Adding second battery

[barsteward]

I'm wanting to add a second battery to the MH I know it's not advisable to to put just one battery on at a time but the one I have now is only 18months old and the MH has only done 2500miles. It also has a solar panel which I would have thought will have kept the present battery in good condition so being a complete Numpty could some one list the parts, Connectors, Cable, etc and a diagram of the best connection method ie Parallel?.
I have uploaded a couple of pictures of the present set up so any help would be appreciated.



Thanks Les

 

[fixer]

You got back to Yorkshire safely then, I kept the old one and bought another identical battery from Halifax to add on, make sure they are both fully charged on the same charger before you connect them together.

 

[DBK]

The classic way is to wire them in parallel, positive to positive, negative to negative, but attach the load to both batteries, that is attach the positive load to the positive terminal of battery #1 and the negative load to the negative terminal of battery #2. If you are only taking a few amps of load this is not essential but if you ever add an inverter it is much better.

There are more complicated ways but if you are just adding a second battery to an existing system and not changing anything else this is the easiest.

 

[barsteward]

Thanks DB, plenty complicated enough for me

 

[DBK]

The picture on this page might help a bit, though they have complicated it by showing 4 batteries.

http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html
What you want is method 2 but with only two batteries. Alternatively, look at Method 4 and imagine you are using only the top two batteries. This is identical to Method 2 with only 2 batteries.

The idea of doing it this way is it ensures as far as possible both batteries take the load evenly. If you do it like Method 1 the battery nearest the load will do more work than the one further away due to the very small voltage drop over the connecting wires - but unless you are adding an inverter it isn't critical, but it is nice to do it correctly!

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[Gaston aires]

The classic way is to wire them in parallel, positive to positive, negative to negative, but attach the load to both batteries, that is attach the positive load to the positive terminal of battery #1 and the negative load to the negative terminal of battery #2. If you are only taking a few amps of load this is not essential but if you ever add an inverter it is much better.

There are more complicated ways but if you are just adding a second battery to an existing system and not changing anything else this is the easiest.

I second that ! done the same thing twice before, and yes charge the new one before you connect.
Phil