Wire Quantities: Food for Thought

[Blue Stocking]

Have you ever wondered what the total length of all the wiring in your boat is.
Going thru Bluestocking's re-build records recently, and discovered I had used 1100ft of black, 10 and 12 AWG, and 1300 ft of color 10 and 12 AWG.
This is AC and DC side. All tinned, all Pacer. BTW, boat is very simply wired, without all the modern goodies like LED step lighting, cabinet lighting, etc.
Boat has centerline overhead, and seperate P and St. harnesses.

[Maine Sail]

This is what I started with for a re-wire on just a 36 footer. Does not include battery cable, single conductor wire used or terminal strips, over current protection etc. etc.....

[Northstar]

4200' plus

I completely removed and installed all new Ancor tinned wire on an Alberg 37. The only original wiring left on the boat was the Volvo engine harness...and I cut that down.

AC/DC Newmar ES-3 panel, B&G instruments, vhf, SSB, bilge pumps, fw pump, refrigeration, 16K BTU Air-Con, mast, autohelm, GPS, stereo w/4 speakers, lights, fans, propane tank solenoid, nav. lights, 2x 100W solar panels, Heart 1000W charger/inverter, 30 amp shore power, and what ever else made the boat go...;-)

Glenn

[FlyingCloud1937]

When I rewired my boat a 52 foot single helm twin engine. I removed every wire. When I took it to recycle, the total weight from this one vessel was 750 pounds. I didn't measure the wire footage, but this included the wire that was original installed in 1937, and the re-wire job that was done in 1967.

I hate the practice of abandoning wire in place when a re-wire happens.

Here's a couple of pics of a recent re-wire, It's a 1947 50 footer dual helm twin engine. it had 400 lbs of recycled wire.

I could compute the total wire I put into a job, bc it's in my invoice.

Lloyd