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hi everyone jeff cote here with pacific  yacht systems  we've got a question here from a fellow  boater  um so this boater is asking us and tells  us he's got an engine that has its own  starter battery  in addition he has a house battery made  of two batteries but you know it doesn't  matter if the house battery is 2 or 10  it's a house battery bank the only  source  of charge for my house battery is short  power that means that his alternator  right on his boat is not connected  directly  to his house battery it's connected to  his engine battery as you would expect  on most boats  he says later on he adds i've considered  battery combiners and also battery  isolators but cannot decide which one is  best for me  all right so that's a tough question you  know and that's one of the dilemmas  remember this is the fun part of having  a boat and this is the bad part of  the boat the fun part is you get to make  decisions the bad part is you get to  make decisions  so if you've got an alternator and it's  not an outboard  right and you've got a an engine an  inboard engine  and you have an alternator connected to  the starter post which is in turn  connected  to your engine battery how do you share  that charge with your house battery  the easiest thing to do especially in  this situation because you don't have a  very big  mismatch of different battery bank sizes  is probably to consider  a battery combiner battery combiner is  going to go from battery to battery  and whenever the engine battery has  what's considered a charging voltage  so assuming this is a 12 volt system  around 13  3 volts 13 4 volts it's going to  basically parallel  automatically the engine battery with  the house battery  and so a battery combiner is pretty easy  to install trick is and there's a lot of  got shoes and we've got youtube videos  on the doctors  is that it has to be connected to the  unswitched distribution  of both batteries we've got videos on  switch distribution if you're curious  and i've got diagrams as well and  conceptual diagrams on that but it's  very essential do not take a shortcut  here  because you will be in a world of hurt  so important battery combiner from  engine battery directly  to house battery of course it needs to  be fused of course it needs to be the  right amperage  the battery combiner also needs to be  the right amperage as you remember what  we said  earlier nothing's easy if you want easy  you're not gonna be on a boat  okay but that's what i would do in  instance because the two batteries are  very similar  size i would put a battery combiner and  not a battery isolator in this instance  everyone thanks for watching and post  your questions down below and we're  going to answer them as quickly as we  can  thank you  you