How To: Marine Electrical Seminar - Fuses & Cricuit Breakers - Ep 17/30

[Music] you [Music] okay I'm going to talk about we're almost done want to talk about because that's going to be in preparation tomorrow a little bit I want to talk a little bit about why do you put a fuse in a circuit breaker right what it does it's an electrical a breaker could be an electrical kill switch it's a way to protect the wire breaks the connection we talked earlier about different types of fuses right there's fuses that you actually can reset those are thermal circuit breakers all our panels you know the little switches that can trip that's a thermal circuit breaker over time you can just reset you don't have to change a fuse what are the things that you're gonna actually always put a fuse at the source of power that's really important and make sure the fuses size to handle both the wire and the load that is going to be used or the maximum output of a charging circuit okay this is actually I want to show you just a couple videos about a couple minutes not even 30 seconds each so this is a video that we did in a long time ago actually as a boy then fuse location close to the battery that's where it should be right so this tactically is kind of your battery you got a fuse right there at the beginning of the circuit and we've got a light right here what happens when you do a det short on that circuit few sparks same this the same test right so what happened right we have a dead short right so this is effectively a battery ground path right so the current actually you saw the light went out right because the light has resistance right so that's why the currents not going it's not limitless current going through that light the light itself a load has a resistance and that's what stops the current from being too much but as soon as we basically had from this point this point over another wire we just put a bolt there that was too much and it blew the fifteen amp fuse because this is gauge 14 wire okay so that's what if used us now notice the fuse was at the beginning of the circuit right alright so the next thing we're gonna see I want to see and this is where by the way not to scare you guys but this is true a hundred percent of you have this problem on your boat guaranteed there's nobody in this room that the chances of you not having a fuse badly located on your boat is almost impossible to the point that it's guaranteed that you have fuses people think that a fuse can be installed anywhere in a circuit anywhere because they only think that a fuse is there to protect the appliance and most people remember don't like reading rule so they don't read and they don't understand that's why in your home your circuit breakers are not somewhere in the house they're at the beginning of the feed right they're not there for convenience the convenience is a coincidence they're there because that's the start of the AC main coming in your home it's not for convenience that is just a pure benefit it happens to be you're not putting the circuit breakers everywhere on the wire and in the bathroom before you plug in to an outlet there at the beginning of the circuit they are there to protect the wire in any appliance that connects to that wire all right now let's do for example VHF VHF comes with a fuse the fuse is right upside the VHF radio so now we've got circuit and you could have your battery long leads and then you have a fuse right before the VHF right and in this case it's on a VHF it's a light so what happens when you cause a det short before the fuse okay by the way this actually I just want to emphasize so the only reason it stopped is because the wire melted because the wire became the fuse right here so the camera nobody's operating the camera the camera is about this this high from honestly if it was where the other camera is at a distance about 10 feet the smoke is by the way like you can't see through it this is not a barbecue like s'mores you're doing marshmallows type of smoke it was bigger than this screen completely absolutely Oh pack you could not see through it to save your life you put your hand in it there's no way it was huge and that is from the shield the insulation on that jacket on a wire this long this long 14 gauge two feet of dead short that's it two feet imagine what happens when the dead short is on a gauge an alternator wire and this is where the stories of people actually can't breathe passing out calling mayday in this summer when there's boat fires and literally they can't they literally have to when the the Coast Guard comes they have to put them on masks for breathing because of in the inhalation from the smoke they can't open like this is not a normal fire this is not a camp fire the jacket when it melts it's absolutely terrified okay that's why you don't want smoke on your boat it's not a fire like a little fire oh it's so cute put a five straight you can't see anything you can't do anything you can't find it you are completely utterly blind and that's what happens I speak to tons of boaters that come back and we deal with a lot of insurance claims oh my boat caught on fire can you come and rewire it and I tell you the experience that it happens and it generally never happens at the dock they're actually on the water it's a life event if they don't get out of boating it's pretty close I think it's pretty close generally the partner is left inclined to go boating there's one that it might be but there's another one that's like you know what this was not part of the deal all right so this is demo we've got two last videos and that's it this video here is now you got two sizes of wires two fuses right because every time you change wire size you got to change the few size so we had a large screws at the beginning small fuse we change the wire size