Grebe, the Shipyard builders of Wedac II, made a superb job of the original wiring. Grebe used two and three inch diameter looms of wire encased in braided stainless steel. Unfortunately electricians assured us that eventually the cloth bound strands of wire within this armor would deteriorate to the point of being dangerous.
So, with regret it was farewell to the chain mail like wiring and hello to Marine grade submersible Romex. Not fully cognizant of the expense of this wire, we forged on, it seemed like an eternity of pulling and cutting.
At one point, we being the laborers for our electricians, we contemplated selling the scrap wire to a salvage yard. It must have been worth a fortune. Every two-foot length seemed to weigh a ton. However, the constraint to our brilliant idea was the lack of a pick up truck, as all our friends with pickups had scattered to the hills after learning of our project. So we decided the most expedient course of action was to just throw it away.
Imagine a house with all its wiring and then easily multiply that by three, four, or more. Now I admit that this may seem a little far fetched but consider, you are not dealing with just one source of power with a boat but several and of varying voltage.
An explanation of what was done.
I mean this to be a little humorous in its fevered tone, though it was hard work it was fun and simultaneously exhausting.
Each side of the boat has an umbilical cord from which you connect to the 'shore' power. This is delivered at 220volts, then reduced to 110volts at the (in Wedac's case, huge) breaker panel .
That is all well and good moderately straight forward, right?--- However, from there it is distributed to the Electric stove, the lighting, the air-conditioning units, which are reverse cycle heat pumps in a boat, of which Wedac has three x 16000 BTU units, to the Lighting and electrical outlets, and so on.....
There we have the start of the wiring project, I can hear you say ---"Well that's no more than a house!"--- My answer to that is to explain that then we did the same from the Generator , a hook-up from the generator is necessary for the times your doing what a boat should --"Cruise"--. Now to make sure the generator is running at the correct r.p.m., because otherwise your producing too much voltage and likely to cause a fire, or too little and the equipment decides it's going to burn because it's trying too hard. Beginning to get the picture? For us, being novices regarding any boat of size, this all came as an alarming revelation ----- "Work on the what"----- "Power plant. Oh you mean the generator".
At that stage of the wiring a slight detour to rebuild the generator was taken so that it could be tested under load. "Right" thought we, thank goodness relaxation time, or at least a welcome change of focus ----- but no, not yet now we checked the 12volt system. By this time we'd fathomed that if all else fails aboard you need a backup system not only for the lighting but also for the starting of the engines, generator , winch etc. So wherever 110volt lights are installed so go 12 volt lights.
Now to the Batteries for that 12volt systems that we'd overhauled, all of which are deep cycle. Simply explained this means a special battery that can withstand the rigors of being discharged to a far greater degree than can an automobile battery. The engines needed dedicated 18 wheeler size deep cycle batteries for each, and we needed one of the same for the generator. The cable they take is about the diameter of a large man's thumb. For the lighting, electronics, and winch etc., we needed a bank of big batteries.
On to keeping those batteries up to charge. Needed was a three bank marine deep cycle battery charger about the size of a small washing machine. This type can charge three sets of several deep cycle batteries simultaneously --- Just the job!
Now at last we get to the fun part, the wiring of the equipment all of which is twelve volt. We needed miles of battery cable for the anchor winch up at the foredeck, also for the Search light on the roof. To start the searchlight a solenoid is used much the same as the starter on your car. The navigation lights required new wire, and the rewiring of the Anchor light which is at the top of the mast just above the forward pointing navigation light, Wedac II has a mast and it's for those couple of lights and for flags to be hung from. All the wires had to stripped out and rethreaded through the inside of the mast, getting rid of the additional "outside of the mast wiring". And now we're set to wire in the Radar , the GPS, Radios, and any other twelve volt electronic aid to navigation one may have ---- what a treat some really fun stuff!
Viola easy eh?
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