Battery maintainer

Thanks DrewE. I already had a feeling that the unused power available from solar controller in storage won't let anything bad happen. When both banks are full, any "charging" from the house to starter will be equal to overnight self-discharge loss of the starter - which isn't much, given its small size. Probably under 0.5 AH per night, and the standby standby current of Trick-L is too low to talk about.

Almot wrote:
Thanks SMK. I understand Trikl-start is not really "charging", but rather feeding the starter battery off the house battery? At least, this is what the diagram shows:


So, the house battery would cycle a little deeper in storage, because of this lost energy.

Not really, at least not to any great extent. The Trik-L-Start (as I understand it) would only be active if the voltage in the house 12V system is above a threshhold of ca. 13V or so, which basically means when the converter or a solar charger or something is providing power. When that's happening, it's not discharging the house battery any, just possibly preventing it from charging quite as quickly. (If it's already basically charged, then it's just the converter providing a little more power and the house battery seeing nothing at all different.)

When the converter is not on, the only additional load on the house system is the standby current used by the Trik-L-Start, which is apparently a few mA. Eventually it would run down the house battery, just like any other slight "phantom" load, at a little faster rate than just the house battery self-discharge.

RJsfishin wrote:
$35 trickle start, verses an $8 switch connecting the positives together during storage ?? I must be missing something.

You are not missing anything unless you forget.

The voltage is .2 less to the start battery.
Overnight TLC uses 5 milliamps in standby mode.

Info is posted on the TLS website.

RJsfishin wrote:
I must be missing something.

Different batteries - house and starter, both in storage on the same controller.
I understand that Trick-l-start cuts the starter battery off at 0.2V below the house (0.1V according to SMK).

My house is AGM 13.7 Float, so 13.5-13.6 flooded starter sounds better than 13.7. Probably still a bit high.

For somebody with a flooded house the Float could be 13.2, so Trickle will cut the starter at 13.0-13.1.

$35 trickle start, verses an $8 switch connecting the positives together during storage ?? I must be missing something.

Ok, you convinced me. Is $30 + shipping, no battery clips cheap enough?

Trik-L-Start

Thanks SMK. I understand Trikl-start is not really "charging", but rather feeding the starter battery off the house battery? At least, this is what the diagram shows:


So, the house battery would cycle a little deeper in storage, because of this lost energy.

My trailers all have three stage converters that do just fine. The motorcycle and tractor have Deltran Battery Tenders and BatteryMINDers on them.