Wiring a bilge pump in a boat

hey there Nang goes through here today's videos on wiring up a bilge pump and a field sensor switch I did a video a while ago on wiring up a bilge pump and a normal float switch he didn't have any sort of manual override switch at all it was just a float switch wide straight to the battery so this time I'm also going to be wiring in a little bit of a control panel for it and writing it all up to the front of the boat so it's a slightly more complicated install and also there's a few little gotchas with these field sensor switches do you don't have with the regular float switches I'll start by going through the circuit diagram for this bilge pump on the chalkboard because I think it's good just have an overview of how it's going to work this section here represents this switch panel so from the front looks like this and on the back we've got two black wires which is the fuse to red in a white which are from the switch so these two wires here are the 10 amp fuse one side of that fuse is going to connect to our negative terminal block if you didn't watch the video on wiring a boat that'll sort of give you an idea of where we're up to with this installation but the basic premise is we've got two terminal blocks a positive and negative up under the bow of the boat so this fuse holder or this fuse goes to the negative terminal block we installed a couple of weeks ago and then comes all the way down here to the negative side of the pump so we just have a negative circuit to the battery essentially and a 10 amp fuse inline on the positive side we then got this this switch that controls the positive side of the circuit power comes into the middle of the switch and in the center position that power doesn't go anywhere so that's our off position if we had it set to auto power then comes down to the positive side of our field sensor switch and when this detects water it passes that power on to the positive side of the pump and provide the fuses blonde it flows in the pump runs the other option is to put into a manual mode where power comes down here bypasses this sensor switch and just goes straight so that's if we want to run the pump regardless of what the sense is saying automatic mode is the mode I'll leave it in most of the time runs with the sensor and off is if you want to turn it off so that's if it's jammed another really great example that run one of the viewers said the other day is when you're refueling the boat just so it doesn't accidentally come on and create a spark while you're refueling and I think it was a really good suggestion so thanks Ron for that that's how the circuit works we'll go over now and we'll start wiring up the one last thing I will say is that with the traditional float switches you could have that float switch anywhere in the circuit you could have a positive come round to the pump then have the float switch activate the negative circuit with these sensor switches they don't seem to work that way you have to have the sensor switch before the pump for them to work it's just a little bit of a gotcha if you're swapping out an old float switch and that float switch was on the negative side of the pump you just need to reconnect that negative side and move the new sensor switch over to the positive side of the circuit there's two halves to this build we're going to be doing one half is the pump itself down at the transom and the other half is the switches up at the dash the bilge pump itself I'm going to be putting mounting it onto a piece of this sort of poly board it's really good because it's essentially looks over a polymer plywood so this is what I'm going to be screwing my field sensor switch to and the bilge pump itself most bilge pumps come with some sort of base like this but you screw down and then the pump itself will clip on so that's what I'm going to do so what I'm going to do is just drill and position this base first and then I'll drill and position the float switch and once they're on it'll give me an idea of how long I need the wires to be I'm picking a drill bit that's just slightly smaller than the thread on the screw so it should go in quite nicely I'm also just confirming this so this plate it's a bit obvious when you look at it but it flows out to the side here so I think I'll mount this so the pipe comes out this way obviously it could probably go either way here but obviously don't want to pointing straight towards the flow switch obviously you need to use stainless steel screws for this because it's going to be sitting in salt water the whole time the other important thing is that the washer the plate of the pump and the base plate you're using thicker than the screws are long so they don't poke through into the hole on the bottom so there we go that's attached now and they don't read past the base plate I'm going to position this field Center switch right next to it in this orientation a couple more stainless washers come on styling screws the other thing worth considering when you're mounting this which way it goes is it's got a couple of points here and you test it by putting your finger on those two points with two fingers in those two points so I'm going to make sure that's the outside to make it easier to reach those to test it now that's done float switch just clips in this is the setup we're going to have at the back of the boat if you remember back to that circuit diagram the negative this pump has to go up to the fuse on this switch we need to run a wire all the way up to the front of the boat for this you could theoretically just run this straight to the battery and put an inline fuse holder on it but I've got this panel it's got a fuse in it it's quite clear then that is the fuse for the bilge pump so I'm happy to run the wire up the positive then has to come from the front