Battery Disconnect

[KLYoung]

A little confused here. I am installing a battery disconnect on my BattleBorn batteries and need to know whether to install it on the negative or positive cable. I seen discussion both ways.

[2oldman]

OP is gone.

[Sjm9911]

I did the negative as the switch i bough recomended it. Just make sure you dont forget to turn it on for the break away switch when towing. I wired mine so that was always powered.

[CA_Traveler]

The discussion was about disconnecting the battery.

Disconnect both the positive and negative battery cables and remove the batteries and you can still have the lights on from the battery charger.

[BFL13]

I had a disconnect on the battery neg to frame wire and thought that would be ok. Nope!

Turned out that because the frame is the neg path for both 120v and 12v, that I still had a neg path aside from the battery to frame wire, when the shore power was plugged into the inverter and something weird was happening the way the inverter was wired so the "ground" wire in the 120v wire got to the "chassis" of the inverter which got to the RV frame.

Anyway, it was complicated. Can't remember all the gory details of which path went where or why I had it like that.

Bottom line is when the battery disconnect on the neg wire was "open" and the shore power cable was in the inverter, I still had 12v lights and fans working in the RV

So as others a trying to warn about, you can have another neg path somewhere, but if you have the disconnect on the battery pos wire close to the battery, you won't have another pos path somewhere.

[CA_Traveler]

Electrically it doesn't matter as a switch disconnects the circuit, period. All postive or all negative wires must be switched.

The general battery safety rule it to disconnect the negative battery cable first on the battery and connect it last.

But this doesn't apply once the switch is installed.

[ksg5000]

May depend on how your rig is wired. Look for extra wires attached to your battery which you might have to relocate to accommodate add-on battery disconnect.

[2oldman]

I seen discussion that it doesn't matter.

[Lynnmor]

KLYoung wrote:
A little confused here. I am installing a battery disconnect on my BattleBorn batteries and need to know whether to install it on the negative or positive cable. I seen discussion both ways.

That's because it doesn't really matter.

[enblethen]

I would install in the positive lead. Closer to the battery the better.
If something were to happen in the circuit if were installed in negative, you could have very serious issues. A ground any where in the system.