Running electric

[atb]

Trying to think through the electric on my boat.

Going to directly wire the electric start, and the switch box to 1 battery. The switch box will run bilge, lights, and have 12 volt outlet. On those boxes can you put all the lights on 1 switch?

Directly wire fishfinder and trolling motor to another battery.

Use 2 deep cycles and a on board 5/5 charger that I already had. Does this sound like it would make sense. Never have done electrical before so sorry in advance for a possibly stupid?

 

[russ010]

Your setup sounds fine. You can run all of the lights off 1 switch, just make sure that the switch is rated for however many amps (the one's from auto stores are usually large enough and take out any guess work).
I would however put my fish finder on the same battery as all of your other electronics - it really doesn't pull any amps.

Remember that depending on how far away your trolling motor is from the battery, you will have more loss the longer you run the lines, you can offset this a little with running a larger gauge wire.. I wouldn't run anything less than 6ga if you do need to splice it...

 

[BlueWaterLED]

Just my opinion, but I would wire everything to the cranking battery and have just the TM on the TM battery(ies).

In fact, If I were wiring it all up from scratch, I would get myself a bus bar and run a hot and ground to the bus bar from the cranking battery, then I would run all of my powered accessories from that bus bar with inline fuses. You can use switches from there.