Electrical panel housekeeping

[Geoff Johnson]

I develop a case of panel envy when I see photographs in the sailing magazines of neat looking flip down eletrical panels with all the wires neatly bundled. Has anyone bothered to clean up his/her Ericson panel which, at least in my case, hides a spagetti-like tangle of wires? One problem is that the way the panel is squeezed next to the nav station (on my 32-3) it is very hard to pull it out to work on it.

 

[Loren Beach]

Design-wise, mine is probably similar to yours. Mine is identical, even to the build label on the back, to that of a late'80's E-34/200.
One nice thing is that mine is hinged to fold down for access to the wiring. Ericson bundled the wires in kind of a mess, however.
The AC incoming cable is tied right in with the 12 volt wire bundle and even the coax...
Sheesh!

One of my long range plans is to put a long terminal block behind it. Then I could neaten up the wires going hither and yon to all parts of the boat, and have a neat (labeled!) set of wires going to the hinged panel. I would also keep the AC separated from the DC and also from the coax...

I did this modification, on a much smaller scale, on our prior 26 foot sailboat.

Just one more "winter project"


Best,
Loren

 

[Geoff Johnson]

On my model the AC wiring at least runs to a separate panel (just above the DC panel).

 

[James Carlisle]

Yours must have been built on a Thursday Mr. Johnson, mine is wired neatly with all the circuits laced and identified. I think mine was built on a Wednesday, Hull 637.
Jim Carlisle

 

[Geoff Johnson]

Now that's an interesting development (or maybe you had a fastidious PO, and I had a sloppy one). BTW, I have noticed in photographs of 32-3 nav stations shown on Yachtworld that the DC panel is above the AC panel. My boat, however, is just the opposite. How are yours arranged?

 

[James Carlisle]

The AC panel on the Valkyrie is directly above the DC component apparently similar to your unit. Actually mine did have a problem with the AC panel wiring as the installer had dificulty determining the difference between the neutral and the ground conductors and used the buses interchangebly, the result would not allow connection to a gfci protected circuit. The wiring in general tho is in a respectable condition.

 

[Christian Williams]

This is an old thread, does anyone know of a newer one that discusses the rebuild/rethink of a typical 1980s 12v panel?

 

[toddster]

I know that I looked at some threads before I started, but I'm not sure where. There are some recent/ongoing threads in the "fix it" section at sailing anarchy, and some at Moyer marine. Probably the most comprehensive sources are Nigel Calder and Don Casey's books. But I had to re-wire the whole boat. It would have been nice to just drop an all-new Blue Seas panel in there, but I had to find a less expensive option.

 

[Slick470]

I'm not sure of a newer thread on this subject here, but its possible that one may have been lost in the shuffle.

I am always interested in how people clean up their panels. I think whoever wired ours up at Ericson just stopped caring. Of course given that our boat was built in April/May of 1990 and Ericson folded in June, that may have been the case. None of the previous owners helped much in that regard either.

It's on the to-do list. The long long list.

 

[Loren Beach]

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?9416-Electrical-Panel-Lights
Check out the picture in reply #4.

That's just one thread I found. I used Google to search on "ericsonyachts.org: panels" .

Quite a few hits. I linked a few....

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?2182-AC-Panel-protection

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?5492-E27-new-12v-control-panel

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?8912-Fuse-Panel-info-needed

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?5152-Moving-electrical-Panel-rewiring

and so on...............

Loren

 

[Pat C.]

I rebuilt/redesigned the whole electrical system on mine 14 or so years ago. made the mistake pulling open the original, not the best design, especially as the boat ages, impossible to work on, monitor for chafe, ect. I've done a lot of things to my boat, doing this might be the single best upgrade. Put the panels on a door, extended/bundled the wires, common negative bus, auxiliary positive bus, inverter, larger battery capacity, whole thing. It's time consuming but not too difficult so long as you go into it with knowledge of circuit loads. Expense varies how far you go, keeping the original panel will definitely keep the cost down (so long as the breakers are all still healthy). Move the battery switch out of there entirely, mine is down at the knees when sitting at the nav station. You'll be surprised how much room is back there once the battery switch is gone.Been spending some time on Blue Sea Systems panel wizard, think I'm going to upgrade to this hopefully this winter. If I was just starting this project today, I would plan to replace the entire panel.

