Best wire...

[Cheeseball]

I know this question has probably been asked before. Please forgive me if it has. I did make an honest effort to sift through the last 10 pages of this forum to see if I could find an answer.

I'm getting ready to wire my boat for nav light, anch light, bilge...etc. all fairly low amp draws. My question would be, instead of me figuring amp draws and power drops on all of these items and buying a special wire for each one, is there a best all-around wire size that would cover all? Say a 14 or a 12? My boat is a 14 footer so the longest path would be 25ft. at best.

 

[russ010]

I'm using 14 ga for everything... and my longest run is about 15' total.

Are you going to run a primary power wire to a distribution block? If you are, then I would run maybe 12, then branch off with 14 or even 16 - but you can't go wrong with 14

 

[Cheeseball]

Are you going to run a primary power wire to a distribution block? If you are, then I would run maybe 12, then branch off with 14 or even 16 - but you can't go wrong with 14

Yes, I'm going to fab my own buss bar, but that will be the return to the neg post. I will run a hot wire from the batt to a switch panel then branch hots off of that. All devices will return neg lines to the buss. So by what your saying the hot running from the batt to the switch panel could be a 12 (maybe larger since all devices will run off of this feed and it will be about a 7-8ft run to the switch panel) then run 14s off of the switch panel and back to the buss?

btw... fuses for all switches are already wired into the switch panel.

 

[russ010]

yeap, you'll be fine with that setup. the 12 will allow more amp to flow through to each individual circuit. I doubt anything you are going to be running will be pulling that much power.

 

[Cheeseball]

Thanks!

 

[Hanr3]

Cheeseball,

Pick up a 25' trailer wiring kit. you can get them in 4, 5, 6 wire kits. They are color coded and the wires are attached together. Makes running them eaier and makes determining which wire goes where.