Self-jumpstarting means jumpstarting one's own vehicle without the use of another vehicle. It's done by combining house and chassis batteries by one of several methods discussed below.
Note: regardless of specific method used, it will be gentlest on the system to combine the batteries and wait a few minutes for the starter battery to come up instead of immediately attempting to start. This will minimize1) the amount of current flowing from house bank to vehicle chassis. This may be especially important with Li chemistries that have BMS protections.
This will be easiest if one already has some kind of isolator/combiner setup. If not, one can run jumper cables from the house bank, or physically remove the house bank and carry it to the starter battery area.
Switches used as manual isolators will self-jumpstart when in the ON position.
Solenoids/relays always self-jumpstart assuming there is enough voltage in the starter battery to energize the solenoid.2) It is a mechanical connection and power will flow both ways.
Some VSRs have a provision to combine the batteries for self-jumpstarting.
Examples:
Solid state isolators are diode based and will not allow power to flow from the house battery to the starter battery. Therefore they cannot be used to self-jumpstart on their own (see below, including the Ctek exception).
As with diode-based isolators, DC-DC chargers typically cannot pass power back from the battery bank to the vehicle; there are exceptions. Read below for workarounds and different approaches.
It adds a layer of complexity, but a relay with a switch can be used to bridge the batteries manually.
Note the Smartpass does this when added to the CTEK D250-series chargers.
Some combo DC-DC chargers contain logic to maintain the starter battery when solar power is present.
Some standalone solar charge controllers like the Morningstar SunSaver Duo can, for example, charge the start battery with 10% of solar harvest and the house battery with 90% using different charging profiles. As with DC-DC above, it's not self-jumpstarting but can help prevent the dead starter battery.
dVSR isolators (including the Li-BIM) automatically connect the banks when the voltage on either side reaches defined setpoints.
Some Victron Multiplus models have a 4A starter battery maintenance feature.
There are dedicated maintainers:
Experimental: RV With Tito has uses a PWM solar charge controller to maintain starter battery from the house bank.
Also see the subarticle on combiner gotchas.
If a DC-DC is present and relatively weak shore power charging is applied to the starter battery there are circumstances where the DC-DC can cycle on-off constantly. Let's consider a 20A DC-DC and a 10A starter battery maintainer.
To avoid this scenario either:
Lithium banks can go dormant at low voltages in order to protect themselves:
What we need is a dumb voltage source to get the party restarted. The starter battery will do nicely.
Lithium "jump packs" have become more popular. Lithium-chemistry batteries can discharge quickly, so even relative small packs can jumpstart a car.
'Dwellers may want to pick a jump pack that has 12v or USB outlets so it can have other uses.