Battery Re-wire

In one of our earlier posts we noted that Circe's pre-purchase survey, conducted by Peter Minkwitz (a first class and extremely thorough Bay Area marine surveyor 510.465.2527), was 'mostly' satisfactory. Overall, Peter's findings validated our initial inspection and assessment of the boat but he did re-emphasise several issues. Some were more serious than others and the biggest problems were electrical, on the supply side of both the AC and DC circuits. We had seen wiring and security issues on the house batteries but Peter also picked up on an AC supply issue. 

There were two major concerns:

1 Although they were all nearly new, the starting and house batteries were not securely mounted in proper trays and the primary wiring was a real rats nest! Beyond that, a second battery selector had been incorrectly wired when the new Heart inverter/charger was installed, essentially creating an unecessary redundancy with the original selector.  A side issue was that with all the batteries on the port side, along with the galley, head, holding tank, water heater and outboard on the stern rail, we were seeing a distinct list to port!

2 The wiring problem on the AC side involved the main AC breaker  which wasn't doing anything at all! As soon as the shore power cord was plugged in, with the main breaker on or off, there was power to all the AC circuits! Evidently the breaker was being bypassed somehow, meaning there was no AC protection on the boat. 

While cleaning up these issues we also decided to relocate the starting battery and move it behind the engine, to put some weight back on the centre line. Also, because the battery can easily be removed, it will give us better access to the stuffing box, which was difficult with the heater fixed in the stock location. This meant relocating the water heater but it was shot so ditching it and moving the new one wasn't a problem. 

Is that a rats nest or what, scary actually! A couple of inexpensive busses would have helped a lot. The #27 starter battery (far left) will be relocated to where the water heater was, in a removable tray for improved access to the stuffing box. The house batteries will be going into an acid proof box and  the wiring cleaned up.

The hot water heater was in bad shape, rusted, leaking and not well located, right over the stuffing box. A new one will go under the Pullman next to the holding tank, making way for the relocated starting battery, which will be in an easily removable tray for the times we need to get to the stuffing box.

Much better.....clean, tidy and SAFE! The edge of the access panel in the dinette bench had to be notched to make it easier to lift the house batteries in and out but the result is a much better set-up.

Heck, we're already using up the free space we created by moving the starting battery. They say boats are like a women's purse, if there is space in it then something will fill it!

There is now all kinds of room to access the stuffing box whenever we need to. We considered putting a PSS in but after re-packing the gland with ten bucks worth of Tefpak we have an almost completely dry bilge and a much simpler set-up.







We were really happy with the changes. It was a big improvement, securing things properly, getting rid of the spaghetti, taking some weight off the port side, freeing up some additional space under the forward dinette seats and improving access to the stuffing box. It was a lot of work but we solved a lot of issues.