12V Circuit Breaker Issue

[Referee222]

I have a Bighorn 2014 3370RK. I am having issues with breaker opening when running the hydraulic landing gear and slides. Upon investigation, I identified the main breaker from the batteries as the one that is opening. It is a 30A auto reset breaker. The interesting thing is that on the breaker buss bar there is a 50A auto reset fuse protecting the hydraulic pump. So with a 30A protecting the whole system and a 50A protecting just the pump, the 50A breaker will never see 50A to open because the 30A will open first. There are a few other 50A breakers on the buss as well that will never open. This makes no sense. I am wondering if the 30A should have been a 50A breaker. Looking at the wiring diagram, they do not even show a breaker from the battery to the buss bar. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[richheck]

Link to a diagram of your circuit breakers, hope this helps

http://manuals.heartlandowners.org/..._Buss_Bar/Heartland/Buss_Bar_for_LM-BH-BC.pdf

The only manual reset breaker listed is a 50 amp from the converter, if yours is 30 amp I believe you are correct in your assumption.

 

[danemayer]

Never heard of a 30 amp auto reset breaker in-between the batteries and the buss bar. But I have seen some rigs with a setup as pictured below coming off the batteries. The 2 breakers with the small copper buss should be an auto-reset 50 amp. The one going to the breakaway switch is probably a 20 or 30. There are earlier builds where 100 amp fuses were used instead of breakers.

If you have a similar setup with a 30 amp breaker coming off the batteries, it's probably a mistake. You should call Heartland Customer Service at 877-262-8032 / 574-262-8030. Have your VIN # ready. They should be able to verify the correct value and send you one.

 

[Referee222]

Thanks for the reference to the wiring diagram. That is the one I mentioned in my post. As you can see, their is no breaker from the battery to the buss bar. I'm beginning to think it either shouldn't be there or should be at least as large as the largest breaker on the buss bar

 

[danemayer]

You do want a breaker or fuse on the line between battery and the refrigerator's inverter. That will protect the battery against a short in that line, or some type of failure of the inverter that causes it to draw too much power.

It's also a good idea to have a breaker between the battery and the breakaway switch, for the same reason.

I'm not so sure it's necessary to have a breaker between the battery and main buss bar. Each breaker on the buss bar provides protection. Seems to me another breaker would be redundant. But maybe there's a reason I haven't thought of. But it would seem necessary to have a 50 amp breaker to match the rating of the breakers for the Power Converter and Hydraulics.

 

[Referee222]

Dan,

Thanks for the advice. I will be calling Heartland next week. Another issue I thought of is that many of the Chargers on the rigs are rated at higher than even the 50A breaker level. So, if the batteries are low enough that they are looking for more than 50A, that would trip the breaker too. I have noticed the batteries were slow to charge. I wonder if the 30A breaker has been tripping all this time. Unless Heartland can give me a good reason for the redundant breaker, I think I will take it out.

 

[Referee222]

Well, I got my response from Heartland. Not totally satisfied with the response. I sent them a picture, it should be attached if I did it right. The comment back was that it was wired correctly and the inline breaker should probably be a 50A, not a 30A. I then asked what the purpose of the inline breaker was and got no response. The only thing I think it could be for is to protect the wires and the batteries from over current draw from the batteries or excessive charge current. So, with that in mind, I replaced the 30A breaker with a manual reset 100A breaker. This will allow me to run an inverter up to about 1200W before the breaker will activate.

With the 100A breaker in place, I no longer have problems with my hydraulics. Original Problem fixed!!!

Thanks all for your advice.

Lynn