and then we got a light again same test so the only fuse that blew was this one here because the other fuse over here the large fuse that we saw earlier the a now fuse was meant to handle the wire gage of the large cable that cable is one knot or two watt Cameron Bure so it never blew right so this is what happens because you see this is a this and why I was bringing this up at a time was I get this all the time Jeff I have a fuse on my battery going to my panel I don't understand why I need fuses on my panel and you're like yeah but the fuse on your battery to the panel is made to handle a wire size you might have a hundred amp fuse or 50 amp fuse going to your panel from the panel everywhere else it's not the same wire size you're changing the wire size to gauge 14 gauge 16 gauge 10 you're bringing the wire size down every time you change the wire size a fuse is selected for two things for the load you're going to be running and for the wire size that it's going to be on right so now let's look at last video here to still two sizes of wire but only a large shoes at the beginning of the circuit so this is a large views and you'll notice this wire here has no fuse on it at all Hugh's never blew the big foreigners doesn't need to because the amperage of a fuse can handle 150 amps the wire can only handle 15 amps so the wire is the fuse in this instance and again the only reason it stops is because the wire melted it was the fuse so the reason I try to emphasize that is about safety right it's about doing things properly because when you're on a boat you don't want to have this happen because there's not a lot of exits alright it's not like you're on land and you can just go out through a window right there's not when you're on a boat you're kind of like on the journey with the boat especially here with cold water you're not gonna jump overboard in like ten degrees Celsius waters so what I'm trying to emphasize is that you make sure that the fuse is made to handle both the load and the wire gauge and a question earlier was about making sure that it's there to make sure that you don't do nuisance tripping right so that doesn't trip the fuse too soon if you're gonna swap out a fuse make sure you disconnect the load meaning have the battery switch off because otherwise you're going to get sparks when you connect that because you're suddenly making a connection and I have seen that all the time boaters are like oh my god I'm putting the fuse on it's it's actually sparking well it's because you have a load on make sure your loads are disconnected before because your connect completing the circuit by putting the fuse on really important make sure you put a protective positive post like covering on top of fuses some of them it's all exposed it's all metal you don't want to have an extended accidental short short and then the other thing too is the always carry spare fuses some fuses are easy to find in the middle of nowhere some art so you know as as motors we should have a list of all the fuses we have I know they'll this takes time but if you want to be on your own or self sufficient it helps especially as you go more north if you're sailing in how sound or English Bay and that's all you're doing all this I mean having spare fuses sure but if you're going on the Browns or you're going discovery or outside of Vancouver Island spare fuses is kind of a must and then when you're choosing a thermal breaker you know like wind Lass's are gonna say I want an 80 amp thermal breaker well do an 80 amp right and some of them what's nice is they come with a switch right they actually the thermal breaker allows you to turn it on and off which is what a circuit breaker is on our panels right it's not only a thermal circuit breaker it's actually an on/off you use that to turn the circuit on or off also remember that thermal circuit breakers are generally used on loads that can be accidentally or that will commonly trip and lows that will commonly trip without a short our motorized loads we'll talk about that a little bit tomorrow when the voltage drops on something remember power equals VI if the voltage drops you're running you're winless you don't have your alternator running you're running it a lot the batteries were partially empty is the voltage goes down to ten or eleven ten point five ten nine point five the amperage we'll have to do the exact same proportional up reaction because it's two things the power the windless will never draw more or less than twelve hundred watts regardless of the voltage fed to it the amperage will just keep increasing to offset the voltage drop and that's why when Lass's are always recommend with thermal circuit breaker because it can happen that your windless breaker will pop not because you have a short it's because it was under low voltage and the amperage exceeded what the windless should be having does that make sense everyone that's really good and that's why thermal circuit breakers definitely have their applications for loads that can often trip and those are generally motorized loads the question and all these jobs to come talk to because you've got a constant resistance no I was gonna stay the same absolutely if it's a 1200 watt load V equals VI P equals VI he's gonna drop currents gonna go up and that's why that's why those circuit breakers are absolutely there yeah the V equals IR yeah I know but it doesn't work like that it doesn't I know I get that all the time P equals VI lae this is the danger and this is why starters die thrusters die they don't die because they're badly manufactured is because they're working under low voltage and the current going through them is going higher than it used to be to make sure that the load is still at 1200 yeah so this is now a recap of what we talked about today right we basically went