Archive for the ‘Circuit Protection’ Category

Marine electrical questions?

June 28th, 2010 by Kevin Hannula and Nick Kroes

Marine Ac/Dc attempts to answer your questions about boat wiring and marine electrical techniques, concepts, and products. We get lots of mail from folks in mid-project or who are just curious about their boat’s electrical setup.

There are loads of post already on the site which we hope you will browse through. If you’re trying to track down info about a more specific category, please use the search box in the upper right of this page or check out the list of various subjects farther down on this page.

If you aren’t able to find the info that you need to complete your particular boat wiring project, please send us an email at boatwiring@gmail.com.

Thank you for visiting. We look forward to hearing from you and hope that you will be able to come back often.

Posted in Battery Charger, Battery Switch, Boat Wiring, Bow Thruster, Circuit Protection, Corrosion, Cruisers, Gauge Panels, Harnesses, Marine Electrical, Navigation Lights, Pontoons, Runabouts, Signaling Devices, Switch Panels, Testing, Trolling Motors, Uncategorized, VSR, Wipers | Comments Off

Ac/Dc connection

July 12th, 2010 by Kevin Hannula and Nick Kroes

Kevin,

Why are ac and dc ground buses tied together in boat wiring? It would seem to be a possible source of electrolysis.

George

Hi George,

You are correct.

When you tie the AC and DC ground buses together, you definitely create the path for stray current corrosion through your shore power connection.

BUT

The wire provides a ground path in the event of an AC fault to the DC system in your boat wiring. Without it, your AC breaker will not trip. The path to ground would be through the boat’s DC system, through the engine, and through the water. There is too much resistance in the water to cause the breaker to trip. All DC devices would become energized at 115V AC.

It is probably better to corrode a drive than kill a friend. I always recommend keeping the ground buses tied together. So does the US Coast Guard and the American Boat and Yacht Council.

Kevin

Posted in AC Wiring, Boat Wiring, Circuit Protection, Corrosion, Cruisers, Marine Electrical, Shore Power | Comments Off

Adding a second wiper

June 23rd, 2010 by Kevin Hannula and Nick Kroes

Dear Kevin,

The original wiper motor and arm on my boat need replacing. Whilst doing this, I want to add a second wiper motor to the boat on the driver’s side.

On the ceiling of the boat there is just some trunking with black wire running to the positive and negative on the wiper motor. This is activated by a switch on my dash board.

How do I arrange my boat wiring for the second wiper motor? Is there a simple way to just loop them and using the existing switch set up?

Kind Regards,Marinco is the marine industry's leading source for wiper motors, arms and blades

Jason

Hi Jason,

The best practice is to have circuit protection for each wiper motor. If you keep the current fuse/breaker and add a second wiper motor to the system, you will get nuisance tripping when both motors are on. If you simply increase the size of your circuit protection, you will get an even greater nuisance – a fire – when you cause one of the wiper motors to bind up.

The simplest solution is to double the size of the circuit protection at the wiper switch. Add an in-line fuse at your current wiper motor. Connect the grounds of your two wipers. Connect a second in-line fuse to your wiper power wire at the same location to form a “Y” in the harness and connect this your second wiper motor. If you bind either wiper motor, you will trip the corresponding fuse and your boat will be safe.

Let me know if you have any questions,

Kevin

Posted in Boat Wiring, Circuit Protection, Marine Electrical, Wipers | Comments Off

New Switch Panel

June 14th, 2010 by Kevin Hannula and Nick Kroes

Kevin,

The original panel on my marine electrical system had a toggle switch as a terminal point from the battery lead and a short length of wire to the positive, fused bus for distribution on the same panel.

For the revised boat wiring, I’ve included a fuse at the battery terminal feeding the positive lead to the panel.

Do current standards require I use a switch and fuse at the point this positive feed is attached to the panel? Can I leave the fuse out, as on the original? Should I use a circuit breaker?

Thanks.

Ken

Hi Ken,

Current standards only require circuit protection at the source of power.

The fuse on a power lead for a distribution panel is meant to protect the lead. Installing this protection as close as possible to the source power is the key to protecting the lead.

Check out the attached Wire Size Calculator. It will help you determine the size of your power feed for your distribution panel along with all of your other boat wiring.

Kevin

Posted in Battery Switch, Boat Wiring, Circuit Protection, Marine Electrical | Comments Off

12 Volt Accessories – 24 Volt System

May 17th, 2010 by Kevin Hannula and Nick Kroes

Kevin,

On my boat wiring, I have a 12 volt battery for starting my motor and a 24 volt house battery setup for running my trolling motor and accessories.EzAcDc offers Smart Battery Switch Systems to make your boat wiring project easy.

I would like to have my electronics, which are all 12 volt except for the trolling motor, run off my house batteries, and use my starting battery for starting the engine only.

The boat manufacturer had the house batteries rigged up in 24 volt, but has the accessories connected in 12-volts across only one of the house batteries. Although this works, one of my batteries drains well before the other. Also, something tells me that boat wiring like this might not be a good idea.

Is there a better way to do this? Should I try to balance the load across both house batteries, or should I use a DC/DC converter to step down the 24 volts to 12 volts in order to run the accessories properly? Also, can I use a Smart Battery Switch VSR to charge my 24 volt system from my motor once the starting battery is charged up?

Thanks,

Scott

Hi Scott,

Your boat wiring  has been engineered in a safe, conservative way.

You run into potential problems when you start running two, separate, 12 volts systems with their grounds 12 volts apart.

