BASIC BOAT DUAL BATTERY WIRING | HOW TO

[Music] hey guys welcome back to another episode of real life fisherman we're going to do a uh kind of a special how-to video today we're going to do boat battery wiring basics this is like a very basic dual battery system so we're going to go over today all the stuff that i would recommend and how i would recommend running a boat battery wiring system there's going to be several different variations this is a very common one one i would recommend if you're rewiring your boat to run something like this you're going to have a few variations again and different setups on different boats are going to be different but this is a very basic generalization of a dual battery system and uh boat wiring so uh it's out of the boat and you know it's not exactly the spec or anything as far as links and runs and stuff like that it's going to be different uh we'll we'll go into all that but this would be like up at the dash right here with your switch panel uh or switches i have two different style switches a regular toggle and a lighted switch um the fuse panel and uh this is uh ground bus up at the up at the dash and then the battery switch and the uh power and negative bus would be at the stern at the back and then of course the batteries would be at the stern as well in the back so i was going to go over it and show you guys how this is done and maybe give you a little better understanding your boat battery wiring um and help you guys out and if this video helps you out or you found it informative please uh like it and if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel so we're gonna start at the uh at the back here or at the bottom in this scenario here um which is the batteries it's your the base of the whole system of course so uh you're gonna have a cranking battery uh for most standard sometimes boat manufacturers will put in two cranking batteries uh but uh again i would recommend switching over to a deep cycle for your house battery or your second battery that way you can run for long periods of time crank batteries are designed to crank and discharge quickly and recharge quickly where deep cycle is designed to drain slowly and takes a longer deeper charge to recharge it but that's what you want when you're out there on the water running things without your engine running you want to drain slowly and you just have more of a capacity or a run time with the deep cycle so most standard crank batteries are group 24 it's going to depend on your size motor on how many cranking amps and you know the rating of it and then the deep cycle standard would be a a group 27 you can get a 24 if you already have a 24 tray or a 29 or a 31. i just recently upgraded uh on my boat i recently upgraded to a group 27 cranking battery and a group 31 house battery and i actually ran a battery isolator and i have a similar system in my boat with the same switch but uh i have that video on the channel if you want to check that out i have a ton of other battery wiring videos on the channel or several other battery wiring videos on the channel um so check those out if you want some more information again this is just a kind of a basic out of the boat wiring set setup so there's that covers our batteries now the wiring on them so you're gonna wire the positive of battery one to position one on the battery switch so position one here or post one that would be your cranking battery and the positive of battery two to position two on the battery switch and post number two position two then you're gonna have a negative jumper that connects both uh negatives of both batteries so they're sharing a negative and then also the negative is going to jump up to your negative bus bar here and then the output on the output side of the battery selector switch you're going to have everything on the boat that requires power off of this stemmed off of this the output here this is where you would have the the main power there you want to put your main engine uh positive on the output if you have a kicker motor you want to put that on the output the boat or dash power that's running up you can even have that on the output just don't stack too many uh terminals on the output uh of on any stud negative or positive you don't want to do more than you know three or four ring terminals on the battery or on the selector switch and that's a good reason to come over to a bus bar what this allows you to do is to have a main power basically a junction that you can then run powers off to whatever you want in the in the back of the boat um normally where this would be you can also have finding these up under the dash as well instead of a fuse block basically anything you attach here to all these different points would need a inline fuse rated for whatever the device you're going to power is needing so you would you would uh hook that up there and run an inline fuse for your downrigger or a circuit breaker to your downrigger whatever you want uh to have this powered off of just saves you from having to hook a bunch of terminals up to your battery switch or directly to your battery same thing with the negative all your negatives would just run to this and again this is all there in the back would recommend running a 20 amp or a 30 amp circuit breaker on your run for your dash power either from the battery switch or from the negative but or from the uh from the positive bus bar here this is just acting as a jumper to go to the what would be under the dash so then going up to the dash you can get a fuse distribution block right here or fuse block this one here allows you to have 12 different devices fused on here and then you can even get one which i would recommend you getting one with a negative bus on the fuse block itself so above here there would be a bunch of spots for you to terminate your uh your negative your ground right up here in that case you would just run a a wire like this power wires ran here you would run uh one from the negative and join here instead of how i have it over here on this uh negative uh little bus or uh circuit board here you could also use a negative bus like this up here in place of that this is just what i happen to have on hand right here so this is where all the negatives for the dash would be terminated here so when you're running your uh when you're running your main powers and stuff like that i would recommend using a four gauge is pretty standard four gauge marine grade wire uh i i always recommend running anchor wire it's the best in the industry um but there's a lot of other manufacturers just make sure it's marine grade wiring i like to color uh code the the wiring but uh it is acceptable you can run black wiring here i would just recommend running red heat shrinks on the end um it kind of helps people uh come behind you or yourself or anybody know okay that's that's positive you know just kind of helps you know black and red helps keep it that way um but uh yeah four gauge wire for your main runs from the battery to the switch and from the switch to the bus bars and then you