BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - What's so good about marine wire that I shouldn't just get it Home Depot?

BAR[_2_]

In article ,
says...

wrote in message ...

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:02:56 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:26:11 -0500, wrote:

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:54:09 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:18:27 -0500, wrote:

Rather than using wirenuts I'd recommend crimped butt splices covered
with heat shrink tubing.

If you don't fill that heat shrink with silicone first, there is
nothing to keep the water out. Heat shrink is far from water proof.

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Understood, but the better grades of heat shrink have glue inside
which melts and seals things up.

http://www.google.com/products?q=glue+filled+heat+shrink+tubing&hl=en

I have used heat shrink with silicone in it for years over a soldered
connection. The wirenut thing was just an experiment but I have to say
it does work, with the advantage that you can open up and restore the
connection if you need to without any special tools. These are in a
water tight box so it is fairly well protected but you can bury these
things in the ground (essentially underwater) with up to 600 volts on
them and a ground fault interrupter will usually hold.

These are not your typical Ideal #74 nuts.

===

Where do you get them?

I imagine you can get them at Home Depot but I got mine from Graybar.
It is a 3M style skirted wirenut packed with silicone gel. I imagine
you get the same effect with a regular skirted nut and gel from a
tube. I like Dow 111 for stuff like this and also for sealing up
joints in plumbing (what it is sold for.)

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couple years ago, my phone system was bad. could hear talk from the 2nd
line. When the repair guy fixed the connectors at the sidewalk he used a
gel pack around the crimped connection. Said worked much better than the
old gel filled wire nuts. Was a bigger baggie of gel, but do not remember
how it was actually installed.

Some 40 years ago the phone guy fixed a broken line in my parents
backyard. He reapied the wires by splicing them and then put the splice
into a plastic test tube and then put some stuff into the test tube. The
stuff hardened and then he re-buried the line. Incidentally the line had
enough slack so you could do these splices, it was like the planned on
it failing and knew they needed the slack to do the splices.