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hi youtubers jeff cote here with another

session of ask pys

so we've got a fellow boater uh named

chris and chris asks

a pretty good question um he says jeff

i've got a question regarding terminal

strips a terminal strip is

by the way something like this so a lot

of us are going to have these sort of

devices on our boats

they can be you know like this one is

just two right because there's only two

connection points

some of them are 10 12 8 it doesn't

matter this is what's called the

terminal strip

there's a lot of that on our boats it's

a way for us to join wires together

without a butt connector okay

a lot of builders are putting them on

board boats and they're quite useful and

he asks the follow questions

i often see images of wiring panels

where there are two rows of terminal

strips

where each incoming wire attaches then a

second wire goes to the breaker etc

what's the purpose of a terminal strip

this device here

why not leave the wires directly to the

panel

and forgo this terminal strip great

question

why indeed why indeed well there's a

good reason

um the reason and i actually did that on

my own boat so i have a catalina

and my panel had all the loads connected

directly to it

but as some of you know i'm in my

iteration number five or six of rewiring

my boat

it's never perfect but i'm getting there

eventually i'll be ready to release it

and one of the things i did years ago

was actually doing exactly what you were

asking about chris and the reason why i

installed these terminal strips on my

boat and i didn't have loads directly

connected to my breakers

is because when i was actually rewiring

my panel i wanted it to be

completely organized why organize why

does that matter chaos is normal

order isn't so the first thing you learn

as an electrician when you're on board a

boat

you're looking for anything that's out

of place because you know that order

isn't natural a wire is not going to

normally fall in place and be perfectly

routed and looking neat so the first

thing i want to do is i wanted to be

able to look at my panel

and i want to be able at a glance say

hey listen this looks clean

everything's in the right place because

if something's out of place

it's going to stick out like a sore

thumb

so then what i decided is i ran all the

wires from the panel

to basically these terminal strips all

of it in a nice

nice bundle and as i'm adding or

changing wiring

i'm never redoing the bundle or the

wiring from the terminal strips to the

panel

the only wiring i'm doing is i'm wiring

my all my loads to these terminal strips

but they're not going all the way to the

panel a lot of builders are doing that

too because now you can actually

have an interconnection point right and

you don't have to join any wires

so you can install your panel you can do

your nice bundle

you can bring it to terminal strip and

then you can start bringing all your

loads to the terminal strip

so it becomes a very modular way of

doing electrical wiring

and a lot of the high-end builders are

all doing this i did it on my own boat

and for troubleshooting now you start

instead of having a butt connector now

you're able to actually measure voltage

at all these points

i do the same thing for example for my

navigation lights

wherever i can hide one of these and you

can buy these in different amperages

some are 20 amps 30 amps and 60 amps

i'm putting them everywhere through the

boat whoever one day might

own satori is going to find these

terminal strips everywhere and the

reason i do that is a way to

easily troubleshoot and instead of doing

a butt connector and not

hoping that my connection was great when

i do two ring terminals

on either side let's say right here and

here coming one coming from this side

and the other one coming from this side

i can inspect the connection point and

that inspection

is a key to know if you have a good

connection hence why

you want to use terminal strips

everywhere on a boat

it helps for troubleshooting it helps

for changes and it keeps your wiring

super clean and organized and that makes

your life as a motor

easier when you need to troubleshoot a

problem so

great question chris thanks for asking

thank you for watching this pys video if

you've got further questions

ask them down below or go on our website

to fill one of the forms

don't forget to subscribe and thanks for

watching

you

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