Wiring for Ballast Pump / Amps etc

[Stingreye]

I am finally getting around to wiring up my cross pump.

1) Dual battery switch setup. Its a 1,2, combine, off setup.

2) 3 total batteries (all normal deep cycle batteries), Two house batteries wired together with a west marine "Combine a battery" thing

3) On board charger that charges it all. I did not notice how this was setup.

I really don't know much about what should be wired to what but I expected to only have the bilge pump hard wired and the rest running through the switch.

I found what looks like most of the stereo wired to the house batteries and a few things I am not 100% sure what they are yet (again could be all strereo).

It appears the starter and the boat main wiring harness are wired to the common post.

Questions:
1) I have run the stereo down most of the way out of the water then flipped to combine mode and the stereo ran another hour before I plugged it in (didn't run it out on combine mode). If its hard wired to the battery bank will the combine cause the amps to still pull from the other battery?

2) I am tempted to leave it alone because its working fine but should the amps/etc be on the common post or hard wired to the battery.

3) Do I wire the new ballast pump to the common post? I reused the factory wiring for my ballast upgrade originally, so I never ran to run power back to the batteries. I think they are coming through the boat main wiring harness.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Steve

[Stingreye]

Found my on board battery charger I think(I have seen Guest and 10 AMP on the charger):
http://www.wholesalemarine.com/guest...FY6Ufgodk24AcA

My battery switch looks like this one:
http://www.jamestowndistributors.com...t.do?pid=13150

My plan right now is to wire my cross over pump to the common post and leave the stereo amps (a JL Audio 500/5 and a JL Audio 300/4 if it matters) connected to the house battery.

From what I tried to find, it sounds like when you hit the combine, it could cause the fresh battery to charge the dead battery..... hence why I got more time when switching to combine. Also seems like a bad idea so I will pretend combine isn't an option unless my boat won't start in position 1 or 2

Still interested in hearing what the preferred setup is if anyone has any comments.

Thanks,
Steve

[chpthril]

Answers and suggestions.

1) Any time the switch is in the COMBINE position, all loads, regardless of which bank they are wired to, will draw from both banks. This has the potential to run down boat banks, while at anchor. If your current 2 house batteries are not enough to last as long as you want, you may need more Amp/Hrs. Before adding more batteries, I would check the condition of the current ones.
2) With that type of switch, I prefer to have ALL loads to draw through the common post of the switch. An exception would like temporary loads like ballast pumps. These can be wired to the common post or house bank direct
3) I would wire the pump to the helm BUS, since the cable size will support it. The helm BUS should be wired to the common post.

Your 10A charger is probably fine for the current setup, all though 10A is a little light for 3 batteries. If you do end up, upping the Ah, a larger charger would be a huge plus. It will work less hard.

[Stingreye]

Awesome answers like always Mike! I assume this is the helm buss to tap into?

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

[chpthril]

Yes, thats it