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hi everyone we've got another question from a fellow boater and this question asks or this boater asks basically the following Jeff my boat has a star battery a house battery all right good and a battery switch on and off now that's where it gets a little bit confusing two battery sources and only one battery switch generally when you're going to have two battery sources you're gonna need to have either two battery switches or three uh two on off battery switches at least and or a combined switch so that would be the third switch or you'll have what's called a source selector battery switch which allows you to decide what runs what does battery one run your boat does battery two run your boat or do you have all batteries running your boat I've talked about this at length I know it sounds a little bit boring but there is a little bit of nuance in terms of battery switching and that does affect uh the reliability of our electrical systems on board so the boater goes on and asks Jeff if I'm running my boat on the starter battery how would my depth finder depth sounder or fish finder work if it was hooked on to the house battery um the way to do that would be to have a battery switch that basically has effectively almost three switches inside um it's basically called a single throw double pole um and so what it does is as a border you have the ability you have three modes you have off and that would mean that your engine battery and its engine loads are disconnected you'd have your uh house loads and your house battery disconnected so all loads are disconnected from both your starter battery or your house battery so that's the off State on the on state engine loads are connected to engine battery house loads are connected to house batteries so there's really four posts at the back of this battery switch right so connections to the batteries connections to the loads and that would be on so that's why single throw once turn of the switch two things happen double pull so you're basically energizing two things with only one action which is good and then um some of you might say well yeah but Jeff great so each battery is connected to its dedicated load but what about emergency situations and that's the third state of that battery switch is parallel so that's where all batteries engine and house are also connected to starter loads and house loads and so that battery switch is from um blue Seas um off on combined is what is commonly known and that's exactly how you would run a boat where you can have one battery switch that allows you to have division of loads which is important because when you were fishing actually by the way and this happens um all more often than many of us care to remember is that it's possible to have your engine running at low RPM and for you to be fishing out for a period of time two three four five six hours some people are out there longer than that and to have even though the alt the engine is running even though the alternator is outputting the loads that are on your battery I.E the loads of the chart plotter maybe the sound system the fish finder and the VHF radio maybe you have a fridge on uh Bait Box whatever it is all those different things that are running at one time might and this does happen might exceed the output of your alternator and so it does happen unfortunately for someone who's trolling at low RPM for extended period of time to have the battery be completely drained and for you not to be able to start the engine because even though the engine was running the loads to run exceeded what the amperage of the alternator could output at low RPM so it's really useful in those situations to have a dedicated engine battery for the engine and a dedicated battery for the house so that way at least if one battery fails you have the ability of combining them and putting them together to start the engine so great question out there uh thanks for asking and thinking about how to make your boat electrical system better and thanks for all of you for watching as well safe boating out there so if you're curious again go on our website and find out more answers and solutions with this sort of setup and thanks for asking and thanks for all of you for listening and tuning in English (auto-generated)