Parallel switch

[garyd]

I recently had a battery problem. Used the battery Parallel switch to start engine, worked great. I was thinking of adding a seperate generator battery and then wiring a battery parallel switch so the generator battery could parallel with either the house or starting batteries.

Has anyone tried this before?

 

[Genesis]

Set up a separate gen starting battery, but the parallel solenoid is overkill. Better is a battery combiner off the house batteries which can do the same job for less money ($50 or so complete, and can be "manually overridden")

Gensets don't take much to roll them over, so this will work fine.

BTW don't even think about trying to start a main off a puny genset battery. It will just destroy the battery. The exception are the AGM batteries - those are actually capable of delivering close to 1,000 amps (!) for cranking, and might be able to roll over a 92 series Detroit if its reasonably warm.