Connecting House and Thruster Batteries

[elly]

I have been reading and searching the topics to determine if connecting the house and thruster batteries is a big or little job. I found one detailed posting but it involved making cables and installing new bus bars and changing the charger. Out of my zone. On the other hand I have seen references to it being a simple process. Could it be as simple as parallel wiring the thruster battery to the house batteries or one of them, perhaps with a cutout switch inline?

My goal is to bump up the available AH for the occasional night on the hook. I currently have two 80 AH house batteries (160 total AH) and estimate my overnight needs in the 70-90 AH range. I an going for the low hanging fruit first- LED lights for anchor light and most interior lights- which helps. The next most painless step seems to be to tie the thruster and house batteries together for the extra AH's. With a need of 80ish AH and 240 AH available it would seem that I would not have to get near the 50% state of charge often. My boat (2008 R25, Hull 49) has the Mase 2.5 generator so that should take care of topping off the batteries during the day.

Even if connecting the batteries is above and beyond a casual DIY I would still like to have a good understanding of what needs to be done so I can direct my local shop in the process.

Thanks,

 

[knotflying]

It is simple. You just need to run a cable of the same size from the positive terminal on the thruster to the positive terminal on the house bank. If you want to, which I did, you can put a switch in between so you can isolate the thruster just as it was before, I leave my switch on all the time though.