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hi everyone jeff cote here with pacific  yacht systems  here we've got a question from brett  brent  asks i've recently been watching your  youtubes thank you  and i've got i've noticed that i've got  some no-nos on my battery terminals  is it acceptable to have more than one  cable stacked on  each other at the battery terminal for  example a starter cable  a bus cable and a battery charger cable  if not  what's the proper protocol and lastly  how do you determine the size of a cable  going from a terminal to a bus  all right so brent good question um all  too often unfortunately as boaters  we're seeing a lot of too many  connections going  to a battery right it's the easiest  thing to do you know why would you go to  a panel why would you go to distribution  when the battery's right there  so over time what we see as voters is we  see a lot of more and more  battery connections or at the battery  where they should be on positive  distribution or at the distribution  panel  so the first step is you can according  to  ebyc have four connections on a battery  terminal post  up to four but no more and what's really  important is when you stack those  connections have the largest  lug or connector be at the bottom and  stack them from  largest to smallest the good connection  is at the bottom of the battery post so  you want to make sure that you stack in  order of  size from largest to smallest i always  think about a pyramid  you know the smallest block was at the  top the largest blocks were at the  bottom  so just think about it that way smallest  at the top largest at the bottom  the other thing too about amperage now  amperage is a tough one right i mean  it's an easy question but  you always want to er on the side of  caution when you're sizing a battery  cable so you've got up all the different  loads that you're going to have  coming to a battery or to your power  distribution  and in effect a lot of times we end up  choosing either a 2r  4 ought cable and i always oversize that  cable because in effect what i'm trying  to do is i'm trying to have my power  distribution  be as good a connection point as my  battery and a way to do that is to have  a very large amperage cable  go from my battery to the positive  distribution  now this is the quick and easy way but  the real way is you got to measure all  your loads what is the maximum amount of  amperage that's going to go through that  cable and then  using the charts or an app you end up  choosing the right  cable for those loads okay  if anyone has more questions about  batteries or power distribution  you know where you can find us thank you  everyone for watching and take care be  safe