Battery connections good practice

[seadrift]

I have a bank of 12v (AGM) batteries, +ve and -ve connections to boat 12v system, a charger and separate inverter, and input from a solar panel via a controller.
The batteries connect to the boat 12v +ve and -ve at opposite ends of the bank - acceptable practice, not ideal I know.

Do ALL the other positive inputs and outputs connect to the same terminal (via a fuse block)? Similarly with the negatives (but no fuse)?

[smac999]

come off the battery pos to a unswitched bus bar. a short large cable run. wrap it in split loom. here put the inverter, charger, solar, ACR / echo charger if have, battery parrellel wire if have (should have) and wire going to house battery switch. run this to battery switch. after the switch you may or may not need another (switched) bus bar depending on loads. may just be single cable to DC panel. or may have windlass, winches, or other big switched loads.

all those wires should be fused as they leave the bus. the inverter should have a battery switch too.

from battery neg to to another bus bar for neg. shunt in-between battery and bus bar if battery monitor installed

battery should only have one cable on each post. (+jumpers if parallel batteries)

[seadrift]

Thanks smac, will follow your good advice.

[smac999]

the blue sea MRBF fuses work great for fusing off of buses as well. They are not just for batteries.

[Stu Jackson]

Google Smart Gauge and they have proper wiring diagrams.

[seadrift]

Yes, Stu, I had seen the four battery wiring methods and selected the acceptable method 2 because the better equal-length leads would have resulted in a real dogs breakfast of wiring given the irregular juxtoposition of the batteries.