Bilge Pump Wiring

Tim advocating to leave as intended and Pete wanting to change it from original   

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Since yoy said you have two pumps, personally i prefer them to be on their own circuits. In other words if one happens to blow a fuse or breaker you dont want it to kill power to the second pump as well.

Hollywood wrote: So take the bilge pump feeds off the ignition breaker, on the battery and a switch somewhere under the helm?

Directly to the battery and an inline fuse.

I guess I complicated things, really talking about 2 different issues. Hope this clarifies:

1) I don't like the bilge pumps being disabled by turning off either the bilge pump or ignition breakers when at the dock. This has happened a few times with other family members driving the boat. So, want to wire them live at all times unless a battery switch is shut off.

2) I was just explaining why I'd want the battery switch, rather than just wire the pumps direct to battery so they ran all the time that the battery was connected.

Hope that's clearer! I agree Pete, wasn't suggesting I was worried about draining the battery when at the dock for even a week at a time or more.

63 Skier wrote: My boat, like all similar to it, has the 2 bilge pumps wired so that the ignition and bilge pump breakers have to be on for them to operate.

63 Skier wrote: I want to turn them off if the boat is on the trailer for a week, no need to drain the battery and run them for no reason.

63 Skier wrote: Just kind of offends my mechanical inner self to have pumps running every 2 minutes for a week for absolutely no reason.

now you're confusing me. turn off the ignition breaker?

I know, mine have run for well over a week and the engine has started up fine. Just kind of offends my mechanical inner self to have pumps running every 2 minutes for a week for absolutely no reason.

I'm pretty sure any marine rigging outfit will wire bilge pumps to operate regardless of any switch in the boat being shut off, except the battery switch.

Steve, the big difference from what you describe and my boat is I have the load-operated bilge pumps standard in most Nautiques. There is no float, each pump goes on every few minutes for a second, if it feels load it keep running until the load is gone (water is gone). If I had float operated pumps I'd just wire them to the battery and forget about them, but on this type I want to turn them off if the boat is on the trailer for a week, no need to drain the battery and run them for no reason.

I think I'll go the battery switch method. It really surprises me that the boats were set up this way as recently as the late '90's, kind of violates normal marine wiring procedures.

I have only three connections to my battery; i) ground, ii) main power, iii) auto-pump.

I run a big perko switch on the main power line.   If the boat is not in the water, the main gets disconnected. This switch is under the rear gunnel, accessible without lifting seats, etc. This switch turns off everything, but the auto-pump.

I installed a circuit breaker near the battery. I ran a separate line from this breaker to the pump float switch (ultra safety switch -mini).   This circuit remains on during the season, but can be turned off.   E.g. if the boat comes into the shop, all power (breaker & main) gets disconnected.    The breaker is inconspicuous, and it takes a bit of work to get to (lift seat), so is less likely to be touched by good intentioned helpers. .

Manual pump still runs through the dash on main circuit.

There is one potential fault mode with this set-up:   If the main disconnect switch was off, and there was enough water in the bilge to close the auto pump-switch (pump running), and you had the manual pump switch on, you could back-feed the dash through the pump.   If somebody tried to start the engine in this set of conditions, it might be interesting to see how hot the pump feed wire got before the circuit breaker blew.    The probability of this 'and-function' is low enough that I did not install a diode on the manual pump feed.