View Transcript

Hide Transcript

Transcript is auto-generated.

hi jeff cote here with another voting

tech talk

all right so we've got a question from

another jeff jeff asks jeff i noticed

that on larger boats there's an open

slot

cable raceways

by the way jeff's right we if you've

ever been on a ferry or a commercial

boat

you'll notice these open trays actually

even if you're like there's a lot of

ferries here in british columbia and

we'll see those open wire trays and you

see that on commercial vessels as well

jeff continues jeff i'm contemplating

redoing the wiring on my little boat

do you recommend going this route using

open slot raceways or should i just do

something different

all right so we've got a question from

jeff and to recap jeff's contemplating

rewiring his own boat kudos for him to

try to tackle on that project

and the question is how do you route

cables

on a boat

well the reality is that in an ideal

world those open slot raceways are

really good

wires you know follow a random path in

that raceway they sort of

intertwine

and

that's really good for offsetting

magnetic flux

and

when you run wires really neatly in a

beautiful bundle it might be look really

great for some of us that

really like order

it certainly does

something i love seeing but there's a

downside to it

and the reality is that it's probably

better to have a bundle of wires not so

tight and it's also for heat dissipation

right because wires do get hotter when

they're in a bundle than if they're

running straight in the air

and so there's a lot of reasons why you

don't want to have all your cabling

neatly tied in a bundle

now there's a big difference between

what we want and what we get

right uh a commercial vessel is

generally especially those large

freighters and

ferries are

built with lots of space and so they can

do that so in reality

as boaters and recreational voters

we don't get an opportunity to do

exactly what is perfect on our boats

it's all about compromises that's why

it's about you can't do what you want

there's always a price to everything so

if you're running wiring on your own

boat

and you're rewiring a boat project yeah

i would suggest to create an area along

the hall and you know maybe again

generally they're running

make it as big as you can possibly get

away with meaning if you're going to be

passing about this amount of

cabling and wires and it's going to be

maybe a two inch in diameter

well let yourself maybe three inches you

know try to give yourself so the wires

have space

so that they're not so perfectly bundled

together that you're going to actually

have heat issues because when we're

calculating cable size

we're there's a lot of assumptions that

have to be done in making sure that your

wiring is doesn't has room to dissipate

heat

and so i would suggest and that's

certainly what i've done on my boat you

know you want to make it look neat but

not so neat obsessive that it's actually

to the detriment

of the cabling right especially for heat

dissipation the other thing too that you

want to consider besides bundling

in reality we won't be able to have a

tray because most of us don't have that

opportunity on recreational boats

besides that is also trying to keep your

ac and dc wiring not running in the same

bundles

easier said than done but if it can be

avoided do so i've read in places where

they try to run the ac and dc when they

have to overlap in parallel like they'll

run them actually

across from one another so they're not

running in parallel

that's one thing

and so you know on my own boat again you

know i'm going to try sometimes yes the

ac wiring comes near the dc wiring but

if that's going to happen i'm going to

try to run it offset i'm going to try to

have them run different routes i might

have the ac go on the port of the boat

and i might have the 8 dc go on the

starboard of the boat so it depends

again

do what you can

so try to have the bundles not too tight

and separate your ac and dc and give

yourself more whole like when you're

drilling a hole

i'm telling you i've done on my boat

where i thought a one inch is plenty and

that one inch was full and then it

became a two inch hole and then that

became too full

so when you're

taking the opportunity of during of

drilling these big holes through your

bulkheads as you're running wires

probably give yourself at least double

what you think it is if you can get away

with it and it's a place that it won't

matter and it's hidden it's behind the

furniture you won't regret it make sure

that your wiring as it goes through the

bulkheads where it gets constricted is

not too tight so that you don't have

heat dissipation issues so great

question jeff and thanks for asking if

you're curious we've written whole

articles about this go on our website

search it out

and we've got a lot of other tech talks

about this very topic if you haven't

subscribed to this channel please do

it actually it really does make a

difference it encourages us to keep

posting so if you're watching this video

and haven't had a chance to subscribe we

really do care because the more of you

that are watching the more of us over

here are willing to put spend more time

in creating content so thanks again