Boat Rewiring

sailsmanship

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Jul 26, 2000
Messages
389
Bought a boat with a hodge-podge of wiring connections. A lot of things that I don't need. Alot of the electronics are jumpered to guages, which I bought a real nice 12 station fuse block to clean it up. Question is I have a few positive and quiet a few negative terminals on the batteries, (I think alot of the -'s are from baitwell pumps, there are five). With the exception of the power trim and auto bilge lead, can I run duplex wire from each of the things I want to keep and ground them on the buss bar and switch them from the fuse block I just put in behind the helm panel? I will have alot of slots left and I have a bunch of marine duplex wire laying around
 

DangerDan

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
May 21, 2005
Messages
260
Re: Boat Rewiring

I just did the same to my boat. I added and 18 gang fuse panel for the helm and a 6 gang panel at the transom for some misc. cockpit wiring, Auto bilge pump switch, Live well pumps, cockpit night lights and a light box for charging glow lures. Believe it or not those circuits can get used up pretty quick. The more terminals you can add in the back will save you wire to the helm and keep the rear circuits to themselves.
 

limacina

Seaman
Joined
Sep 11, 2005
Messages
50
Re: Boat Rewiring

Run 8 or 10 guage wire from your battery up to a couple buss bars and distripute your power from them. Limit the connections on your batteries.<br />I'd tie into your battery switch so you can shut off your "house" components when you shut off power to your engine. This way you don't have to shut down the radio and lights when going home for the day. Add a fuse as close to this connection as possible. There are a coule issues that come up like having to run seperate power to your bilge pump switch and I added a 16g wire forward for all ways on power for radio memory.
 

Gone

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Aug 28, 2005
Messages
389
Re: Boat Rewiring

Put anything with an electric motor on a separate ground bus to the battery unless you want the noise it generates to mess up your electronics.
 
Top