Wiring for 12 Volts!

This is what it looked like when we added wiring for 12 volts! Living on a boat means constantly moving stuff, especially when doing boat projects. Ken had to get behind both settees, through the head (bathroom) cabinet, through our closet, under the galley (kitchen) cabinets, under the aft cabin, and through a few bulkheads to run the wires to our navigation station.

We added three Caframo fans to Nirvana, which have really helped in keeping cool. Ken hard-wired one in our v-berth (bedroom) and one in the salon (den). The third fan plugs into our salon's outlet, and can be moved around if needed. That fan can also be turned towards the galley, which has been awesome when I'm cooking! We also have another 12v fan in the salon, which came with the boat and can be moved around as needed .. probably to my side of the v-berth!

While the boat was torn apart, Ken also replaced our speaker wires and our stereo. We purchased the stereo from West Marine, which allows us to play our iPod, CDs, and has a USB port. We plan on adding a couple more USB ports on the side of our nav station to charge our phones.

Ken installed several 12 volt outlets throughout the boat .. one in the v-berth, one in the salon (we already had one in the salon, so now we have two), and one on the side of our navigation station for our Engel fridge to be plugged into. The fridge can be either AC or DC, so we were able to use the fridge with the AC outlet before installing the 12v (DC) outlet.

One of the outlets in the salon will be used for our 12v television, which also can be plugged in either an AC or DC outlet and was being used with an AC outlet before this project. Our television is installed over a storage cabinet, so we can still store stuff behind it.

Notice the lighting over our settee? We replaced all of our lights with LED lights .. more about that in a future post. With the wires run, LED lights installed, and a new battery system .. we are now looking into solar panels. Who knew living simple would be so complicated?!

Hasta luego .. until then. Mid-Life Cruising!