Isolated Grid Heater

[ISX]

Finally got that damn thing from sucking down my main batteries. I had a good deep cycle laying around so I threw it in (yeah so I have 5 batteries now ) and took the grid heater positive wire and wired it directly to the deep cycle. I put a relay in and hooked it up so that when it is normally closed (not energized) it closes the path of the positive from the main batteries to a wire for the deep cycle positive, that way it will charge any time the grid heater is not on. When the grid heater turns on, it also energizes the relay and opens the charging path so that the battery is connected to the grids and nothing else. After the grids turn off, the relay turns off and it is back to charging the battery. The alternator has a greatly reduced load on it and your lights won't dim or any of that crap. My wires are not as big as they should be so that is why it takes a little bit for the deep cycle to match the main batteries.

In the picture, the 2 black wires are the charging wires (from a main battery positive going to the deep cylce positive) the yellow goes to the grid heater to energize the coil, and the blue wire is the negative for the coil. The contacts were a little too close for my liking, thats why I padded all the wires with electrical tape.

The little grid heater wires actually didn't have the power to turn the relay on. I kept thinking something was messed up but it just didn't work no matter what. Not really an issue, I just hooked it up to the actual grid heater wire instead (the big ones, on the side that gets switch on and off). So that worked perfect.

You can hear the relay switching in the video, pretty neat how it is all automatic like that. Now I don't have to worry about the batteries or alternator and still have the other switch to turn the grids completely off if I want to.

http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=osqm0T6JeBQ

[Prowelder]

I guess I'm a little confused to what the reason of this is for?

[ISX]

Less wear on the alternator mainly. I don't think it really wears out very fast but I have lots of batteries laying around so I just figured I would make it so the alternator didn't have to kill itself every morning.

[Prowelder]

Less wear on the alternator mainly. I don't think it really wears out very fast but I have lots of batteries laying around so I just figured I would make it so the alternator didn't have to kill itself every morning.

I gotcha, cool deal. I was just wondering that's all.

[ISX]

Well I had a deep cycle laying around which triggered the idea.. I can kill it and not care whereas the other batteries won't be as tolerant. If I didn't have the deep cycle I never would have done it.

[Prowelder]

Well I had a deep cycle laying around which triggered the idea.. I can kill it and not care whereas the other batteries won't be as tolerant. If I didn't have the deep cycle I never would have done it.

Cool deal. Yeah I don't think a normal starter battery would have handled it!!