any help with basic 12v set up please

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chi-girl

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need help with basic 12v switch arrangement. we are trying to help a friend and we are both clueless.

where do the pos and neg go to on the switch back from the battery
are the tails on the back neg so i can connect neg from appliance to these black tails so where does the appliance live go to.
thanks Ann

hoping to do all this and get it checked before connecting to battery






 
The -ve is not involved in the switch panel at all. Connect the -ve returns from your various devices together using a busbar or common stud with a heavy wire to the battery -ve. The battery +ve connects to the ring terminal that supplies the three fuse holders in your picture, and the short tails from the switches to the +ve supply to each device, whatever it is. Make sure you use the correct size of fuse for the size of cable supplying each device.
 
The positive from the battery, via the master isolating switch goes to the busbar connecting all the fuses. The tails are then the positive supply to the devices you are trying to switch. The negative to the device is taken from the negative of the battery (or from a negative busbar already fitted to the boat). The negative should go nowhere near the switch panel.
 
These look like single pole switches so there is no place on this board at all for the negative. These would be connected on a separate bus bar.

The tails would be the positive to the item that you are switching. The positive in should go to the other end of the fuse. I am a bit confused by the wire with a single ring terminal on it. Can't quite see in your pic what this is doing. It could be the main power in but it looks un-insulated.
 
If the panel is supplied with fuses, make sure you replace them with suitable sizes if you need to. A fuse protects a circuit against overloads & shorts. The fuse size should be chosen to match the capability of the wiring. If the wires are capable of way more than what's connected to it, then select an even smaller fuse. But if the wiring is only rated at 6 amps for instance & you fit a 10 amp fuse, the wiring could burn out before the fuse blows.
 
neale said:
The lakesailering rules are complex, but I think you still need the OP to complete it. I won't say how, as that could incur a forced lakesailer.
Click to expand...

Damn - I was going to point this out too, but of course to do so after you have would probably trigger some kind of infinite spiral of lakesailor-complexity.

Ken - just having other people duplicate your answer is not a Lakesailoring :)

Pete
 
meant to say i have 40 amp wire for batt pos and neg and 30amp for appliances. its only a cabin led light and an aux power socket and in the future a basic ff/depth sounder
 
chi-girl said:
ive heard of the lake sailer principle so how does it work?
Click to expand...

Essentially, when several people reply with much the same answer (like in this thread) and the person who asked the question thanks only the last one (not everybody, like you did). The person who answered first then feels miffed that their contribution was "ignored".

It applies more when there is some time between the responses, so that the later people must have seen the original answer before repeating all the same information anyway and then being thanked for it, rather than like this one where they probably all replied at the same time and couldn't see each others' answers.

Pete
 
oozelum ,ooooselum ooseelum err spelchecker pls

prv said:
Damn - I was going to point this out too, but of course to do so after you have would probably trigger some kind of infinite spiral of lakesailor-complexity.

Ken - just having other people duplicate your answer is not a Lakesailoring :)

Pete
Click to expand...

this spiral of lakesailor-complexity think he could be related to the
Oozlum bird !:)
 
To keep it simple, if you draw a diagram of what you want to wire up mark your switch as a simple on/off switch on the positive side of the battery that should make it easy to understand. The switch also conects the bulb on the panel into the circuit. Forget about colours of wires. I would never go by colours of wires as you have no idea what a previous owner might have used.
Hope this doesn't count as lakesailoring :o
 
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