Where to put fuse in boat?
I am wiring a boat with a VHF radio and a Fishfinder. I am hooking up to the helm panel which is only about 3' of 14 or 16 gage wire. One fuse is a 7.5 amp the other is a 3 amp. I want to put my fuses...
Forum Discussion
A fuse may help protect the device under some conditions but that's not it's purpose really. Protecting the device isn't very practical. For instance, your VHF might pull 2 amps on receive and 6 amps on transmit. So, you need maybe a 7.5 amp fuse. If something goes haywire in receive mode and it pulls 6 amps things will still burn up but the fuse won't blow.
Any wire coming from a battery should have a fuse if it runs very far. The possibility of a short makes this important. If you have a very heavy, short wire going to your fuse panel a main one in the big wire isn't that big a deal.
If it were my boat I'd keep the new accessories matching the existing. I'd install panel mount switches with fuse holders. Then changing them is easy. Even better is to use a panel with resettable circuit breakers.
Put the fuse as close to the panel as practical, if that's outside for access I wouldn't worry about it.
Any wire coming from a battery should have a fuse if it runs very far. The possibility of a short makes this important. If you have a very heavy, short wire going to your fuse panel a main one in the big wire isn't that big a deal.
If it were my boat I'd keep the new accessories matching the existing. I'd install panel mount switches with fuse holders. Then changing them is easy. Even better is to use a panel with resettable circuit breakers.
Put the fuse as close to the panel as practical, if that's outside for access I wouldn't worry about it.
