Electrical Breaksafe 6000 charging option

[JT76]

Have a New Age van so while not Jayco I think the brains trust here is pretty goes

Fitted with a breaksafe 6000 which charges while connected to tug, all good and works well. Question is while parked up in the shed (no 240v) I have no way to charge the breaksafe battery. I have a solar panel mounted on the roof of the shed to charge the van house battery via a ext solar setup which works well too.

Today i wired up a 12 pin plug I had to go from my shed solar panel through the reg into the vans 12 pin wired to the same two wires that charge the breaksafe while hooked up to the tug. Unfortunalty this didnt work and reading the breaksafe instructions they mention depending on the charger you may need to open it up and connect directly to the battery as no voltage is across those pins or the external terminals on the breaksafe unit and a charger may not work like this. After a little research I found some people hooking up a second house battery to the breaksafe and letting the batteries equalise this way.

So my question is do you think it would be ok to plug in from the vans house battery (which is an anderson plug) to the 12pin via my new adaptor which has just a earth and the breakaway charge circuit. The adaptor I made also has an anderson plug so is easy to plug in. Only worry I have is the fridge runs off the same pin as the breakaway charge but has a seperate sense wire so I am thinking as long as I have power on the breakaway/fridge pin and not the fridge sense then the fridge will not draw anything.

Or is there a better way. I would only do the above for a day or so a month when not in use and then plug the van battery back in to the solar for the other days so van battery would not drain much.

 

[Drover]

Mine just gets charged from the tug and gets no charge while parked up and has given no dramas over the years showing charged when I've checked it, it stays charged for months at a time so i don't think you should worry about it, so long as you don't pull the pin out... My rig never gets plugged into 240 except to run the AC..... PS : It has since been modified so it gets its 12v charging supply from the van batteries so stays charged.

 

[JT76]

Thanks @Drover you are probably right but as we don’t get away as often as some I ended up hooking it up through the same wiring as when hooked up to the tug. Charge light is on so happy days. I’ll give it a charge every now and then in between bigger breaks off the road.

 

[Drover]

Yep, originally I thought the same but even when it sits idle for 4 mths or more like when we built our house it still shows charged, has me stuffed, I even looked to see if somehow it was drawing from main battery which is charged by solar but couldn't find anything, so put it in the Ripleys Collection.......

 

[JT76]

Forgot I had it on charge via my solar shed panel today and went out to check. Charge light was off so hopefully that just means it’s fully charged? I’ll leave it off for a while and plug it back in and see if the charge light comes back on. Test light still says battery is good. Again I’m sure you are right in not needing to charge it but sometimes I like to play so this idea popped in my head. I made up a lead to connect it from the shed solar via a two into one anderson plug, because I rewired the fridge into an anderson plug which also charges the breakaway, originally I wired it up through the 12 pin then I remembered I moved the fridge out of the 12 pin. Anyway possible a waste of time but seems to work as well.

 

[Max Wallace]

I also experienced problems with the Break-Safe battery going flat when the van was in storage. I did wire it to the house battery direct but you need put a diode in the positive feed wire to ensure there is no back feed of current from the Break Safe battery. Without this the Break Safe battery with be trying to power other items in the van should the house battery be removed. The diode is worth very little, probably about 80 cents, from JayCar.

 

[geedub]

I also experienced problems with the Break-Safe battery going flat when the van was in storage. I did wire it to the house battery direct but you need put a diode in the positive feed wire to ensure there is no back feed of current from the Break Safe battery. Without this the Break Safe battery with be trying to power other items in the van should the house battery be removed. The diode is worth very little, probably about 80 cents, from JayCar.

Or you can just put a switch in the line.

 

[Max Wallace]

Great, just something else to remember to do.

 

[geedub]

A standard diode will drop the voltage by 0.6v ( a shottky is better at 0.2-0.46v) which is significant when charging a battery.
I find the switch easy. I just turn it on when I get home and then I have the house battery on a timer for charging. When it is getting charged so is the break safe battery. I wasn't having a go just offering an alternative.

 

[Max Wallace]

I take the van's main battery out of van and place it on continuous charge at home when the van is not in use as I store the van in a farm shed at another location that has neither electrical power available nor direct sunlight for the solar panel to keep the battery charge maintained. I did have to drill a hole into the side of the breakaway battery compartment to facilitate the wiring coming in from the main battery. That was about two years ago and I've had no problems since. Yes, Drover, I too had a difficult location to get to the breaksafe unit but in the end I removed unit's battery and unscrewed it from the floor, then I was able to move it out enough from its tight space to do the mod. Also, no offence was ever taken geedub.

 

[geedub]

I take the van's main battery out of van and place it on continuous charge at home when the van is not in use as I store the van in a farm shed at another location that has neither electrical power available nor direct sunlight for the solar panel to keep the battery charge maintained. I did have to drill a hole into the side of the breakaway battery compartment to facilitate the wiring coming in from the main battery. That was about two years ago and I've had no problems since. Yes, Drover, I too had a difficult location to get to the breaksafe unit but in the end I removed unit's battery and unscrewed it from the floor, then I was able to move it out enough from its tight space to do the mod. Also, no offence was ever taken geedub.

Consider putting a 10W panel on the roof of the shed and wiring it to the plug on the van. That way you won't need to remove the battery and the 10w panel will keep the battery topped up nicely.

 

[carco]

My unit has a dedicated 240v charger which just plugs into the nearby power point.
Thought they all did?

 

[Max Wallace]

Yes, I certainly agree and that is being done. I've since purchased a 20watt solar panel and will be placing it on the outside of the shed. However, the power feed I installed from the main battery to the breakaway battery will be left in place. That breakaway battery on its own is only capable of providing enough power to apply the brakes for a very limited time, which of course with having dual axles fitted with four brakes drawing electrical power makes that rather critical. With power also being supplied from the main battery, with a diode preventing power feedback from the breakaway battery, the power to the electric brakes, should an on road caravan disconnect situation arise, is going to be extended far beyond that of just relying on the tiny breakaway battery.