 

[toddster]

FWIW, here was my solution to replace the 70's era panel and subsequent rat's nest mess. The panel/door is just a piece of black star-board set in a mahogany frame. You can drill or cut holes for devices as desired. The battery switch and large breakers* are on a separate panel close to the engine. Also the bilge pump and blower have independent circuits on the engine panel.



I bundled the incoming cables differently after this pic - the stick-on zip-tie mounts didn't last. I replaced the screws holding the trim pieces along the sides of the boat with longer #8 bolts and attached cable clamps on the back side. Separate bundles for DC, AC, and instrument data.

*That is, house main, space for: future windlass, maybe future SSB radio. This winter, will figure out how to squeeze a galvanic isolator into there.

 

[sailorman37]

On the ericson 30+ they used a liner in the boat and there is limited space so it makes rewiring a real nightmare. The existing wires were secured in the most inaccessible spots so I decided to run flexible conduit everywhere and avoid the need to secure behind the liner. I reused the existing location for the 12V panel and glassed a board to the hull to terminate the conduit and terminals.

I didn't have a new board in the budget so I reused the old. I tried to follow yellow for -, red for + and blue for lights, purple for instruments, but some of the obscure items didn't seem to have a suggested color.

 

[Christian Williams]

Very useful stuff. Several excellent all-new panels there. Thanks all.

What are these connector strips mounted to? Is that the hull? Maybe a piece of Star board glued to the hull?

One thread moves the Battery Selector switch off the panel, which would really make the overloaded 32-3 panel board easier to deal with.

The Borel product below seems a sensational idea--frees up four breakers and gives you that gold-plater location-illuminated-ship outline look, too.

i

But can it really be $86 for the panel including four breakers? My current breakers are $25 each.

Can't say this is an undertaking I'm looking forward to, though.

 

[toddster]

I'm guessing that those are simply light switches meant to run of a single breaker on your panel. With LED nav lights, a single breaker could easily protect them all, and I considered doing that. The potential drawbacks are 1 - if there is ever a short in one wire run, you wouldn't know which one it is without some behind-the-panel work and 2 - some future unknown person, for unknown reasons, might replace your low-current LED with a high-current device.

Oops. N/M I just looked up a different pic of it. Those are just cheap breakers like the ones that I used. Like you get in Sea Dog panels, as opposed to Blue Sea panels. Compared to a Blue Sea breaker, they look like cheap junk. But infinitely better than what I had before.

 

[PDX]

My first thought was maybe it was just a switch box. But I went to their site and they are claiming it has four individual 10 amp breakers. If you don't have need for a tri-color the three circuit panel is even cheaper.

 

[Maine Sail]

This was a 32-3 I did a while back....


BEFORE:

AFTER:

 

[Christian Williams]

Work of art. And it all even fits back in.
That 'before' photo looks distressingly familiar. Too bad Maine Sail is on the other side of the Panama Canal.

 

[Joliba]

E 38-200 panel

Here is a thread with an opening panel for the 1988 E 38-200. http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoe...p?9822-E38-200-Electrical-Panel-Replacement. This is our panel. This has worked very well over the past 3 years. We have added a few more features including a small fuse panel in the cabinet. Mike Jacker

 

[toddster]

Another advantage to putting the panel on a hinged frame like that, is that it gives you an extra inch of space behind. An inch doesn't seem like a lot... until you are out of space! It made the difference on whether or not my radios would fit in the panel. I think it also made the AC panel location possible. (Many gadgets take up an inch or two more than you (I) think, when all the cables are connected to them. :/ )

Also worth thinking about. If inter-connected instruments are in your future (e.g. NMEA buses) you may need to plan for several more terminal strips and maybe a couple of black boxes in a concealed but easily accessed location. Hopefully the newer ones don't require as many connections as NMEA 0183! Currently, the small locker below my radios is sacrificed to electronics connections, but some slow weekend, I think I'll cut into the settee back liner immediately below there and make a concealed compartment. Once the cushions are installed, it will be invisible.