through all of that the big takeaway I think is really important especially as you're adding is modularity is a really big thing right thinking about the different ways the combiner the isolator that you're gonna share power from an alternator or batteries to battery and then looking at the different ways that you can go about charging your batteries right being a charger an alternator solar controller it could be a wind turbine it could be a DC gen all of those are different ways for you to create energy or power to be stored in a battery and then on the load side you can see there's a lot of different things I didn't talk about that but one last point if you're wondering why I have a fuse block on the unsigned and a fuse block on the switch side you're gonna have unswept circuits that are to code what would that be propane detector which is another one Dilek bump I don't want anyone else stereo memory there's certain circuits that should be left all the time few bilge pump is probably the best example you should be able to walk away from a boat turn your battery switch off and your bilge pump should work so you can isolate all those on your boat except a few bilge pump being probably number one on the list and that is called the unswept distribution fuse block and those are very few loads right you might have VHF radio might be another one yes class TA and now I'm gonna do a little bit more on fusing tomorrow because there's some troubleshooting yeah so there's ATO ATC glass fuse a now mega class t-there's mr BF it's a little bit like everything's built for a purpose right the world we live in is not simple anymore you can get a sense right I mean we just did what six hours and I'm always scratching the surface every field is non-stop and everything fusing is another one it's like as a tire tire no actually it isn't you're like oh what ty are using it for what application so you have different fuses for different applications what's interesting about a class T versus nal which are two big fuses is the rate at which they trip the reason why class C's are used for inverters or suggested by a lot of inverter manufacturers is because they have a faster trip time meaning they will not have a higher tolerance like you could have a fuse for example in a in L fuse you're like 300 amps it will let a thousand atoms go through it you're like wow I thought you said it was a 300 amp well it's 300 amp for continuous over two seconds as long as you don't peak so much like they'll leave these high inrush for these inductive these motorized loads when they come on like a starter a starter you might not like a compound meter see only 300 amps but for a microsecond it went to 1,200 and so what they're trying to do is they're trying to say yeah it's a 300 continuous but for a very short period of time and that trip time is that one of the specification of a fuse a class T fuse is gonna have a very shorter trip time it doesn't want the inverter because an inverter will never stop to do what you asked of it I always think about my lab that passed away I could make her fetch for until she dies she would do it until she dies and an inverter is the same way it doesn't say oh I'm 2000 watt I can't do more no it's gonna try you could put 4000 watt load on a 2000 watt inverter the only thing that stops it from doing 4000 Watts is that you put in a fuse that will trip after you draw more than 2000 watt of power and that's why it's essential to have on an inverter and most people don't have a fuse on an inverter believe it or not to have a few so that when you overload the inverter the inverter actually the fuse trips and that's what's actually protecting the inverter from actually doing more work than it should that's why class T is a really common one and there's some fuses to that our ignition protected and some that aren't alright and especially for some of us that have gasoline boats that's a big concern because where are you gonna put like a Class C fuse is not ignition protected by Denny Allen one is so on boats that have for example an inverter not in the engine room we'll put an ignition protected fuse at the beginning of the circuit in the engine room go through bulkheads Lear completely sealed go completely knots and then put the class t fuse beside the inverter to protect the inverter and the nal fuse is going to be protecting the wire you had a question no tailed it all right other questions on anything that we talked about there you go oh yes battery capacity tests okay alright let's go down the wormhole battery capacity so battery capacity is sort of your ability to take alcohol it's a function of time I could probably take a drink every two hours and probably never be drunk you know got a lot of experience I'm good but if I take five drinks in five minutes gonna be a problem right so your ability to process alcohol is a function of time your batteries are actually the same everything is a factor of the discharge rate the rate at which you discharge a battery when everyone here in the room thinks about a battery and they say oh I have a hundred amp hour battery what they're saying code is at a C 20 rating my battery is a hundred amp hours meaning if I discharge my batteries over a 20 hour discharge period right and my battery also more complicated is at a certain temperature so you should actually have your battery temperature-compensated I could discharge that battery a hundred a power battery bank over 20 hours would be five amps so you literally go five amps and you take that in that battery if you discharge it at five amps will bring you down after 20 hours to 100 amp hours that's why when we do battery testing it's time-consuming because there's no such thing as a quick and easy way to predict how a battery will do under deep cycle discharge than to actually