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Electrical upgrades and trouble shooting

Scott is a very good trouble shooter. He has solved many long term problems in the first hour onboard many boats. He has a very good reputation and is known for his ability to solve difficult and complex problems in a short time.

 

The first set of photos is of a panel built for Yanmar Engineering Services by Scott in 2005.  The panel opens and closes easily.

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This windlass was installed with very clean labels.

The photos you see are of different electrical systems which we replaced with a new system. Notice how we label the heat shrink on the wire ends. This gives a permanent neat indicator of what wire goes where.
The panel on the left was a complete rewire. On the right panel we removed all the old battery cables and did our best to sort out the mess. 

Electrical Panel Upgrade Example

Do you have an electrical panel that looks like the before photo. We can make it look like the after photo in just a couple days. Scott has rewired many panels and can usually complete a job like this in just two to three days. Notice we used all the old breakers.

This was the original 18 year old panel from the builder. It had been added to many times and power pulled from all over. The owner was having trouble following all the different unlabeled wires. He decided to start over and let us clean up the whole area.

The electrical panel could only be accessed from the rear. This made repairs difficult. We decided to hinge the main panel so it could be opened from the front. This is a photo of the final panel open.

The Process

First we stripped the original panel down. The second photo shows a slave panel that we rewired at the same time on the same boat. Notice how we labeled each breaker from both sides.

 

Next we add new wire looms.

Notice the labeling on the back of the breaker. Soon we have a complete panel ready to be wired back into the boat.

 

 

 

After we hooked up the new panel the voltage throughout this whole boat was back to normal.

We had a very acceptable voltage drop between the batteries and the final distribution wires of .05 volts.

When we started the voltage drop was over 1.5 volts between the batteries and the main bus bar on the panel.

Ahhh..., much better.

 

The Battery Switch

Notice how in the before photo the battery switch was a rotary transfer switch with nothing (except our temporary tags) labeled. The switch got hot as soon as any load was placed on the system. The after photos all show big, labeled, red wires. Every wire is clean and a 150amp breaker has been added. The owner can now start the engine from any of three battery banks, or run the house from any of three banks.

Three days and the boat was back underway.

 

These photos are of a small panel upgrade.  This panel took two days to complete.


 

   
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