so I can supply manual power to it but also attach to the wire from this float switch that is labeled was labeled till it fell off to pump so it makes it nice and easy but what it means is at this point there's actually only a junction of three wires just like to keep in mind when I start deciding on what connector I'm going to use another thing worth considering and this is something I'm still kind of in two minds about is where am I going to do these connections so pardon me says keep these wires reasonably long take these up under the gunnel somewhere at the highest point and keep them as high away from the water as possible another part of me thinks that you could cut it reasonably short and sort of wire it it's quite a short tail here because this is still going to be City well above the height the sensor level so the only time water is ever going to reach here is if something's gone wrong the pumps already failed you know otherwise water just won't get that high but you know having said that it could happen you could then catch it and find it there's a problem fix it violet so on the balance I think what I'm going to do is run these up quite high run them up under the gun somewhere I think it will go that way and just have the slightly longer wiring now these as it turns out and not quite the same length so I'll probably cable tie these together to each other so what I'm going to do is cut this white wire at the same length as the brown one because that's the shorter one so the one from the float switch is the shorter one I'm going to cut the build front wire there did come with a factory eye on it but I'm not so worried about that cause I'm going to heat shrink and solder them anyway I'm going to use a razor blade to strip this white outer casing so it's quite large larger than my wire strippers will strip so and then I'll just use the white stripping tool to do the inner wires red and white wise three wires now positive negative from the bilge pump itself and the wire from the float switch going to the pump now I'm going to put that aside for a loop and we'll focus on the switch itself the switch needs a short tail to reach to the negative terminal block of the busbar which is just under the dash so it really only needs a foot of cable not a lot so we'll put that on the other negative needs to reach all the way to the back of the boat the centre red wire of the switch just needs 12-volt positive power so once again it only needs a foot of cable just to reach the bus bar under the dash so I'm going to use some twin core wire for these positive negative come out separate it enough so it can go into those two terminal blocks I then need to run auto power all the way down to end of the boat and earth or a negative or ground and a positive override so I need three wires to the back of the boat and to wise up under the dash so three long two short so I'm going to make these tails up onto the switch first and then we'll wire the other end I'm going to start with the long wires now I need to send three down to the back but I'm going to use two lots of twin core wire I do have some single but the reason I'm not going to use a double in corn a single core wire is because I'm bound to need to run another wire anyway example might be a stone light where I then just earth the stone light straight to the battery and just send a positive down this way maybe a fuel sender something like that I don't think it's going to go Australia so I'm going to run two twin cores but I'll only be wiring three of the actual cores for now with this twin core wire I find the best way to strip this outer casing is just to gently run a razor blade down the center between the two inner wires then you can peel the casing back and then cut it off with side cutters I find doing it that way there's less chance I'll actually Nick the casing for the inner wires and make them less waterproof then once that's done it's nice and easy just to strip the inner wires well I've got in the way a little bit and it's now a couple of days later but we'll finish this so I've just made the long cables to run the length of the boat the next thing I'm going to do is make up some short leads that just take positive and negative to those two terminal blocks under the dash and supply power and ground to this control panel but one thing I will say is I like to sort of sacrifice a little bit of neatness under the dash for having enough length to be able to pull something out of the dash if you have these wires just long enough it can be quite tricky to wire things up was if you got a bit of slack you can actually pull them out of the dash work on the connections and then feed them back in and then just cable tie up the excess later anyway to do this I'm just going to use a short length of the twin core cable and then I'll just sold them on and heat shrink them as same as every other white wire connection we've done so far got this switch panel now wired up we're just a positive and a negative tail long enough to reach the terminal blocks what I'm left with now is three other wise that are the three that the long wires are designed to take to the back of the boat because I am going to solder the wires on to the bilge pump and we're being waterproofs really important I don't want to have this permanently attached ie I can't fit this through the hole in the dash and I certainly kind of fit the bilge pump through the hole or - to run it back so what I'm going to do is put three Spade connectors here and that way I can actually run the wire through bring it out through the - hook them up and then screw this plate into the dash so that's the plan so I'll quickly just put some Spade connectors on the end of these three wires and do the same on the dashboard end of the long wires I'm never quite as confident with crimped