Odd Head Unit wiring questions. Acc Turn On and 12volt power. Second battery.

[brettmcox]

I am adding a second battery to my boat. I want to run my AMPs and by power plug (cigarette lighter) of the second battery. So I do not worry about running down the starting battery with the system and filling and draining my bags.

My questions is, can I run the Power wire to my head unit to the battery (fused) and the ACC turn on to the current setup?
This way I know the radio will be OFF when the dash is off and the system will TOTAL run of NON starting battery.

Yes, I would still take my Jump Box out on the lake with me.

[MLA]

Brett,

I would approach this in a couple of directions. If you want to wire the amps and other accessory loads directly to the house battery and have a dedicated house and main battery bank, then I would suggest going with a dual-battery switch and an ACR or isolator. This will give you a fairly automatic system with the main cranking battery always isolated from the house battery, yet the house battery will receive a charge from the alternator when the engine is running. Or, go with a traditional dual-battery switch and wire ALL loads to the common post of the switch. All loads will draw off which ever bank you have the switch turned to, so one bank will always be left in reserve. Its a solid functional system, but more manual then the other option. Even if you wired all your amps, etc to the house battery, you will still need to manually move the switch from time to time, or the house bank will never see the alternator and go dead in an hour or so.

[kmgs]

Hellroaring makes a great isolator.

[brettmcox]

This is my current plan.
1. Add second battery, run a ground to main battery.
2. Use a Combiner Changer (http://www.yandina.com/TrollBattery.htm)
3. Run Amp Power and Ground back the second battery.
4. Run Head Unit Power and Ground back to second battery.
5. Create a Jumper 4g Power cable to link the two batteries in the case that I have to Jump Start myself.
6. Carrie Jump box when go out on a Large Lake. (80% of the time I will be on a small 380 ac private lake).

I am treating my Amp and Radio battery like I wired my dad’s trolling motor.

I did not want to mess with rewiring the Boat’s setup but I wanted to know that my system would only pull from NON starting battery.
Oddly, our private lake does not allow wakeboarding with “LOUD” music, but you can swim and play music as loud as you like. (There is one boat on our lake with 6 amps and 4 batteries to run the system that he only charges by plug it in at night).

[brettmcox]

I take it my idea is not the best plan?