[C320-list] Starting Battery Question

[jonvez at comcast.net]

I know you've already gotten a lot of good advice on this particular thread--the best of which is Calder's book (the 3rd addition is worth some boat bucks BTW), but to answer your question, the Combiner does parallel/cut the  two dissimilar banks with no problems. The only thing that should be similar is the chemical makeup of the battery (e.g. Gel, AGM, Wet). I have this setup and the combiner takes care of charging/disconnecting my starter from my paralled house bank of 2 4D's...

Regards,

Jon Vez

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: <crashley at gte.net> 

> I've read a lot about adding a third, smaller starting battery and combining the 
> two existing 4D's into a single large house battery. This sounds attractive and 
> I may want to do this someday, but I have a basic question. If you use the 
> existing battery combiner switch it will parallel the 4Ds and the new smaller 
> starting battery (in the "all" position) for charging from the alternator but I 
> thought I've read that you never want to parallel different size and/or aged 
> batteries. How do you get around this? Is there any way to avoid paralleling the 
> house and starting batteries and charge both batteries from the alternator? The 
> shore charger is easy to configure since it has two separate outputs already. 
> Any advice? 
> 
> CRA 
> Rosebud #882