connectors on a boat but this end of the equation is under the dash so at least it's out of the rain and any sort of salt spray and as with all crimp connectors just make sure once you've put them on just give them a little tug if you can pull them off easily then they're not on right and if you can't then you're not going to damage them by giving them a little bit of a Yank so that's our front panel pretty much ready to go I'll now put the female connectors on the other end of these long leads and then I'll start soldering to the pump itself we'll just go back to the circuit diagram to get a little bit of our reorientation I guess now there were two leads I made which was the center one from the switch which is the short lead to the positive and from the fuser short lead to negative and then on the other side of the fuse and the two sides of the switches that's right put those Spade connectors and these are the three long wires we're going to be running down to the back of the boat I've now put matching Spade connectors on the ends of the long wires they're not quite symmetrical in length because three of them are going to the bilge pump and one has to go off for the stern light so I've just given a bit more length here now I'm going to solder on the other ends to the bulbs pump so we'll just go and have a quick look at the circuit diagram just to sort of have a look at where they need to go when we get to the other end of those long wires the ones that are going down to the back of the boat one side of the switch we're going to attach to the positive of the sensor the other side of the switch we're going to attach to the positive of the pump itself and the other side of the fuse holder we're going to attach to the negative of the pump this white wire is the wire that's going to go to the positive side of the our float switch and in this case it's labeled from battery so this is the switch that's now going to supply power straight to the floats which these ones once again I'm just going to solder and use some heat-shrink just to get the best possible most waterproof connection I can given it's going to be out in the weather the other side of the floats which now needs to go to the positive on the pump so when it floats which activates it sends positive power to the pump but I also need the positive from the other wire the other set of long wires to come here because this is also where I'm going to supply 12 volts when I switch it into the manual mode and overriding what the float switch is doing so I need to connect all three wires together here so here's how I'm thinking of doing this I'm going to get some heat-shrink and I've put a large a piece of heat shrink on this tube and I'm going to run the other side of the float switch up through that heat shrink so the three wires are sort of coming out together like this once I've got these three wires running parallel like this so this is the two from the front and the one from the float switch I'm then going to put some finer heat shrink tube onto the two wires from the bilge pump itself from here I'll twist them up and I've got the white wire coming from the front is going to the ground on the bilge pump and then the outlet from the float switch and the red wire from the front are both going to the positive on the bilge pump what we've got now is the brown on the red which is the float switch and the override from the front coming to the bilge pump and the ground coming from the fuse of the front to the ground on the bilge pump I didn't notice when I was doing it for the heat shrink for the positive had come off so it's not on there so I'm going to put the heat shrink over this negative and then I use some liquid electrical tape and a bit of regular electrical tape to seal this one and then I put the other heat shrink over the top of the lot actually quite like liquid electrical tape it does a good job the only thing I don't like about it is it seems to take quite a long time to dry so I'm just painting that on until you can't see any wire at all and then I'll let it sit for a little bit while I let that liquid electrical tape dry I'll just go and drag the boat in so we can install it all I've decided I'm going to put this panel over here cuz I'm going to have other gauges off to the right and it gives me an opportunity to sort of cover up these three holes they're already in the dash what I'm going to do is measure this up so that I've got a hole that sort of is around the size of the center parts here drill the four corners and then use a jig saw to cut that out so these are the four holes I'm going to drill out then once I've drilled it out I'm going to use the jig saw so I'm just using a drill bit large enough to fit the blade of the jigsaw in that's the that's all I need one thing worth mentioning is if you don't know what's behind the - always just have a look as well this is all clear under here is no bracing no otherwise whatever but just always make sure you know what's behind before we start drilling into it this one ended up being a little tricky because it's so close to another hole but it doesn't really matter because I can just run down from this one and run across from this one I guess theoretically you actually only need two opposite corner holes to do this now we got this played out just do a little bit of a test fit fits reasonably nicely I'm just going to take this out clean up a few of the marks left by the foot of the jigsaw and then I'll drill the screw holes they're going to hold this plate in so this section now I've let the liquid electrical tape dry then I push that large a bit of heat shrink tube over the whole lot and and shrunk that down I meant to film it but forgot to press record so the plan now is to go and put this in the boat and then start running these wires up the front towards the