House battery not charging

[karonoko]

With no apparent reason my house battery no longer charges from the alternator. It ran down and i had to combine my batteries and charge it up through the start battery. I have an ACR that for awhile was flashing fast, meaning lock out of one battery and discharging. Now, no led.
Could someone more familiar with the alternator connections please advise me here? We thank you.

[karonoko]

Any ideas for me? Thank you....

[Kickin Bears]

Thinking out loud and real time (dangerous ) it could be the alternator, the regulator, or a faulty diode or exciter (or combination). If you’re getting no charge, I would think alternator is shot. I’ve swapped out a few alternators over my life when the symptom is no charging when engine running

I highly recommend Don Casey’s book “complete illustrated guide to sailboat maintenance”. There’s an in-depth section in the chapter that covers electronics, dedicated to troubleshooting the alternator / regulator. I think it’ll give you a lot of direction on how to troubleshoot / test / isolate

Have you done any ammeter testing you can post here? Might trigger some direction from others with that extra level of detail

PS -If you’re a DIY, this book should be in your library. You’ll thank me later!!

[karonoko]

I found that my relay was faulty so no ground to the ACR and thus no feed back to the House battery. The relay was recommended to me so my shore power will not feed through the ACR.

[Kickin Bears]

Is this how you’re setup?

http://assets.bluesea.com/files/resourc ... L-ACRs.jpg

Looks like it manages the charge for starting and house batteries. Totally misunderstood the issue..

[karonoko]

Yes, though i have the simpler SI ACR, and since I also have a shore power charger, it have a relay to shut off the ground from the ACR when the charger is fired up to disable the ACR. The relay went bad and kept the ACR ground from connecting so I evidently drew a ground some other way and that caused my House not to charge and to discharge. Need to replace the relay or put in a manual switch instead when using the shore charger (though I rarely use it since i am now on a mooring these days).

[Maine Sail]

Yes, though i have the simpler SI ACR, and since I also have a shore power charger, it have a relay to shut off the ground from the ACR when the charger is fired up to disable the ACR. The relay went bad and kept the ACR ground from connecting so I evidently drew a ground some other way and that caused my House not to charge and to discharge. Need to replace the relay or put in a manual switch instead when using the shore charger (though I rarely use it since i am now on a mooring these days).

There is no need to disable the ACR when running the shore charger.

Making Sense of Automatic Charging Relays: https://marinehowto.com/automatic-charging-relays/