PDQ OWNERS FORUM

I'm guessing folks have led these down inside the aft support pipes, into the fuel tank compartment, and from there to the battery compartments. Do the wires go into the core, across at an angle, and then down? Since some sort of panel protection rail will need to arch across the back, a wire duct could be integrated. Any details would be appreciated. Since this has to be among the worst places to get core damage, I need to consider this carefully.

Where have you tied in, and where have you mounted charge controller? No point in reinventing the wheel!

Our wires (six panels on hard top) run down the support next to the helm and the controller is mounted in the "electronics area" above the steering cables. The wires run external and is quite ugly. I hope to start repainting piece by piece this year and will look for a better way to run the wires before reinstalling the panels.

Where do the wires connect to the batteries? Clearly, I don't want to put them on one battery, as the charving would be uneven. By the same token , the further I run wires the more voltage I loose, so I don't really want to go to the main panel.

My 4 house batteries are in the engine wells with the main (large) cables leading into the starboard cabin maintenance area where the cutout switch is located. The charge controller, Iota charger, and wind gen all lead to this area for the main power trunk. Fairly short runs except the cables heading to the port engine well which are either 1 or 0/1 gauge wire.

OK, I'm with you so far Anytom. I've built frames I'm happy with and I've sorted out mounting all of that to the hardtop (I'll post pics when finished). I can see a simple place to tap the feed and mount the charge controller in the cabinet under the helm. Routing the wires is still a question. I'm thinking I'll connect the 2 panels (they are on either side of the boom behind the skylights) with a short jumper under the boom, perhaps in low-profile wire duct. The main line (#12) will then go inside the starboard grab rail near it's aft end, go through the hard top hidden inside the rails forward end, and then continue down as you described. Tedious, but necessary. Sound doable?

I really don't want to drill in the hard top. My panel mounts will actually epoxy on (1/2-inch x 2-inch square pads with 1/4-inch SS studs). Water intrusion there would be bad.

Any thoughts?

It's hard to judge without seeing pictures of your bimini. It seems PDQ changed the bimini design at least once.

On the 32? Didn't know that.

Well, first to mount the panels. Fishing the wire shouldn't be too bad.

The most tiresome thing about drilling holes and core sealing is that I am an hour from the boat. If it were a few minutes, that would be one thing, but when a project must wait on a few holes, or worse yet, a large hole must be left open, it's a burn.

The project is complete. Routing the wire turned out to be pretty trivial, feeding through a cockpit light and down inside a cockpit support.

A post on the finish panel instalation:
http://sail-delmarva.blogspot.com/2011/ ... anels.html

Nice job!

Do you happen to have any pictures of the wire run down through the support tube into the starboard ceiling? Were there holes already drilled in your boat at this point?

I have 6 50 watt panels on the bimini and one 90 watt panel on the back rail. Currently everything is parallel to a BlueSky 3024 controller; I'm considering hooking up the 6 panels as 3 sets of two in series parallel to the BlueSky and the other panel separately through my old Trace controller. I'm hoping this will reduce "shading" issues. Not sure how I'm going to isolate the two controllers to not interfere with each other, maybe I won't have to?

This will be done during a re-paint project where all the panels are coming off the bimini anyways.

Any thoughts?

I have no good pics, but I may be able to describe better.

On the roof, where the wire goes down, is just above a dome light above the helm. Molding under the dome light is very thin (no core) and, if you remove the dome light, you can see wires going across the hardtop in molded chanels in 2 dirrections (I believe one feeds the cockpit dome light and the other feeds down the aft suport tubes). I drilled through there, which brings the wire within 3 inches of the side support tube. The wire for the helm dome light fed up from the starboard cabin light using this side support tube, so I traced the same path. there was a 3/8" hole at the top of the tube, facing aft. The bottom of the tube is open right thrugh the deck to below, and I simply fished the wire down (I did have to pick-out some silicone caulk).

The only disassymbly was removing the dome light and removing the forward part of the starboard cabin ceiling liner. Everything else was accesible through the stearing gear door or the buss door.

Ok that's where the differences start. Our bimini didn't have any original dome lights, we did add one but it's wires are quite ugly too.

Time to get creative I guess.

Well, passing the wires down the side support worked well. Even if the hole is not drilled through, the lower end is not too hard to get to.

Also, the wire duct I used between the panels seems worth further expermentation. Pretty solid and super easy to deal with.

I would suggest further reading on the series pannel wiring and shading. My guess is that will make it worse. However, you could do as I did and use junction boxes that allow you to easily wire it either way, should you change your mind.