simplest way to charge house battery from alternator?

[Oldtownryan]

I have a pretty rough build, live in Manhattan/brooklyn half time and it works great but...rough. Just wondering if theres a cheap way to get a bump off the alternator while on the road without getting too involved because I hope to have solar in the next year. thanks

 

[Colorado_Al]

You need a charge solenoid or relay. If you're going to solar, I'd recommend a relay that will allow the chassis battery to also be charged from the solar.
This is the one I use and recommend:

SI-ACR Automatic Charging Relay - 12/24V DC 120A - Blue Sea Systems

Automatically combines batteries during charging, isolates batteries when discharging and when starting engines.

www.bluesea.com

It's about $85

You'll need to add a fuse to the positive cable between the starting/chassis battery and the relay, and also to the cable between the relay and the house battery.

This is how I did it here:

T1N Cargo Conversion

Things are moving along on the 03 158" cargo conversion. First thing I did was install an aux battery system using the BlueSea SI-Series Automatic Charging Relay #7610 and a Cabela's Advanced Angler AGM Battery. Hooked up the center console, radio, cargo lights to the aux battery and also...

sprinter-source.com

The relay also connects to the starting circuit to decouple the house battery from the chassis when you start the engine

 

[autostaretx]

Black and Decker used to sell a two cigar-plug gadget ... plug it into your Sprinter's 12v outlet, and the other end into a similar socket wired to your house battery. It was current-limited to 8 amps.
The side under charge would get handed 14 volts.



--dick (p.s. i have one, but i've never used it)