House Battery Circuit Breaker Question

[TallPaul]

My motorhome has a circuit breaker on the house battery. It is a HI-AMP, BUSS, 120A, Waterproof, 184120F. It is rated 30VDC and 3000A Interrupt. I am trying to figure out if it is defective. I see breakers like this on the net and there is a button on top you can push to trip it and then the arm pops out on the side of the top part. Mine does not have the button to trip it, so I assumed you simply push the arm in and it should pop out, but it does not pop out. That leads me to believe the breaker is defective, but before I spend $60 or $100 on a new breaker (these things are very hard to find), I thought I should ask someone here if it really is supposed to pop out or is it fine the way it is. Thanks, Paul

[TallPaul]

My motorhome has a circuit breaker on the house battery. It is a HI-AMP, BUSS, 120A, Waterproof, 184120F. It is rated 30VDC and 3000A Interrupt. I am trying to figure out if it is defective. I see breakers like this on the net and there is a button on top you can push to trip it and then the arm pops out on the side of the top part. Mine does not have the button to trip it, so I assumed you simply push the arm in and it should pop out, but it does not pop out. That leads me to believe the breaker is defective, but before I spend $60 or $100 on a new breaker (these things are very hard to find), I thought I should ask someone here if it really is supposed to pop out or is it fine the way it is. Thanks, Paul

[RV Wizard]

Paul, if the breaker is passing current it is ok in the since that you have a complete circuit. It may or may not have a safe way to trip off this 120 amp breaker manually. A dead short should cause it to trip. I read your other post on using this as a means to disconnect batteries. Why not just put in a knife or Deka rotary switch to turn off the batteries?

[TallPaul]

Thanks. I guess then that the breaker must be "fail safe." Well, I won't worry about it so long as it is safe. Yes, a battery disconnect switch makes more sense than tripping a breaker.

[HarveyP]

I bought a breaker like you describe with the button to pop the arm. I think I got a 200 amp one for about $20 on eBay. You might try looking there if the price sounds right. Car stereo-type shops have them also. I wired one between my house batteries and the connection to the coach. Harvey

[TallPaul]

I contacted the manufacturer of the breaker. It should be fine. They said that model does not have a trip test button and that it will not trip test by pushing on the lever. So everything should be just fine. Now I can figure out what to do about the draining battery and I guess the trick is to find where the drain is happening. I could put a switch in for the propane detector (has no off switch) so it can be turned off and see if that helps, though in my former motorhome the propane detector did not bleed down the battery.