Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Electrical Connections

I have decided to rewire the entire boat and bring it up to date with the latest electrical safety standards. So with that in mind, I started with the main fuse block that covers all of the major electrical loads on the boat.

I will not take credit for this design though. I got this from Compass Marine - so kudos to MaineSail and his excellent how to articles.

I started with a piece of 12" x 1" x 3/16" Copper Bar Stock I purchased from Industrial Metal Supply here in San Diego. I could have purchased it in a 3ft length, but at the time, I didn't think I would need all three feet. In hindsight, I should have gone ahead and bought it and saved the rest for future projects. Aw well. 20/20 and all that...


Next, I measured the distance between individual fuse blocks and marked it (measure twice, cut once). A friend of mine who has a drill press cut the holes and I hacksawed the bar to its correct length.


That was the hard part. Now all I had to do was piece the components together. The Copper Bar acts as a bus bar so I don't have to use 2/0 awg cable which is a bear to bend in short lengths. This makes it so much more compact.


The Fuse Blocks themselves are Blue Sea Systems ANL Fuse Blocks. The Three fuses are House Bank (250A), Alternator (100A), and Battery Charger (50A)



And there you have it. A new fuse block.


The Fuse Block with the Plastic Covers. I used a label maker to mark where I want to run cables from and to for ease of tracing them.

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