can run this is 8 gauge here you run that up that's a good or you can run you know six uh from here you would then step down uh think of it like a main trunk and then step down the branches and the branches can be smaller depending on what you're running them to like a a bilge pump or a narrator or lights or a vhf or a fish fighter everything can be powered off of this main and you can step down to a smaller gauge there so again run a 20 or 30 amp breaker going up to the dash just in case anything were to happen here that's going to pop and it's going to uh you know not come back any further not go through the switch and go to anything else the engine or anything like that so uh from here again you would put in whatever um fuse the appropriate size fuse for the device that you're trying to power up um for today we're just having some leds here these leds represent whatever that device is it doesn't matter the led is just something that we could show here that will let you know hey it's got power it doesn't have power you can see it turn on you can see it turn off so again the battery power is going from the battery to the switch and then you can divert through the switch i think the switches are on right now so we can go to battery one now everything's powered up this is hot this is hot and so we have and then the switches of course are on so we can turn those off here here so power's going up here through right here is the main power coming through this fuse panel and then this side of the fuse is hot and if this fuse is good this side of the fuse is hot and that's going up to the switch and then this is a simple toggle switch on off uh there's you know all there are several different switches uh this is the most basic one just an on off toggle switch so you got power going in power going out to the light and you flip the power connects power into the switch turns on the device which is light this one here is just a little bit different this is a on off switch uh there's momentary switches there's on off on switches uh we won't get into all that wiring this is just a basic wiring video but this one is a lighted switch you'll find that a lot because a lot of boat manufacturers and stuff like that they want you to know that you've left something on so let's say for instance you turn your bilge pump on or your live well pump on you have a light on the switch when it's turned on letting you know that that is actually powered up so the only difference with that switch as opposed to the regular toggle switch is this switch has a power coming in a power going out but it also has a ground that connects from the switch to the ground bus there at the dash or your common ground up there at the at the dash that allows the light in the switch itself to actually turn on that ground is just for the light in the switch so that's really the only difference there with that we're going to turn these switches on here just so i can go over the battery switch itself so again this is all hot now you want to shut this off it shuts off you want to switch to battery 2 now turn it to battery 2. now everything's being powered from battery 2. battery 1 your crank battery is sitting there not being used and when you want to leave for the day you just switch it on back over to battery one start your motor and go home you don't have to worry if you have any battery juice left to start it or you don't have to worry about starting your motor every you know 30 minutes to an hour so you know you have uh your battery charged you can just run everything off of this one and then save that one for just starting the motor it's a good system very safe system if that battery were to go bad on you sometimes you don't know your battery's going bad you get out there you don't want to ruin your day by putting it back on the trailer or by not being able to get it off the trailer you can crank from this battery or you can combine them on one and two and now both these batteries are in parallel and you're basically going to jump start that battery with this battery you can charge both these batteries by running on one and two but i don't recommend running like that all the time um it's not really recommended to run around on one and two constantly so whatever battery you are switched to when your engine is running that is the battery you are charging unless you have a battery isolator like i just installed so battery 2 again also guys make sure when you're switching the battery switch around that you do not have the engine running you want the engine off before you change battery positions because in between here and there and off or switching is uh off so that power from your engine your alternator your stator has nowhere to go and you can cause a voltage spike so it's recommended you turn your battery or your engine off before switching your batteries also you want to with the modern electronics like our high-end fish finders we run nowadays uh you don't want to just shut the power off to the fish finder you want to let the fish finder actually power down like you're shutting down a computer so you want to power down your fish finder before you turn your battery switch it's a good habit to get into just shutting the power off is like ripping the cord out of the wall from your uh computer it's not something you want to do okay guys well just to recap again dual battery system battery selector switch negative bus positive bus dash power harness or dash power uh having a a circuit breaker here uh going up to the dash uh fuse block and then from the fuse block here you go to your switches and then from the switches to the light in this case or whatever device it is you're powering up there um and then you also from the device the negative is going to go to the negative bus up at the dash and then again the battery selector switch can run everything from either position one position two or one and two and it also kills everything with it switched to off so that's quick recap if you guys are looking to get into more uh in-depth like trolling motor wiring and stuff like that i do have a video on that on how to wire up batteries for trolling motors in parallel and series in 24 and 36 volt so be sure to check out that video and uh again guys if this video helped you out please give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already and thanks for watching and i'll see you guys on the next one

Channel: Reel Life Fisherman

Views: 219,601

Rating: 4.9101796 out of 5

Keywords: boat battery wiring demonstration, boat, boat wiring, boat battery wiring, boat battery installation, dual battery, reel life fisherman, reel, life, fisherman, how-to, diy, vlog, vlogging, vlogger, outdoors, boating, boat help, helpful tips, tips, watch me wire a boat, how to install dual batteries on a boat, dual boat batteries, battery, deep cycle, house battery, cranking battery, accessories, accessory, wire accessories on your boat, trolling motor, kicker motor, fish finder, light, lights

Id: 8HLmflsKT3I

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021