do a deep cycle sort of marathon so what we'll do is we'll actually find out what the c-5 rating is what is capacity over a five hour discharge and we'll discharge that battery over five hours use that and translate that to what the battery capacity B would at 20 hours so certain batteries you'll see them and they're deceiving they'll tell you telecom batteries are gonna say oh yeah my battery is 100 amp hours but what they're failing to tell you is it's a c8 rating or it's a different type of rating so you always have to think about C 20 is what it is capacity over a 20 hour discharge and so if you want to know what your battery is or you bought a boat and you don't know what your battery bank is you say okay what's my battery bank let's say for golf car batteries for of golf or our batteries wiring 12 volts 440 amp hours no problem start the test and you give me four numbers you're my data logger generally I delegate this to boat owners because it takes time you give me time volts amps at powers should have an amp hour meter right if you don't makes it hard remember I love amp power meters but another reason every hour on the hour you start telling me what was the volts the app should say the same should be always five about right and then you should tell me what the time is because I want to know that you actually took it at that time if you didn't I don't want to assume and you tell me what the amp hours I'm power shouldn't be shouldn't should be an increment I don't want any surprises after one hour it's five after two hours it's ten I want you to prove to me that there was no like a fridge would not be a good load to put on because a fridge is an intermittent load it comes on and you need steady look like a lightbulb something like that and you do that and you'll basically find out what it is after a period of time and then that value you can say okay well I did the test and I'm at 95% of what I thought I would or I'm at 70 percent or 30 percent and that is the only way of actually knowing what a the battery true battery capacity is is by doing a C 20 test or C 5 but you need time no no because doing so takes away 2 percent of a battery bank capacity on a typical conventional battery conventional batteries are about 350 cycles at full discharge you can it's dangerous to geek out too much meaning when I have my flooded lead-acid batteries I switched to Firefly but when I had my flooded lead-acid batteries what did I do I wired them for even discharge I made sure they had the right charge rate and I made sure that I always top them off with distilled water my 8 golf cart batteries lasted me it's not a joke 11 years it's off the charts it's like saying I live to 120 if you live to 120 you're doing something good like good genetics or whatever but there's no such thing in batteries I was unlucky as I loved them but I didn't go further right I still discharged into theoretical 50 they probably only lasted longer but I'm in one point I'm telling myself 11 years out of a battery bank you did me well thank you very much for your service and then I'm like I'm moving on to a different battery bank right so it's about finding a balance between monitoring and calculating constantly what is the new battery bank capacity re-entering that in the battery monitor and saying you know what let's just take an average now when I did my battery monitor and my battery said they were 880 did you think I entered a marketing number that was probably happened once in the lab and the guy was like sales guys like really don't you think we could just increase it just a little bit are they ever gonna know now it's fine like I don't do that I'm like 880 hours 800 amp hours like let's take some skin off you know I mean like I know that reality is never what is promised so I pull back the numbers and I use that I might as bad man capacity on my monitor and it lasted Lily me 11 years till I switch to Firefly so I think it's always about finding a common balance between what's reasonable and what's true ownerís as an owner to do any other questions yes yeah so a good question I'm starting my engine with a deep cycle battery am i hurting my engine by doing so batteries am i hurting something well phrase it like that yeah you're in this situation you're lucky because you only have a eight horse engine very small need for a lot of power suddenly to move that you can hang crank that engine the challenge with bigger engines when you start them with deep cycle is that your starter wants a lot of right there and then in a moment and because the voltage drops the amperage increases on a starter and if the amperage drop the voltage drops a lot to nine volt eight volts because the deep cycle battery is completely built differently and I was entertaining putting slides of what a deep cycle battery looks like I was like oh god this is geeking out too much like I find it interesting but like Jeff you're pushing it they are completely built differently so I would encourage and you're I think you're the exception to the rule right your engine is you're lucky it's it doesn't need a lot of cranking amps but that I don't think reflects to everyone else I think when you're buying a battery for your boat and if you're gonna use it as an engine battery I strongly suggest by the way an engine battery is probably two-thirds or half the price of a deep cycle battery so if you're gonna you're gonna actually save money to buy a starter battery for a starter application then buy deep-cycle battery for a starter application so financially it makes more sense to go with a starter battery because it cost less and it's better but you can do the opposite for a deep cycle application deep cycle application you need to spend more money and buy the deep cycle battery go ahead oh my god I love this I love this