House Batteries

Back to electrical... House batteries are now installed and wired together to form one big house bank. The cable that connects the batteries is 4/0 which is about the size of a garden hose. Fortunately I had the use of a huge ratcheting crimper for installing the lugs on the cable which made the job relatively painless. The left part of the cabinet will hold all the inverter, charger, wiring, and electrical distribution stuff. These are gel cells and should not gas off during normal conditions but I am incorporating good ventilation just in case. I also designed it so that the batteries are easy to access for maintenance or removal. Our boat is DC/Inverter based which requires a lot of juice... we'll have about 1250 AH (amp hours) at 12 volts. We'll only use about half those AHs before recharging in order to limit the wear and tear on the batteries from deep discharge cycles. With our modest power requirements, this should give us many days of clean quiet power when anchored in some beautiful remote spot. Next up is hooking up the AC from the shore power inlet so we can install the inverter/charger and get the batteries topped off.

Fuel transfer system and plumbing

These pictures show the completed fuel transfer system. At first glance it looks quite complicated but that is mostly due to the fact that, in order to keep all our tankage below decks (lots more interior room that way) we ended up with six storage tanks and one day tank on the aft bulkhead of the engine room. This makes for a lot of plumbing. Once everything is labeled it should be fairly easy to follow. The six main tanks hold about 1600 gallons of fuel and the day tank holds 50. I won't bore you with all the details of how everything is plumbed, but it gives you the ability to pump from any tank to any other tank (via a big Racor filter) and also fill the day tank from any tank. This can all be done with an electric transfer pump or a hand crank pump (manual backup is a good thing). Included is also a distribution manifold that will fill any tank from the single fuel fill aft of the wheelhouse.

Fwd cabin nailers

Sue and I finished up the overhead nailers in the forward part of the boat. Pretty much the same deal as the aft cabin, the fwd ceiling nailers are made up of two stripes of 3/4 ply and are formed to the curve of the overhead. Should look very nice when we get the tongue and groove planking in. Before we lay up the final ceiling, I have to figure out what type of light fixtures we are going to use and where they are going so I can run the wire. I'm definitely going with LED for the lighting to save energy, but need to find some nice economical recessed ceiling fixtures...