dash what I'm going to do is plug this in the bottom of the boat for now then we'll plumb out the outlet later the only thing I am going to do and I had a separate video about this once was when I put this in I'm going to lay it on this port side but I'm gonna lay it this way not this way if you lay it this way so it's sloping down towards the keel the water sensor can be in deep water and the bilge pumps in shallow water and in that situation the sensors detecting water that the bilge pump can't reach and for that reason it'll just stay on the whole time you'll burn the motor out the batch will go flat so I'm having it that the bilge pump is sitting in deeper water than the float switch it means you end up with a little bit of water left in the bilge that's that great problem compared to the alternative down the track I'm also going to find a way to cable tie these up so that the soldered connections are lying in the bilge I've run these long wires up to the front of the boat now they're coming in through the hole on the side here and run along and then back out this mounting hole we just made the thing about having this extra length is it makes it really comfortable now to set about wiring this or service it or whatever in the future so we've got two pairs of wires the one that has the single white wire so that'll be my Stern light wire this wire here is power that goes to the float switch so this comes from the automatic side of the switch so that's an easy plug in the other side of the switch is for the manual override and this red wire goes straight to the positive side of the battery and this black wire coming out of the fuse holder is a ground for the whole thing so once they're plugged in we're pretty much good to go all Lani to do now is connect up these two bare wires to the terminal blocks for the positive and negative from the battery which I'll do under the dash and I'll do that once I've disconnected the battery just to make sure I don't accidentally shorten anything in the process because I'm lazy and can't be bothered walking to the back of the boat all I've actually done is pulled the fuse out for this positive so now these two short leads coming from the back of the switch I'm just going to put the positive into one of the port's here the negative into one of the port's here and put the fuse back in we'll see how it goes I've now got those two wires in and the fuse back in so it's all good to go a few wires hanging around but this now is our off position centrally in auto mode the little auto light comes on and if the float switch gets activated then the Bulls fumble come on then off and in manual mode you can hear the bilge pump going so what I'm gonna do now is leave it in Auto then go down and test the water sensor switch to test these field sensor switches all you need to do is hold your two fingers against these two curves hold it for 10 seconds or less and the switch comes on so we know it's all good the last piece of the puzzle is plumbing a bit of hose like this spiral outlet hose from the pump overboard through one of these skin fittings this skin fittings from the original pump I had and it's a 19 mil outlet so I'm going to upgrade to this 25 mil which matches the pump itself where the old fitting was plastic the new ones stainless so I was going to put a bit of dura lock on it again but it's actually got a little sort of silicon rubber silicon washer on it so I'm pretty comfortable put it up putting it on aluminium I can't find this in a bit of the hole so I needed to use so I'm just going to kind of ream it out with a deburr bit in a die grinder I've got to say although that was my second choice of tool I reckoned that was a lot easier than using the whole solder beam so happy with that now just fit the back in collar now I'm just going to put a couple of stainless steel hose clamps on either end of this outlet hose push it on over that skin fitting and they'll tighten up the hose clamp then I'll do exactly the same as that down at the pump in and we're done one last thing I'm going to do to wrap up here I'll be doing more in the way of adding conduit all that sort of stuff but I'll do that in part two of wiring a bow is I'm just going to cable tie these connectors so this is the solder connectors here and these are the ones heading to the front this is going to become us two in light but I'm actually just going to cable tie them around this stay to make sure they don't drop into the bilge I'm quite happy for the factory wires to be in the village because it's completely sealed but I'm going to keep those soldered connectors up a little bit higher that's kind of the last thing I'm really going to do here as those wires head off they'll end up in a conduit and I'll need it up a little bit more but that's probably the only other thing I think is important with regards to our wiring so thanks watching I hope this video was helpful to you if you're looking to wire a similar bilge pump sort of set up subscribers who've been following along with the restoration of the green machine here will have noticed I finally got around to painting this cowling I'm not a big fan of standard cowlings always have to mess with them an order some decals though it's a bit plain at the moment but you might notice I've tried to keep everyone happy the leg is still Honda silver this is Yamaha touch-up paint this is mercury touch-up paint so it's a little bit of brand harmony going on here all right we'll take care thanks again please rate comment subscribe and I'll catch you next time see ya

Channel: Dangar Marine

Views: 177,895

Rating: 4.9026709 out of 5

Keywords: bilge pump, wiring, electrical, field sensor switch, float switch, switch panel, bilge, install, sensor switch, pump

Id: m0jrZPY9o3s

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2016