Charger Wiring

[dmksails]

I'm looking at my wiring in order to install a monitor and I found something strange. I have a ProSport 12 charger connected to my starter and house batteries. I've included a diagram of the current wiring. The cable from the charger to the house battery goes from the POS term on the first house battery and to the NEG term on the second house battery. The charger cable connecting to the starter battery connects to the starter battery POS term and to the house battery NEG term.

There is a warning tag on the charger cables that clearly says the POS & NEG cables need to be on the same battery!

So why would it be wired as it is?

There are also a number of additional wires I haven't shown that go somewhere - for instance there are 3 additional wires connected to the starter battery POS term and 2 additional wires connected to it's NEG term. Haven't traced those out yet. Shouldn't all device power come from the panel and not the batteries?

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by dmksails

The cable from the charger to the house battery goes from the POS term on the first house battery and to the NEG term on the second house battery.

There is a warning tag on the charger cables that clearly says the POS & NEG cables need to be on the same battery!

So why would it be wired as it is?

Can't speak to your whole situation, but it may be that the charger to house battery BANK is wired that way because the two batteries are paralleled... so they can be treated as one battery.

And then it's usually recommended to connect boat positive to one "end" of a battery bank and boat neg to the other "end." Presumably that applies to charger connections as well. In a two-battery bank, that'd look like your set-up.

-Chris