Cockpit Footwell Floor Installed

 Well, another small part of the project completed. 

I left the installation of the footwell floor to last to enable easy access to run the electrical wiring through the 25mm conduits. 

I also installed two extra athwartship cleats to provide additional support for the footwell floor.

The footwell floor was sealed on the underside and holes marked and drilled in place ready for the temporary screws.

The temporary holding screws are prepared, and the cleats are covered with epoxy glue.

 

Finally, the floor is secured in place.

 

Electricals

 Time to run some wires. 

When designing the wiring run, I considered the following:

1) I did not want wires visual in the cabin area.
2) The wiring harness needed to include power for the following: DC power outlets, cabin lights, Nav lights, stereo speaker, GPS/Fishfinder power and transducer, bilge pump and future solar power and motor charging wires.

I split the wiring into two conduits that run from BH2 under the floorboards to the junction boxes. The conduits run through the enclosed buoyancy area under the cockpit foot well. The conduits are sealed with silicon where they pass through BH's to ensure the buoyancy chamber is airtight. A further conduit was installed athwartships to link the two junction boxes. 

I made the junction boxes from 6mm ply. They are fully sealed units with clear Perspex fronts and screwed to the transom.

 

The wiring runs up into the port and starboard aft seat back storage areas and then forward through conduits to the main cabin.

To reduce voltage drop for DC power and the main earth connection I used larger diam wires (4.5mm diam) from BH2 through to the junction boxes in the lazarettes. The larger wires continued forward to the cabin area. As the cabin and Nav lights are all LEDS I reduced the wiring from the lazarette area to the forward cabin area to 2mm diam.

All wiring was twin core tinned marine grade and to reduce doubling up of negative wiring I only ran positives for the Cabin and Nav lights. I also ran nylon pull chords with the wiring harness so I could pull through any future wiring.

Speaker Install

April 2023's post covered the construction of two ported speaker boxes built in the lazarette area aft of BH 8. Ports are used to produce a higher and deeper bass response (should make led Zeppelin sound pretty cool)

Time to install two GME (GS520 110 watt, 163mm Dia flush mount speakers.

Wires are run from BH 2 through conduit under the cabin floor to the electrical connection boxes on transom and then through to the speaker boxes in the lazarette area.

The boxes are filled with sound deadening/dampening wadding.

The speakers are screwed in place and the covers installed. can't wait to hear how they sound.