all right question I start my engine on all right a source selector battery switch that has off one two both because I want both of my batteries to be charged when I'm running my engine great question I strongly disagree with that why I think that before you leave the home your birth you want to know that your engine battery can start your engine on its own it's sort of for me like leaving the house and start leaving the house with a king you know what you before you go on a trek in the woods you don't want to start you don't want to have your backup used as your primary I think it's very important to use the primary as the primary and to always start at the dock know before you leave your berth that your engine battery isn't sufficient to recharge to start your engine because that's when you have control once you're out on the water you don't have what control you have gotten just for a day sail and your batteries are completely full your charger was on and then four or five hours later the all is not enough and what's the backup to all there is no backup all is all it's all everything you got so all it to me is is an emergency thing and I always emphasize to all the builders that I deal with if you have to start your boat on all I want to call if you can't call me call someone else but know that you're going out and now you're saying that your engine battery's not enough to start your handle so if you your concern would be to put a battery combiner solve that problem change the battery switch because you can it's a make before break you can go from one to all or both and to no problem a million times if you have a normal switch no problem the switch is made to do that you just can't go from 1/2 off to 2 to both you do all the connections on top you just don't go on the off stage to go back and that's why this switch is called make before break and the switch is built for that it's not an old switch 3040 years old it's gonna do it no problem that would be my it's it's a personal opinion that's all it is no right or wrong personal opinion after 5 minutes let's say you can do ya there's two ways of doing this right you could do some owners will start on battery one wait five minutes and not even bother about all they're like screw it because I might forget to take it on all later on when I get to my destination right because some destinations can be pretty distracting it's not like we get to our destination like Oh God I'm here this is so boring what am I gonna do with my time I wish that my life was not going so bad it's like you get to destination you're like oh my god this is the best thing on earth the last thing you're thinking about is like oh let me go change my dial switches and while everyone else is inviting you to do whatever is maybe pleasureful in your life right so I recommend that one owners is you start on one run at five minutes right and then after five minutes go to 2 and then recharge your house and never even bother with all because once your batteries start five minutes is plenty to recharge your engine battery the problem is doing it after your destination is there is no room for error right no room like if you forget the all and you discharged your batteries after two days in Anchorage there is no oh I've got this you're like no there is no I got nothing the backup was with the primary now euros to one battery bank now what now it's I don't call someone floatover tender do you have a battery can I lend a battery can you come over I need a battery do you want to take your battery out of your boat I need a new battery I need it like it's it's it's a headache right that's I had that conversation earlier don't expect things to last forever change the switch or put a combiner in never switch again yes go ahead yeah which is dead yeah so the question is what happens when you seriously discharged your battery which by the way is going to happen to all of us right I mean it's pretty common you can feel bad about it rightly so but it's kind of happen to all of us your batteries are completely discharged and now you try to recharge them what happens is most battery chargers will actually not charge a dead battery you're like what isn't that your job your job is to recharge a battery you're called the battery charger well no again nothing is easy the battery charger is only gonna charge a battery this isn't perceive as dead because if it's dead it actually could catch fire so they'll only battery chargers in a battery shop where they're kind of like it's not really about it they're forcing it so I've had motors that i vish literally take their batteries off the boat bring them to a battery shop that has a charger that doesn't care to bring them back to life charge enough like 10 11 volts take the batteries put them back in the boat and the other normal charger to say oh it's just a low battery but some charges will say the battery voltage is too low I charging you even though you're a charger they're like no I know I'm a charger but I'm not a charger on a dead battery so that happens all the time in the summer oh my god every day every day I get that call every day I get that call yeah other questions I'm willing to after the course is done letting everyone go I want to thank you for being here today a big thank you and everyone at home thanks for watching and if you've got any further questions welcome to be there drop online write a comment or come and see me right here and I'm here to answer any question you might have thank you everyone [Applause]

Channel: Pacific Yacht Systems

Views: 19,665

Rating: 4.9735098 out of 5

Keywords: ABYC, NMEA, Jeff Cote, Pacific Yacht Systems, Boat wiring, Marine electrical, Fuse, Circuit Breaker, PYS

Id: HzfKJwFCPho

Length: 33min 23sec (2003 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2019