GonzoF1 wrote:
With Skinny Dippin' celebrating her 25th birthday this year, I was wondering if, as an ongoing project, I should consider systematically beginning the process of swapping out all the breakers in the breaker panel?
*Our boat is now 37 years old and from what I can tell all the breakers seem to be original.* At least there are no obviously newer ones or breakers with different coding or mfg names.
All the breakers--- AC and DC--- work as advertised.* I think the key is that we use the boat year round on an almost every weekend basis.* Even if we don't take the boat out we go up to it as our get-out-of-Dodge cabin.* So the breakers get used almost every week which I think keeps the contacts clean and their "action" limber.
Even if we don't go out I turn on the electronics, horn, wipers and nav light breakers (the breakers don't actually activate the horn or nav lights).* The other breakers for water pump, lights, shower drain pump, etc. get used whether we go out or not.
When we leave the boat everything goes off.* All the DC breakers and the battery selector switch (so it gets excercised, too).* Same on the AC side-- the only things that stay on are the master breaker and the refrigerator and inverter breaker, which has to be on to send AC power to the AC circuits even if the inverter itself is turned off.* In the winter two of the AC outlet circuits also stay on for the cabin and engine room heaters.
I think use is the key to longevity with these things.* So if your breakers are all working properly and they get sufficient excercise to keep*the*contacts*good and the action limber, why change them?*
Another thing we were advised by an experienced marine engineer is to run all the flexible impeller*pumps periodically*even if we don't*feed water to them.* Not for long-- just for a few seconds.* He said the thing that kills flexible impellers is heat.* A quick*two second*burst isn't going to be long enough to generate any*destructive heat, but*it will move the impeller around so it doesn't take a set, and more important, it will spin the pump shaft in its bushing and*shaft seal which will keep the shaft polished and free of corrosion.
A pump on our boat that can go for quite awhile between uses is our big Westinghouse AC salt water washdown pump.* We keep its intake seacock closed unless we are going to be anchoring.* So every time we leave the boat at the end of a weekend I flip its breaker/on/off switch on for about two seconds.* The pump was in sad shape when we bought the boat-- it barely moved water.* A few years ago I completely rebuilt it with a new impeller, bushings, wear plates, seals, etc.* Hopefully we can keep it in good shape even though it doesn't get used as much as the rest*of the equipment on the boat.* "Exercising" it periodically seems to be doing the trick.
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