DC Monitoring Advice

[sailcrazy]

I am a cruising sailboat. My current DC layout includes 4 battery banks-3 (ea switchable on/off)for the house and 1 (isolated, but can be paralleled)starting. I used 2 Link 20s to monitor each bank individually; it was good to know the state of ea bank (v, chge or dischge amps, amphrs,etc). But one of the Link 20s has died and I'm not finding any replacements. I'm looking for advice/suggestions on how to redo my whole battery status/monitoring--I could put a batt montior on the total house output and a voltage monitor on ea bank, or??? Suggestions welcome!

[isobelk]

probably should combine all your batteries into a single house bank. Use a grp 31 for a start and echo charge it.

This way you can use a single battery monitor.

Most agree that multiple battery banks are not efficient.

[CharlieJ]

+1
Combining your 3 house banks into one makes good technical sense. If possible, have the B+ from the sources/loads at one end of the bank and the B- from the sources/loads at the other end of the bank.

Install the shunt for the Link 20 between the bank B- and all of the sources/loads. This will count the coulombs in and out of your house bank. Connect the voltage sense B+ (position 6 on the back of the Link 20, violet wire if you used the Xantrex cable) to the starting battery's B+ and you can sense its voltage which is sufficient for a starting battery. By the way, my version of the Link 20 manual has a typo on the wiring diagram on page 34. Position 6 is for B+ voltage sense, Positions 7 and 8 are a twisted pair with Position 7 (yellow) on the battery side of the shunt and Position 8 (brown) on the load side of the shunt.

Hope this helps.
Charlie