Is "De-Wiring" a Thing?

[David Johnson]

We are now over two years into refurbishing our 1986 Nauticat 44. We are only the third owners, but the first owner was a retired naval officer who added a lot of wiring and painted everything in the bilge gray. The electrician who did the work for him reversed the ground and neutral when he added American wiring to the Finnish-built boat. Had I known at the beginning what I have learned in the past two years I would have removed absolutely all the wiring at the beginning and started over. As it is, I am continuing to remove orphan wires and we have effectively added new wiring for almost everything, including all-new 110 AC circuitry. Nigel Calder continually reminds in his workshops: "110 will kill you; 12 volt will burn up your boat." In my opinion, removing all the old wire and starting over with labelled and diagrammed circuitry is always a good investment in safety and reliability, even if there is no financial reward when you sell the boat.

[Icarus]

Originally Posted by Paradise1

Anyone who has a boat more than a couple of years old has likely seen it. Bundles and bundles of wires and cables running up and down the boat and from bow to stern. Many are working original wires, but many are dead, being bypassed with new wires with upgraded electronics and other things. My electrician did some work last week and said most of the wire conduits and throughways are so tightly packed and full, that he couldn't run a new wire if he had to. Apparently, the problem is that with upgrades comes all new wire/cable, rarely ever pulling out the old. I know people do it, but I certainly don't have tens of thousands to rewire the boat. This seems nuts! Is there such a thing as boat de-wiring, somehow systematically tracing and removing old, obsolete wire?

Sure you can trace wires
I would get rid of X mas tree connections and redundant wiring as much as possible..

[boatpoker]

The vast majority of the thousands of boat I've inspected have serious wiring issues.

[boatpoker]

Some more ...

(I literally have thousands of these )

[chrisr]

a word of advice : make 100% sure that the wires you cut aren't live !

when cleaning out old wiring on a previous boat i failed to do this when cutting a 2 core wire. caused a deadshort which resulted in about 20 foot of wire going up in smoke. fortunately this was just the old wire and it didn't spread to the rest of the circuitry...but it was amongst my scariest moments

ps ; if for one reason or another you cannot check if the wires are live, seperate the pair and cut one at a time

cheers,

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

The vast majority of the thousands of boat I've inspected have serious wiring issues.

Dear god , burning the whole thing to the water line would be best , !

Who lets a boat get like that

[Dieseldude]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

The vast majority of the thousands of boat I've inspected have serious wiring issues.

Amazing what some people do with their wiring. Just no appreciation for the hazards. Something that is done wrong might work for a long time. But it can fail at any time. There is the obvious fire hazard. There is the obvious hazard of shut down of critical equipment. But there is the problem of extended time of tracing and troubleshooting. The problem seems to be by slow creep. Small bits of sloppy work over years add up, and the wiring becomes a can of worms. Best to do it correctly from the start. Usually, it is only a little more effort and a little more cost to do it right.



Probably, most people are afraid to touch old wiring when it seems to be working. "If it works, don't fix it." seems to prevail. There are lazy equipment installers too that do a quick shoddy job and take the money. But a time could come of a major failure or fire, and it could be too late, or at least a lot of trouble.


Wiring messes are also common aboard commercial vessels. And this is done by people who should know better.

[chrisr]

Originally Posted by Dieseldude

Amazing what some people do with their wiring. Just no appreciation for the hazards. Something that is done wrong might work for a long time. But it can fail at any time. There is the obvious fire hazard. There is the obvious hazard of shut down of critical equipment. But there is the problem of extended time of tracing and troubleshooting. The problem seems to be by slow creep. Small bits of sloppy work over years add up, and the wiring becomes a can of worms. Best to do it correctly from the start. Usually, it is only a little more effort and a little more cost to do it right.



Probably, most people are afraid to touch old wiring when it seems to be working. "If it works, don't fix it." seems to prevail. There are lazy equipment installers too that do a quick shoddy job and take the money. But a time could come of a major failure or fire, and it could be too late, or at least a lot of trouble.


Wiring messes are also common aboard commercial vessels. And this is done by people who should know better.

agree 100%. the first step is when installing or modifying anything ALWAYS remove all the old wiring (ie don't let the problem get established).

easy bit of discipline if doing it yourself but sometimes you need to stand over the tradie to get them to do it. i'm paying for your time and this is what i want you to do !

and never just get some guy to go onboard and do a job unsupervised...be there, watching is the only way to get it done right.

cheers,

[goboatingnow]

I have a mantra , “if in doubt F—k it out “. Ie “ it’s it’s not working fix it or remove it “ . That’s applied to old wiring as much as anything else.

[DanielI]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

Some more ...

(I literally have thousands of these )

Took your pictures as a “spot the problem” test. Some are just rats nest, others are too close to water or heat sources, but that last, marked “charger ign switches” I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Thanks.

[DanielI]

Any rules of thumb when (if ever) old wires should be left? I pulled my old instruments, replaced with a wireless on the mast and a NMEA backbone in the starboard cabinets. That left a number of yucky looking wires going from the nav station under the cabin sole. Hard spot to access. Any reason to leave them, even as just a pull line for future cable runs?

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by DanielI

Took your pictures as a “spot the problem” test. Some are just rats nest, others are too close to water or heat sources, but that last, marked “charger ign switches” I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Thanks.

Switches and battery chargers should not be installed over batteries as batteries produce highly explosive and corrosive hydrogen sulphide gas while charging and ... the batteries have no fuse protection. This is the way they built it !

[Fore and Aft]

Boatpoker I once surveyed a power boat that had nine battery switches! That boats wiring was such a mess.
I think most people have the mentality that it's only 12 volts so I will have a crack at wiring that.
Cheers

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

Boatpoker I once surveyed a power boat that had nine battery switches! That boats wiring was such a mess.
I think most people have the mentality that it's only 12 volts so I will have a crack at wiring that.
Cheers

As I got older I got smarter and choosier.
No more 1982 Hatteras 53's for me ... 12v, 24v, 32v, 120v, 240v, two generators and five battery chargers ... all in terrible shape.

I told the first time buyer to hire a full time liveaboard electrical engineer or he'd never get it out of the harbour.

[pcmm]

Originally Posted by Endless time

I have a set of telephone wiring equip from the olden days before cell phones. One set is a transmitter which is attached to a wire and sends a repeating beep down the line. One takes the receiver and goes down the street to the next telephone box (or somewhere else in the building to another phone line panel) and the receiver picks up the beep (if the line is terminated there of course) and you just run along the posts to find the line of interest. I have used this equipment to trace out lines in the past which were not telephone lines. There might be some equipment out there like that still which you could find and use.

Lol that's not "olden days" we still use those toning devices to check wires after doing network wiring, very current technique. The devices are called "wire trackers"

but sometimes its just better to gut the wiring and start fresh (depending on the boat) When I bought my morgan I gave each of my kids a pair of side cutter pliers and told them to have fun and cut every wire out of the boat ( it was that bad) I paid them by the pound of wire they removed.. They gutted the boat in a weekend and it cost me $100ish.

After thay ALWAYS buy your wire by the spool and plan out the wiring ahead of time to try to determine a common wire size that works for the majority of devices) I'm mostly wired with 16 and 14awg (alll LED lights).