Wire converter to which side of battery switch?

mena661 wrote:
Do the Iota's do this?

Yes. My IOTA status LED flashes and there is a parasitic draw when the AC power is removed. I pull one of the cables off the batteries if I won't be hooked up to AC power for a few days.

Just a warning not sure if it applies to your converter
Some actually many of the converters with a remote control aka pendant
consume a small amount of power from the battery all the time they are connected to the battery. Just something to think about

FWIW, my PD9160A with Charge Wizard draws between 3 mA and 7 mA. The rate appears to be determined by the CW's mode which in turn determines the duty cycle of the green LED. That puts the battery discharge between about 2.2 and 5 Ah per month. For comparison, my battery monitor pulls out 6.4 Ah per month, and the self discharge of a 2x GC battery using the common 5% per month rate is 11.25 Ah per month.

Bottom line: The battery draw of the 9160A+CW is IMO a nit. One detail that PD did a very good job with.

KJINTF wrote:
Just a warning not sure if it applies to your converter
Some actually many of the converters with a remote control aka pendant
consume a small amount of power from the battery all the time they are connected to the battery. Just something to think about

Do the Iota's do this?

Snowman9000 wrote:
Begs the question: Is the reason for the switch:
A) to disconnect the house in order to not run down the batteries, or
B) to disconnect the batteries for safety or some other reason, while connected to shore power.

For me, the benefit comes from A. I haven't run into B yet.

Even if the switch is on the battery side, you could still have other loads on the battery. A trailer would still have jacks, slides, breakaway switch, LP alarm, and stereo clock. A MH may have some things too.

You might need a switch right at the battery post to cut off everything. For help in remembering, you could run a wire from there to a big lamp above the rig's doorway which is on when the switch is closed :)

Just a warning not sure if it applies to your converter
Some actually many of the converters with a remote control aka pendant
consume a small amount of power from the battery all the time they are connected to the battery. Just something to think about

B for me. Don't want to have to worry about equalizing messing with the fridge board or other 12 stuff.

duplicate

Begs the question: Is the reason for the switch:
A) to disconnect the house in order to not run down the batteries, or
B) to disconnect the batteries for safety or some other reason, while connected to shore power.

For me, the benefit comes from A. I haven't run into B yet.

Thanks, it's good to see the different rationales for each way. The way I'm leaning is to put it on the battery side. That way if I plug into shore power I'm sure to get a battery charge. And if nothing works in the house, I'll realize the switch is OFF. OTOH if I connect it to the house side instead, I could plug into shore power but forget to turn the battery switch. My house circuits would work but my batts would not charge.

So, the downside of putting it on the battery side is that I could not completely isolate the batteries. I'd have to switch off the converter to accomplish that. I'm trying to think of what happens to make that become an issue.

I'm trying to make it idiot-resistant. :)
But I have to imagine which consequences of idiocy would be more likely, and which ones worse.

Two theories.

If hooked on battery side you can fully turn off coach but still charge batteries

MOST RV dealers hook to house side of switch so you can power coach from shore after disconnecting.