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i youtubers

jeff cote here with another session of

ask pys

so we've got a fellow boater named john

and john's got a question about

uh if a battery switch is required on a

starting circuit

it's a great question because honestly

most

a lot of us unfortunately are have no

battery switch

between the battery and the starter

solenoid on our boats

and that can be very scary i know we

don't have them in our cars

right there is no battery switch in cars

you know you don't have to

turn the ignition on and then also

before you do that

turn a battery switch on but there's a

big distinction between a car and a boat

first of all if a car catches on fire

you open the door and you walk away

take a safe distance freak out

but you're on land on a boat if you ever

have an electrical fire

leaving your boat is not necessarily

easy you might not have a tender in the

water you might not be at the dock

and even if you go in the water and you

go in your tender you might be very far

away from shore

so preventing electrical fires on a boat

has to be a much higher threshold than a

car

and this is the challenge a lot of

people are saying hey jeff

i don't have a battery switch in my car

therefore

i don't need a battery switch in my boat

but the comparison between a car and a

boat

is they're similar yes both used for

propulsion but they're in a completely

different medium

the water changes everything so

the codes absolutely stipulates that

every single

engine be it a generator even be it

your propulsion your engine has to have

a battery switch that allows you to

isolate the

engine from the battery in the event of

not only an emergency but if you're

going to do maintenance on the boat you

might be

doing anything on the engine and you

want to be able to disconnect power to

the starter solenoid and then turn the

alternator

and you want to make sure that your

engine is not energized greatest way to

do that is turn the battery switch off

the other thing too is you want to

remove any sort of parasitic loads that

your engine might have you turn the

battery switch off when you leave your

boat for a month or two months that's

another reason to do it

the other reason to do it and i get

called out and i about

maybe half a dozen times a year for a

boat fire and the boat fire is stuck

starter

so the starter is actually turning even

though the button

on the panel is not energized right so

the starter got stuck

and now the starter's turning and

turning and turning and you can't stop

it you can't turn the ignition

off you're not pressing the button to

start and as the starter is stuck

starting it does that in overheats and

it causes electrical fire

so the only way to actually stop that

from happening is having

a on off switch and so it's absolutely

essential as a boater to have an on off

switch

for every single engine on your boat and

the other caveat there is the battery

switch should not be installed in the

engine room because if there's an

electrical fire

the chances of a boater going down in

the engine room where they can breathe

can't see anything to find a switch

which they probably don't touch that

often

is probably slim to none is an

understatement

and most people are going to open the

hatch close the hatch and then be like

oh great

yeah battery switch is in the engine

room we're not going there

let's prepare everyone let's go for the

dinghy or let's

get off the boat because there's nothing

we can do to stop this electrical fire

hence why the battery switches and all

these modern boats now are always

accessible

outside of the engine room because if

you have a boat fire and it happens in

the engine room

having the turn off or the battery

switch being in the very place where

you're going to try to avoid

it defeats the purpose so yes battery

switches on starting circuits and

battery switches

located conveniently outside of the

engine room space so that you can turn

that circuit on and off without

jeopardizing your life when there's an

electrical fire

so great question thanks for asking

thank you for watching this pys video if

you've got further questions

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and thanks for watching

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