DC Ground Wire Colors

[fissioneng]

Just finished my battery charger installation and noticed more strangeness with DC ground wiring colors:

DC wiring in my Ship's Service Panel - Yellow ground
DC battery wiring - Black ground (drawings say Yellow ground)
DC outputs of charger - White ground (drawings say Yellow Ground), not good with a white AC neutral right next to it
Bonding system - White (drawings say green)

At least all the hot wires are red!

So I am sure there is an explanation, maybe the electrical installation crew didn't read the drawings? ABYC confusion? Engineering spec'd something wrong? Or the parts shop ran out of wire? Perhaps Roger has some insight here.

 

[TedZ]

Link to colors.

Ted


http://www.acbsphl.org/Tips_and_hints/ABYC_Wiring.htm

 

[Sonny]

old skool dc negative was black, while ac hot is black. the dc neg was changed to yellow to prevent (potentially deadly) confusion between the two on boats that have ac and dc. yellow dc neg is the abyc standard now. in ac circuits the ground or bonding wire is green. iv'e been on boats where the entire electrical system was wired all in one colour! must've been a fire sale on red wire. i used to run a 48' brooks/marine management and most of the 24vdc system was black for neg, but the gauges in the panel were all bonded with white wire that ran all the way back to the ground bus in the er. go figure.

 

[captddis]

Just finished my battery charger installation and noticed more strangeness with DC ground wiring colors:

DC wiring in my Ship's Service Panel - Yellow ground
DC battery wiring - Black ground (drawings say Yellow ground)
DC outputs of charger - White ground (drawings say Yellow Ground), not good with a white AC neutral right next to it
Bonding system - White (drawings say green)

At least all the hot wires are red!

So I am sure there is an explanation, maybe the electrical installation crew didn't read the drawings? ABYC confusion? Engineering spec'd something wrong? Or the parts shop ran out of wire? Perhaps Roger has some insight here.

Some of the greens and yellows fade to a whiteish color over time.

 

[MikeP]

"Some of the greens and yellows fade to a whiteish color over time."


As do we all!

 

[fissioneng]

I understand the ABYC standards, they look back and look forward which is why you see a mix of colors for the same thing (black-old, yellow-new). Strange thing is that white is nowhere in the list for DC wiring, past or present.

What puzzles me, if you were going to build a new boat (especially Hatteras), why wouldn't you make it all the same? Especially when the drawings specify every DC ground wire is to be yellow. The white bonding wires make no sense either. (must have been a big sale on white wire)

I have yellow wires right next to the white DC ground coming from the charger, so I doubt there is a fading issue.

I think I will nominate this thread for the most boring of 2009!

 

[GJH]

Are you sure all your wiring is factory original? On my boat, the original wiring is easily discernible and right on to the schematics. Some of the stuff the various POs have done is a little dicey, which I have tried to slowly correct. Don't think I have contributed any new diceyness myself, but I think I will double check

 

[Maynard Rupp]

It is pretty easy to figure which wires were installed by "bubba", the previous owner. Most are either white or black as that wire is the easiest to find, most are twisted and wrapped around the screw with no crimped end, and most are 12volt electronics installations. Almost always the dc negative is installed on a green bonding post instead of a yellow dc negative. The other colors are often because the guy's wife bought the wire and those were her favorite colors. Watch out for the British dc wiring where the dc wires are tan and blue. I can never remember which is plus and minus, but I see them on my racing sailboat which was built in England and has Brooks and Gatehouse electronics. I hope I removed the "boring" label from this thread.

 

[fissioneng]

I am pretty certain that all the wires I'm talking about are original. They have the small handwritten taped wire number label on them which was put on at the Hatteras factory. The handwriting is all the same.

Here is a picture of the white DC ground wire going into the Sentry battery charger before I replaced it (and no, it is not faded yellow, there are bright yellow wires just out of this photo). The labels are clearly visible. You can also see the AC feed (with white neutral) behind it as well as the green ground case wire on the outside.

 

[fissioneng]

Here is a different shot of the same wire. Look in the lower right corner, you will see a yellow ground wire that is not faded.

This is why engineers spend time documenting the "as-built" condition of things. Many times the field must make changes that never get reflected back on the drawings.

 

[Silverado6x6]

I would think eventually boats should be wired like the trucks I work on mostly Peterbilts and the wires have numbers every couple of inches, when I do wiring in my plant I do use colored wires but I also have this handy pad of thin strips with numbers that you peel off a strip of say a one, another and another to make a series of numbers like 112, 113 etc. Simple organization could be any single digit number is negative or ground, a double digit number from a battery source or hot wire, a three digit from a switch to a component and its possible at least to me to use letters and numbers if I had to segregate port from starboard.

Its my thought if I was to wire a boat, but what do know, I only build show cars and then nowadays I wire three phase 480 stuff, boats obviously cannot be done right, it would defy the laws of physics.

 

[MikeP]

I label all wiring I install, giving it an "M" (for Mike, of course!) designator. M001, for example was my first circuit when I installed an engine room starter switch for the port eng. M002 is the Starboard engine starter switch, etc. I'm currently at M010. I hadn't thought of using a different initial number code for specific uses. That's a good idea...;

I have a list of the added circuits that I keep with the boat's oem wiring diagrams as well as on my laptop.

 

[fissioneng]

Hatteras did use intelligent codes in their wire numbers, at least in my boat. DC wires for starboard are 2XX and port are 1XX. All DC accessories are 3XX. All the AC lines are 8XX.

I like the M labeling for your own circuits. Maybe it should be POXXX?

 

[GJH]

Jeff, I call that yellow, not white. I have the same wire going into my charger and there is no mistaking it for the white wires around it. I guess we all see color differently, all the way to being color blind. However, your point is well taken, as I do have some original DC wiring that looks much closer to white than to yellow.

 

[captddis]

looks yellow to me too. Compare it to the white wire for the AC input. They do fade.

 

[Sonny]

I would think eventually boats should be wired like the trucks I work on mostly Peterbilts and the wires have numbers every couple of inches, when I do wiring in my plant I do use colored wires but I also have this handy pad of thin strips with numbers that you peel off a strip of say a one, another and another to make a series of numbers like 112, 113 etc.

bigger boats have been getting wired like this for decades. you don't see it on smaller boats because of their lack of systems and simple colour coding suffices. my '68 hatt's electrical system is numbered as you describe, as was the '68 CC i ran.

 

[fissioneng]

The 2nd photo may not show it well enough, but there are bright yellow wires attached to the ground buss to the right of the photo. Next to those, the wire in question certainly looks white, maybe tan-ish, but perhaps it was a lighter yellow to start with and it did fade. In the boat, it certainly looks white although not as white as the AC neutral. Look at all the grounds in my DC Ships Service panel, that is the yellow I am talking about.