Rewireing

[sanna]

I am in the process of rewireing our 12 v system. I wonder how to collect all the minus cables coming from the consumers. Is a bus bar a good alternative?
I also need to collect a couple of plus cabels before they enter a swicth in the panel. Is a bus bar a good alternative for this?

Thank you in advance for replies.

Regard

"Sanna" in Oslo.

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[snowleopard]

bus bars are definitely the way to go. 'best practice' says not more than 2 or 3 wires to be fixed to any one terminal post.

you can save a lot of cabling by running one heavy cable along the boat and attaching bus bars to it at intervals

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[oldsaltoz]

G'day Tor,

Bus Bars is the only way to go, makes it easy to find faults later with all connections in one place.

I used a domestic all plastic electrical box, made by Clipsal I think, purchased with bus bars and very reasonable, it has a dark tinted front folding lid to prevent little fingers playing with it. Front panel has cut outs for circuit breakers.

Also found the square conduit with the removable top very tidy for cables and gives good access if you ever have to run another cable.

Hope this helps

Avagoodweekend Old Salt Oz.../forums/images/icons/cool.gif

 

[sanna]

Thanks for the feed back!
Here in Norway some people say that there should be one cable for every comsumer (also lamps) be on the safe side. I understand that you mean that this is not necessary? What I should do then is probably to install separate cabels for the vital consumer and a heavy one for the others?

regards

"Sanna"

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[tr7v8]

Various ways of interpretating that. I was aways taught it should be a fuse per device and that the fuse protects the cable not the device itself. So by all means run a fused heavy cable to various bus bars but then each feed to each device should have a fuse and be for that device. I'd also look for essential devices to be off the busbar and have their own feed and fuse, 2 obvious ones being VHF and any bilge pumps. I'd probably split the Nav lights into 2 seperate circuits with their own fuses. Idea is loosing a fuse and a feed doesn't knock everything out.

<hr width=100% size=1>Jim

Draco 2500

 

[sanna]

Hi Jim !

Thank you for your interesting answer.
I think the best solution for us will be to have separate cables connected to separate fuses and switchec in a central panel for all devices except for the nav lights and the internal lightning.
We have one green/red nav light in the bow (centre) and one white behind. We plan to install a nav light on the top of the mast later (to save current). If I connect the two existing nav lights when they enter into one fuse and a switch in the central panel this should be a low risk solution since we will have the nav light in the top of the mast as a back up.
If I connect one lamp in the central cabin with one in the front cabin (we only have two cabins) in one circuit and the rest of the lamps into another circuite, this should also be a reasonably safe system. If I use cables and fuses of the right spec, I then probably could drop to have fuses outside the central panel.

I would be happy to have your (and others) comments to this.

Regards

Tor (owner of "Sanna")

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