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hi  jeff cote here with pacific yacht  systems we're doing another ask pys  we've got a question from rick a fellow  boater he asked i'm going to remove 28d  batteries and replace them with six  golf cart six volt batteries do you have  any suggestions  on first steps that i should do before  disconnecting the old batteries  and what should i do before connecting  the new batteries all right  this is a good question first thing  don't be a hero  whenever you're disconnecting batteries  on a boat do so slowly  methodically and label everything  this is where an ounce of prevention is  worth a pound of cure  there is no way for anybody to do the  disconnecting of a battery bank and be  an act like a macgyver so  the fact that you're asking the question  means that you're sort of wondering how  to do it slowly and do it right  so what i would do is first you won't  want to worry about disconnecting all  the loads from the battery  you're going to try to do that for  everything but unfortunately some of  your loads are going to be still  connected to the battery even though the  battery switches are off  and so there are loads on your boat that  are simply always on  so even when you dis with the battery  switch off and you disconnect the cable  you're probably going to see some sparks  and that's okay because some loads like  bilge pumps or carbon monoxide are  directly connected to your batteries  also i made mention and i want to  reemphasize label every single wire use  maybe sort of painters tape and do a  quick schematic of where  all those cables even for us sometimes  when we disconnect the battery bank and  we reconnect it  there's a lot of wires connected to the  battery and you want to make sure that  every single one of those wires go in  the same place  another thing to look for is  unfortunately many of us have black  wires that do positive and negative  so don't assume that the color of the  wire or the cable is an indication of  its purpose  it should be but not always so that's  another thing so disconnect the loads  label everything so that when you come  back  the other thing is that if they're  flooded lead acid batteries you could  have also have  sulfuric acid over the bottom of the  battery bank so you're going to want to  neutralize that with baking soda  and when you're connecting the batteries  back on board do it slowly again with  the battery switch off and then what  you're going to do  is you're going to actually you're going  to see probably a little bit of sparks  that are going to come in when you're  going to do the positive connection or  the negative  connection just don't do it slowly just  sort of be committed  do it put it in place and then  make sure that all your nuts on every  single one of the series and parallel  connections are top notch  and once you're happy measure the  battery voltage from what you think  positive and negative is because  sometimes you can make a mistake i've  seen that before  make sure you've got 12 volts and then  once you have 12 volts on that battery  bank  then you can connect your loads turn the  battery switch on and voila  you're done great question rick thank  you for watching this video  if you've got further questions and  you're wondering about your own boat  please ask questions below or send us an  email with your questions and we'll get  to them  hopefully as soon as possible if you haven't done so please subscribe  to our youtube and get  our weekly updates we're posting about  four videos a week right now  and also thanks for watching  you