Bilge pump switch lights always on?

[bud37]

Fred can you delete this please...wrong post

[Alanna Mo Cree]

What if the brown wires are switched on the terminals? If the feed is coming in on terminal 3 instead of terminal 2, the switch would still work like a switch but the indicator lamp would always be lit. I gathered this from a post about Carling switches from New Wire on https://www.thehulltruth.com/new-wire-marine/513864-carling-contura-rocker-switches-explained.html.

Power feeds the bulb from terminal 3. If you think about this for a moment, you realize that the switch could be wired up differently… if you put the + input on pin 3, then the light would always be ON and pin 2 could become the switch leg. Additionally, if you had a load with an alternate input (like a bilge pump with a float switch), that input would feed back up the switch leg into pin 3 and illuminate the light, even if the switch is OFF. This is really neat for a bilge because you can tell (via the lamp) when your float switch is making your bilge pump run… cool stuff!

Also to give credit where this was first suggested...

Source of the post I'm thinking that the wires on terminals #2 and #3 might just be swapped but I'd want to see a better pic of exactly how it's connected before I would commit to that.

[Carverlvr2]

Team! That makes total sense! Now I can’t wait to get back out to the boat just to try that!!! I bet that’s it…whether it was switched at the pump or just at the panel, who knows. I’ll post back as soon as I’m there.

[Carverlvr2]

Update: Alanna Mo Cree, you and KM1125 nailed it! And not only were they just reversed at each switch, each switch was connected to the wrong pump…not one part of all that was right except the actual dimmer illumination I guess. Well done team! That’s been bugging me since I bought the boat.

[Alanna Mo Cree]

Glad you got it worked out! It always amazes me how wiring gets messed up over various "upgrades" over time. It is so much easier to correct things immediately when making changes than to defer them and forget what change caused an issue.

[Carverlvr2]

Exactly! I’m still baffled as to what would ever make someone disconnect all that in the first place. Even when the bridge was taken down for shipping, it all separates At plugs below the radar arch and they only go back together one way. And nothing else on that panel suggests anything else was changed. Oh well, glad it’s done and off my list of many things. Thanks again!