OH MY GOD!

You mean you DON'T have a way to switcheroo your house bank over so you can
use it in the absolutely unavoidable instance of trying to start your boat
with the dead 'starter' battery????

Heh..

Sorry for the facetiousness. You summed up the whole 'K.I.S.S' approach
nicely, Rich.

However, I will be the first to admit that more than once we've had to use 1
or ALL to start the motor (battery is on 2). I've seen a lot of diagrams
that show 3 switches in place of the 1/2/ALL to, uhh, 'simplify' the use of
the batteries.

In my mind, I guess the ideal situation would be 2 banks of two batteries.
One bank for the house and one for the motor. Each bank would have a backup
battery on a maintenance charge. Any throwing of big switches would just be
for emergency purposes and for normal use you would simply use a main power
on/off switch.

I'm sure this thinking shows that I'm not ready to take off over the blue
horizon, let alone across the lake, but it sure seems to make sense to me.

Cheers,

Rick Beddoe
s/v Soņadora, 1978 Baba 30
Minneapolis, MN
http://sail2live.com

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-baba-l@ballreich.net [mailto:owner-baba-l@ballreich.net] On
Behalf Of Richard Cassano
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 4:27 PM
To: baba-l@ballreich.net
Subject: Re: [Baba-L] electrical distribution

Tom,

I did the same thing - ran battery cable to posts in the electrical
panel box.

Question:
Considering both the positive and negative battery cables are fused at
the house bank what need is there for a "Big On/Off or 1/2/all" rotating
switch at the nav station?

The old "1/2/all" switch was eliminated and I use the main 50 amp power
breaker on the top center of the electrical panel to kill all current
feeding all the little breakers, (entire panel). The old rotary switch
was only ten inches further down the line so did nothing to further
protect the electrical system. One of my fellow sailing friends thought
this was terrible as he said the 1/2/all switch is a must. We only have
one big house bank and a starter battery so the function of a 1/2/all
switch was really only to turn power on/off which is something I was
doing with the main panel breaker anyway. Every circuit onboard is
either fused or has a breaker rated for the load of that circuit. This
is in addition to the fuse that protects the battery cable leading up to
the panel. I did not check ABYC on this so don't know if they think I
committed a capital offense or not.

Rich Cassano

Tom Beard wrote:
> One item in my recent posting about wiring to the SSB, failed to reveal
how
> legs to the source of DC power can be so short.
>
> What I do in my boats is to locate power posts near fuse boxes or circuit
> breaker panels. This brings battery-cable size wiring (protected with fuse
> blocks) right to the vicinity of need from a distant battery buss. Thus, a
> single battery cable can replace a number of wires stringing through the
> boat to say, the main circuit breaker panel. (I have purchased used boats
> with equipment wires running directly to battery posts!) Some of the
> circuits now located on the main circuit breaker panel can be replaced
with
> fuse panels elsewhere, conveniently located nearby the need. The results
are
> very short runs for the smaller, individual service-wires and convenient
> distribution points for battery power. And there is never any problem
> picking up a clean power source for that new piece of equipment-no need to
> splice into another wire running to something else because there are no
more
> circuit breakers.
>
> Tom
> MOONSHADOW
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Baba Panda and Tashiba Owners Mailing List --
> For more info, please check out the FAQ...
> http://www.ballreich.net/hypermail/baba-l/faq.html
>

-----------------------------------------------------------
Baba Panda and Tashiba Owners Mailing List --
For more info, please check out the FAQ...
http://www.ballreich.net/hypermail/baba-l/faq.html

-----------------------------------------------------------
Baba Panda and Tashiba Owners Mailing List --
For more info, please check out the FAQ...
http://www.ballreich.net/hypermail/baba-l/faq.html
Received on Mon Jan 22 14:57:56 2007