jbbcd

On 7/16/2020 at 3:05 PM, oldjohnt said:

jb, is there a reason why you need to be charging the engine battery ??? Is it running down quickly ??? Does temporarily unhooking prevent the discharge ???  Is unhooking an easy viable option for you ???

  If its one, absolutely necessary and two, you choose for whatever reason to do it using solar as you posted instead of a battery trickle charger, in that case I (as discussed above) wouldn't get rid of the PWM charge controller but instead use it (with a small separate solar panel) for the less critical engine battery charging and use the more expensive more efficient MPPT charge controller for your house battery bank.   Hey there's no  necessarily right or wrong answer here, it strictly a matter of YOUR choice.

Good luck jb, take care now

John T

oldjohnnt: Its just that we boondock for weeks at a time, during these times we do plug into chassis battery for small fans cell phone chargers etc....mostly for my wife. I know better...lol. just trying to prevent the day were ready to roll & the chassis battery is dead cause the wife drained it with out me knowing..... etc etc

Thanks again every one :) 

Thanks everyone for your input!

Looks like Tom_M nailed it! 

I will definitely consult back to this post when I start the project of adding items & fuses. 

1 hour ago, Tom_M said:

Get rid of the PWM and disconnect the start battery. If you think you may need to maintain the start battery get a Trik-L-Start maintainer.

http://www.lslproducts.net/TLSPage.html

Great! probably exactly what I'm looking for...... Thanks much !

Hi & Thanks for any input,

A bit new here for solar. I don't have all my specs yet , just bought a used RV set up with solar. I have not seen any fuses or breakers on this set up yet. yikes!

1) The hardware:

a) 2 (two) solar panels on roof (higher voltage, I see read outs up to 27 volts & higher) I'm not familiar with these panels yet

b) 1 (one) PWM Duo battery solar charge controller 

c) 1 (one) MT-1 dual meter

d)1 (one) Victron MPPT 30amp smart charge controller. (this currently is NOT installed)

e) 2 (two) 12 volt deep cycle house batteries

f) 1 (one) vehicle 12 volt starter battery

I purchased the RV with a dual charge controller (PWM Duo battery solar controller ) charging both the house & RV batteries

I would like to add the Victron  MPPT charge controller to this system.

My question is: Could I splice the leads from the solar panels to go to both charge controllers? one set of leads to the PWM charge controller charging the RV battery & one set of leads to the MPPT charge controller for the house batteries?

If so, as I'm adding a 2nd charge controller I would like to add the proper fuses at the correct locations.