BCM Community

Our 8D house batteries and inverter are now in the center of the bus where the old OTR air conditioner used to be.  Can anyone recommend where to ground them?  I'll be running a solenoid between the house and chassis positives.  Could I simply run the ground directly to the negative terminal on the chassis battery, or would that overload it's ground cable? 

All of my house dc loads run back to the negative terminal on the house bank.  I just need a solid place to ground that.  I was hoping to find a large ground cable in the AC junction box, but those all appear to be chassis 24v runs.  I recall that there was a robust ground stud above this bay, but lacking foresight, I covered it up when we put down the new floor.

Thanks for any help you can provide,

Mike

I just put a 3/8" bolt through the floor and bolted my ground cables to that.  The entire metallic structure of the bus is ground so it really doesn't matter all that much.  I used anti-corrosion grease on it and I keep it clean.  So far it works fine.  I wouldn't connect to the ground cable terminal of the start batteries but I might connect to the chassis stud that they use for ground, if it was close enough.  Keeping that ground cable as short as possible is important.

Brian

Thanks Brian.  What size cable did you use for the house battery ground?

mine is 00 2 feet long. Inverter is 00 welding cable 6 feet long 4024 inverter. 4 - 6volt bats @ 232 AH

Based on my current load design I used a 1/0 cable.  It should be able to carry 100% of your anticipated maximum current at your voltage.  My battery bank is configured for 24 volts to reduce the current load and cable sizes compared to the same power at 12 volts.

Brian