  1. Stray current corrosion.

    The engine is connected to one battery ground, while the hull is connected to second battery ground – engine corrodes away to protect hull

  2. Fires caused by crossing grounds.

    Gauges and navigation lights have same ground to complete circuit. Your engine harness grounds the gauges and your boat harness grounds the navigation lights. If you connect the engine ground to battery 1 ground and the boat accessory harness to battery 2 ground, the 24 volt jumper wire for your trolling motor completes the dead short from Battery 1 positive to Battery 2 negative.

    The short circuit path is the Accessory harness ground which is connected to battery 2 negative (battery 1 positive), to navigation light switch ground, to gauge ground, to engine harness ground, and back battery 1 ground.

    There is no circuit protection in this circuit so the smallest wire burns. This is usually the small ground jumper wire that connects your gauges.

If you are going to separate circuits to both batteries, install circuit protection in both the negative and positive wires and pay close attention. Label all battery connections because swapping a ground at the battery will cause a fire.

Best of luck,

Kevin

Posted in Boat Wiring, Circuit Protection, Corrosion, Cruisers, Navigation Lights, Pontoons, Runabouts | Comments Off

BEP’s New Coutour Zone – State of the Art

April 14th, 2010 by Kevin Hannula and Nick Kroes

BEP Marines CZONE™ is a state-of-the-art networked power control and monitoring system it has been designed to integrate and simplify on board electrical and mechanical systems and improve the boating experience.

The system has significant benefits to the OEM
Compared to typical circuit breaker installations CZONE™ relocates the circuit control and protection devices closer to the loads thus shortening cable runs, this equates to a reduction in the cost, complexity and weight of the marine electrical/boat wiring.The CZONE™ system through its simple plug and play connection system provides savings in installation time.

CZONE™ offers an extremely high level of versatility and integration:

  • Control AC and DC loads with built in circuit protection
  • Monitor multiple Tanks
  • Monitor multiple AC and DC power systems
  • Programmable timers, dimmers, alarms, load shedding and more
  • All controllable from one of the intuative display interface

The CZONE™ system is made up of multiple input and output interfaces that are networked together on a CAN bus. CZONE™ can consist of a single interface or a multi bus control and monitoring system, CZONE™ is the only system on the market that, affordably, caters to the needs of vessels ranging in size from 25 to 100 feet in length

Configuration
The system can be modified or updated via the Display module or the extremely user friendly CZONE™ configuration program. If a module is damaged a replacement unit can simply be plugged in place of the old device the system will automatically configure the new module.

Designed to withstand the harsh physical nature of the marine environment
The design of CZONE™ was undertaken utilizing the highest quality, proven components and innovative protective circuitry providing a robust reliable on board power control and monitoring system.

CZONE™ is the only power control and monitoring system which can interface with a third party multifunction marine electronic navigational displays.

Posted in Boat Wiring, Circuit Protection, Cruisers, Gauge Panels, Harnesses, MarineAcDc Forum, New Products, Signaling Devices | Comments Off

Boat wiring resource for boat owners

August 27th, 2008 by Kevin Hannula and Nick Kroes

Everyone at Marine Ac/Dc is very excited about the recent launch of EzAcDc. These guys could easily become the internet’s premier source for boat wiring systems and marine electrical components. Even with just their initial offering, they appear to be an excellent resource for boat owners.

EzAcDc offers engineered boat wiring solutions including:

We recommend their products and services without reservation.

Posted in Boat Wiring, Circuit Protection, Corrosion, Cruisers, Electrician's Log, Gauge Panels, Harnesses, Harnesses-AC, Harnesses-DC, Harnesses-Dash, Navigation Lights, New Products, Pontoons, Quality-Control, Runabouts, Signaling Devices, Switch Panels, Testing | Comments Off

Marine Circuit Protection

January 24th, 2008 by Kevin Hannula

More great boat wiring advice from EasyAcDc.com…

Any boat built to NMMA (National Marine Manufacturer’s Association) standards has circuit protection for its boat wiring system. These breakers/fuses are specified to provide adequate amperage for all standard equipment. And, the original boat wiring is sized for the factory installed system.

Problems occur when the boat owner or dealer begins to add other items.

The best and safest position to place your circuit protection is as close as possible to the source of power (battery or distribution panel). For example, a new fish finder is added to the helm of a boat. There isn’t an obvious way to splice in the existing boat wiring to connect the power and ground wires. The solution is to run a new pair of wires to the battery. The fuse for the fish finder needs to go as close as possible to the battery. The fuse is protecting the fish finder and its wiring. If the fish finder has an internal fault, the fuse will blow. If the wire between the fish finder and the battery gets damaged, the fuse will blow.

If the fuse is installed close to the fish finder, then in the case where the wire is damaged between the fish finder, the wire will burn instead.

Circuit protection is also very important when adding additional charging sources. This new charging source is considered to be a source of power that needs circuit protection. If it is not a “self limiting” device, circuit protection is needed at both ends of its positive output wire. Most chargers are self limiting.

For example, let’s say that a solar battery charger is added to boat. It has 4’ long leads with an inline fuse 7” from the end of the positive lead. The boat owner needs to add 8’ of wire to allow the charger to be connected directly to the battery. As long as the wire doesn’t get damaged, this setup will work fine.

Problems occur when the wire gets damaged. If the wire is damaged between the charger and the inline fuse, the self limiting battery charger will shut down, and the blown fuse will limit the output of the battery. If the wire is damaged between the inline fuse and the battery, the battery will continue to discharge until it is depleted or the shorted wire has completed burned up. This usually results in a fire.

Posted in Boat Wiring, Circuit Protection, Cruisers, Electrician's Log, Harnesses, Harnesses-DC, MarineAcDc Forum | Comments Off