger post when the switch is closed. The 500 amp isolator that I'm looking at is simply a large relay - the trigger posts are connected to ground and to a 12v signal that's hot when the vehicle is running, and the secondary side of the relay connects the positive terminals of the two batteries. Many smaller battery isolators have such a reset switch or terminal built-in, but larger 500 amp isolators don't appear to have this function. I would also, however, like to be able to override the behavior of the isolator with a manual switch (e.g., to connect the batteries when necessary to use the auxiliary battery to assist in starting). So far so good, there are plenty of battery isolators to choose from. So I'd like to add a second battery to my car and have it isolated from the main battery when the alternator is not running.

24v battery isolator relay testing