Bilge Float Switch Inop After Blue Sea Add A Battery Installation

[jthor3277]

Hello Everyone. It's been a while since my last post. Well I finally went out and purchased the Blue Sea Add a Battery system and installed into my Sea Ray. I thought I had everything hooked up correctly until I flipped up my bilge float switch with the battery switch selected to off and nothing happened. Once I select the batt switch to on, the float switch operates normally. Prior to my system install the bilge operated on the hot bus as I'm in a slip all year. I have attached a drawing of my install and I need help in identifying what I missed. Any help is appreciated

 

[Grub54891]

I think your drawing is wrong. You have the hot wire and ground going directly to the battery, so the pump would never shut off at all. The float should be wired to the battery side, and the wire to the helm is the one for manual operation. Here is a diagram. By cutting power to the helm you lose power up there, that switch should be wired constant hot, fused.

 

[sam am I]

It does look like as if your drawing is a tad off else you would have never been able to shut off the pump, however it does seem from your drawing you might have a system similar to mine with a single position manual override switch at the helm and not a three-way switch as grub has shown..........if so, try this.


The pump will always be able to run via the float regardless of any switch (main or helm) position on the boat on or off and the manual switch at the helm can override the float but, the main power switch must be on (I believe this is what you had before based of your description and drawing, ours are a common wiring setup as well. Complete with helm switch shown below, i think this drawing was from a Mako)

 

[jthor3277]

Yes you are correct that it's wrong. I had too many colors and lines going on lol. The power is at the helm switch and the fuse is near my battery disconnect. It's a 15 amp fuse. I only have a two way switch at the helm though...it should probably be on an, "on-ff-on". I'll try this wiring from Grub and Sam. I'm confused because all I did was add the switch and ACR. I did route some new wiring and cleaned things up so I'm sure it's something obvious once I stumble upon it. Thanks guys