Battery Isolator and Solar charging

Hi folks. Just picked up our 2017 Broadway FB last week, and now the questions are starting to occur. My understanding is that the EC500 governs all solar charging and that if it left switched on it will charge the leisure and vehicle batteries, but if it's switched to shutdown it will only charge the leisure. Consequently we've been leaving it switched on. However there is also a battery isolation position on the ignition. This seems to disable central locking and vehicle battery readouts etc after a few minutes. As far as I can tell the Hal locate is still working when the isolation is set. My question is what happen to solar charging off the vehicle battery if the ignition is left in the isolation position? It's seems like isolation should be useful to vehicle battery life when in storage, but is that at the expense of it being toped up from solar? Also as far as I can tell the HAL locate appears to be wired to the vehicle battery rather than leisure. At least it reports ext voltages which match those of the vehicle battery. Slightly unsure whether to switch to isolation of not.

Lee

The idea is that if you isolate your vehicle battery there will be no drain on it so it won’t need charging.

Tinwheeler wrote:The idea is that if you isolate your vehicle battery there will be no drain on it so it won’t need charging.

Well I'd guess that is probably the case in the original vehicle. However in this instance it still appear to be supplying the HAL locate, so I'd say there is still some drain on it. Regardless of that batteries lose charge just from standing if left long enough.

Hence the sceptical smiley.

I'd like to isolate my vehicle battery as well but as you say Hal is the problem. I asked my dealer to switch it to the leisure battery but they said they were unable to do that!

woodlice wrote:I'd like to isolate my vehicle battery as well but as you say Hal is the problem. I asked my dealer to switch it to the leisure battery but they said they were unable to do that!

The one thing I have noticed is that with the key in the isolation position that sending a locate text to the HAL it reports an ext batt voltage that appears to match that of the vehicle battery. I can only guess that the wiring of the HAL locate bypasses the battery isolation switch. All a bit mysterious.

Lee

Thks Lee, Sounds about right which means we still end up with a flat battery. I was going to isolate via the ignition and wire a dash solar trickle charger via a fuse straight to the vehicle battery but I'm not sure if it would be enough in winter to supply Hal as well!