Breaker Panel Organization - Post your photo!

[PaulZeeders]

We had a panel made up by BEP marine last year that we are very happy with. The breakers are grouped in 2 sets and fed from 2 main switches. That way when we leave the yacht we only have to turn off the switch feeding the non essential brerakers on the board and all the essential breakers remain live. Hopefully that way nobody turns off the bilge pumps etc. I tired to post a photo of the panel but am new to the forum and do not know how to post photos directly into a reply. If someone can kindly show me how this is done I will post a photo of our CB board.
Thanks Paul

[GWilly]

I just had an old 12v fuse panel replaced with breaker panel, which caused my electrician to reorganize the whole thing. In the pic, the upper right is 110v, lower two panels are 12v, upper left is inverter panel.

[Chuck Hawley]

Originally Posted by chowdan

Hey all,

I am looking at either building a new breaker panel or having Blue Seas make one up for me.

Photos do justice if you've got them

Fortunately, I have done a series of three videos for Blue Sea Systems and it explains this pretty well. Or at least I think it does. You can see the transition of my Alerion Express 38 from its original electrical distribution panel to a custom panel using the 360 series panel from Blue Seas. Let me know what you think of the videos.

[Djarraluda]

Originally Posted by Wotname

I have always considered it best practice to have three breakers for the nav lights (Port/Stbd/Stern) and a single three pole Nav Light switch.

It is requirement for some commercial operators and a good practice for the rest of us (IMO).

Doesn't work if you have masthead tricolour though

Easy to wire a Nav Light switch as On-Off and that feeds a M'Head (tricolour) or Deck level via a simple two way switch.
Steaming light power is only available via the Deck level setting.
No more "just turn em all on and we can be seen" which appears to be the typical approach from so many clowns around here.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Djarraluda

Easy to wire a Nav Light switch as On-Off and that feeds a M'Head (tricolour) or Deck level via a simple two way switch.
Steaming light power is only available via the Deck level setting.
No more "just turn em all on and we can be seen" which appears to be the typical approach from so many clowns around here.

Yes, I understand the concept .

So do you then have a separate breaker for the tricolour and still have three breakers for the deck level nav lights which if so, necessitates 4 pole ON OFF ON switch?

Just curious!

[PaulZeeders]

Hi
I have attached a photo (hopefully) of our Circuit Breaker board we install last year from BEP marine. We are very happy with the result.
Sorry I don't know why it shows it upside down.

[Djarraluda]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Yes, I understand the concept .

So do you then have a separate breaker for the tricolour and still have three breakers for the deck level nav lights which if so, necessitates 4 pole ON OFF ON switch?

Just curious!

I just have a single breaker for Nav Lights and a separate 2 position switch (1 pole On-On) for M’Head/Deck selector. I simply modified the original breaker panel adding the selector after I changed anchor light cable from 2 to 3 strand. Still havn’t changed anchor light to Tri White as yet, that is on the To Do list
Roger

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, PaulZ.

[noelex 77]

One of the major advantages of fitting both deck navigation lights and a tricolour is redundancy and the immediate availability of a reasonable back up system. Wiring both of these systems to one circuit and one circuit breaker with a multi-position switch results in introducing many points where a single failure will disable all the navigational lights negating much of this advantage.

A bad circuit breaker, a short in wiring, or a defective multi-position switch would affect all the navigational lights. Try and avoid this where possible. Separate circuit breakers for the tricolour, lower navigation lights, steaming light and anchor light (although this often shares wiring with the tricolour) is a better system. While illegal combinations can be chosen accidentally, it hard to imagine knowledgeable skippers or crew making this mistake. Even if inadvertently done, the consequences are not terribly significant.

This same principle applies to many important systems such as bilge pumps, navigational equipment, and even interior lights. Unfortunately, modern boatbuilders are reducing the number of circuit breakers just at a time when marine electrical systems are becoming much more complex.

[ayates]

As a data point, we currently split navigation lights out as in the attached photo...

[YANDINA]

[ayates]

Originally Posted by YANDINA

[Leaded glass panel...]

Beautiful! Any chance of a high resolution photo of the panel?


Thanks,

Allan.

[endeavour55]

make sure you balance the 120 volt legs if you have more the one shore power.

[zstine]

Originally Posted by SV__Grace

Here's a photo of our new AC and DC breaker panels after re-fit of our 1985 Nauticat 43. As full time cruisers and liveaboards, we spent a lot of $$ to update our boat systems!

AC is on the left, and DC is on the right.

AC panel includes switches and indicator lights for inverter and AC charger controls.

DC switches are all digital, just push once for on and again for off.

All DC switches are programmable, here's two examples-

- We have a wifi booster and a cell booster that share one switch. If we're at a marina or anchored near shore with usable wifi we use the wifi booster, otherwise we use our cell booster.

- The navigation light switch is programmed to turn on turn bow lights, stern light, and mast mounted steaming light when the engine is on. If the engine is off, that means we're sailing, and that same switch turns on our mast mounted tricolor nav light.

Also on the right side DC panel you'll see an alarm light (with loud buzzer), USB outlet and generator controls. The USB outlet is not for charging (we have plenty of those sprinkled around the boat), it is for plugging in our laptop to monitor, control or program the electrical system.

We can also monitor and control our electrical system via CZone on our MFD. In the second photo you can see the digital switches for our navigation system expanded, just touch for on or off.

Boat electrical systems have come a long way and I love the new technology enabled by NMEA 2000 and the newer devices.

This looks very nice SV Grace. A few questions... Digital switches must have some brain/computer to control them.

1) Do you have redundant manual switches for everything? The brain seems like a single point of failure that could lead to big problems when it crashes.
2) Since your switches are digital, they don't provide overload protection, are all circuits still protected with breakers?

thanks
zach

[thereefgeek]

Our Tayana came with the fuse panel (yes, glass automotive style fuses) under the companionway steps and we installed a new Blue Sea panel at the Nav when we rewired the boat.



Blue Sea still isn't making custom labels since the place burned down, but I plan to replace the white labels with the back-lit type when they do.

We have a few videos on YouTube of the entire rewire.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nh2cqXNqXo