Full Rewire - Pembrokeshire

[Helidan]

Any recommendations for a company who can carry out a decent rewire job in West Wales - preferably without costing an arm and a leg?

 

[V1701]

Type & age of boat? It will be expensive because it can be very time consuming accessing and tracing wires, etc. Materials costs will have gone up quite a lot as well I should imagine. I would suggest think it through in order to break it down into chunks of work, you might decide that a partial rewire done DIY could be an option? I've done this before, it's quite satisfying and the bonus is you'll know exactly what you've got...

 

[Trident]

Average hourly rates for a marine electrician range from £40 to £70 and its a lot of hours to plan out, lay the wiring, etc even on a small boat and material costs (copper wire especially) have gone up 50-100% in the last two years (in the case of some huge 120mm battery wire I bough last April for £650 a reel by the time I need more in December it was £1200 TRADE)

If you are tempted to DIY please don't be tempted to but Chinese eBay or Amazon battery switches etc - go BlueSeas or BEP at higher cost on everything but you'll know its safe and up to the job (I have found no end of burned out, melted and otherwise dangerous cheapie parts on boats that owners bought online and said "but they say CE on them" !)

 

[Sandy]

Any recommendations for a company who can carry out a decent rewire job in West Wales - preferably without costing an arm and a leg?

You should be aware of the Speed, Quality and Cost triangle.

Project Management Triangle - Speed, Cost and Quality | Fractory

You can have two out of the three, as it is a boat you need to add a marine element usually counted in the number of spring tides before the job can be started.

 

[Tranona]

As already suggested, sacrificing an arm and a leg is what goes for rewiring a boat. I have just done a 31' sailing boat. Very basic DC distribution and all new wiring except interior lighting circuits, split charging and wiring for engine and simple 240V shorepower. Approx £1500 so far for panel, cabling, connectors, terminals, bus bars, switches, split charging. £500 batteries, £300 chargers (secondhand). Lost count of the hours spent planning, sourcing materials, never mind the actual installation work. Of course a professional would take far less time than a one of DIY. Small boats are horrid things to work on. It took me 2 days to install the B2B for the bow battery including running the cables through the boat. One day to make the mounting board and attach to the boat, then mount all the fuses and connection posts. Second (long) day to make up all the cables from the start battery to the B2B and on to the bow battery and then run them through 4 bulkheads and under the floorboards forward for connection. That is £800 at the going rate for tradesmen, although likely to be lower because they work quicker than I do, but doubt it would take less than a long day.

Agree with suggestions about DIY and particularly only buying good quality materials.

 

[Dellquay13]

Tim at Dyfed electronics in Milford Haven by the marina is helpful, but as others have said his price might make you wince.
He may accept helping in a scenario where you run the cables and he terminates and fits out to keep the labour charge down, if you feel less confident in your technical abilities.

 

[Dellquay13]

as it is a boat you need to add a marine element usually counted in the number of spring tides before the job can be started.

This phenomena I am only too aware of this year, an emergency repair to a grp sterntube, that is being scheduled in between other boats according to when there is enough HoT during working hours to splash them. A big rush to get the deeper draught boats repaired for launch next spring tides then the engineer gets to me as the neaps approach and launching pauses

 

[Helidan]

Thanks for all the replies guys. What I might do is attack all of the low current house circuits myself (which isn't many items on my boat). Perhaps then I can get someone in to correctly install of the heavy stuff in the engine bay including the isolators, VSR, circuit protection etc. For information, the boat is a Fairline Holiday MK3 which appears to have quite easy access to wherever you might want to run cabling.

 

[Tranona]

If you break it down into smaller chunks it can be manageable. I found stripping everything out and starting again was best, but you can see from the photos how horrible it was to start with. If you are doing single engine and just start and engine banks the heavy stuff is probably easier, particularly if your batteries are close to the engine. I used bus bars and a BEP Marine switch cluster with VSR which eases wiring. Made most of the cables up myself with a heavy duty block crimper from !2 Volt - in fact nearly everything came from there.

Photos show before and after for the batterie but the after is not fully wired at that point. Rest are old and new DC distribution panel. Last 2 are a not very good shot of the bus bars and 240v CU plus the BEP switch cluster. Hope you find this helpful