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Considering buying a used boat with a lithium battery already installed? Check out this video to find out if you should have it surveyed. We have a big announcement. You can now become a YouTube member. You can join as a YouTube member right now here on screen for custom loyalty badges and emojis. Or if you are looking for exclusive early access to our videos, live Q&As, and more direct support on your project, we also launched our brand new Patreon page linked in the description below. Thank you so much for watching and being part of the Pacific Yacht Systems community. Now, let's get back to the video. Hey everyone, Jeff Cote here with Pacific Yacht Systems with another installment of Tech Talk. We've got a question from Derek. Derek asked, "Jeff, I'm considering buying a boat, a used boat, and the owner is bragging that he's done already a lithium battery install on his boat. I'm thinking of maybe having it verified, or should I not even bother?" When you're buying a boat, you're actually not really just buying a boat. You're buying the pre- all the previous owners' level of risk. So, how they took care of that boat has a lot to do with the experience you're going to have on that boat. Now, that is a complete contrast to buying a brand new boat. If you buy a brand new boat from a manufacturer, you can use the manufacturer's reputation and solely their reputation on quality and finishing to make your decision on if that boat is going to be right for you and for your budget. But, the reality is when you buy a used boat, that used boat over time has been maintained by the previous owners. And some owners have different risk level tolerances. Some are worry more, some worry less. And that affects pretty much everything they either they do on their boat or the people they hire to do work on their boat or the things they decide to maintain or not maintain, how they maintain them, the shortcuts they take. And so, Derek is absolutely right and it goes beyond the lithium question. All of us when buying a used boat need to really consider not only the boat manufacturer, but what type of owners own that boat before. And it makes sense and I've always advised owners and I tell that to other boaters there's a lot of work to make sure that the owner the previous owner and you have the same sort of values when it comes to maintenance. Because if there's a misalignment in values uh and especially if you're more safety conscious and more about maintenance and reliability and the other one isn't and there's nothing wrong with either one you're going to find yourself with a boat that might have a lot of work might need to be done to your new recently purchased boat because the previous owner simply didn't think it was worthy doing that work. The other reality is that all of us as boaters have pressure to get projects completed. And I can tell you more often than not I have seen a lot of boats that call a project done or completed. Either it can be a lithium battery upgrade, it could be a solar panels, it could be a navigation system, whatever it is. And the install was maybe done to 80% 70% and they called it done just because they wanted to be done, not because it was done, it's just because the devil's in the details and they weren't able to carry it to complete completion. And even in our field, I always say even for my technicians like doing 80% of the work isn't just 80% of the labor. Sometimes the last 20% of the work or the last 10% take more time proportionally because that's where you're fine-tuning and making sure that everything is tested, commissioned and done perfectly. So, Derek's hesitation or his wonder is actually sort of bang on. So, if you're considering a boat that has a lithium battery done install, I would first of all ask who did it. Was it the previous owner, right? And then not to say that's bad because I've met owners that do great work and honestly, they could be technicians. They're just really meticulous and detail-oriented. Now, I have also seen the other end of the spectrum and there's some people that just don't know what they're getting themselves into and there's not that they're bad, it's just they just don't know what they don't know. So, that would be the first question is who's done the work and then once you've known and I've had this happen a lot, I've had owners buying boats and they reached out to me and saying, "Hey, by the way, I've heard you worked on this boat. Can you confirm?" And then I would have the owner involved and of course, you know, for privacy would get everyone on the same page, but I've had new owners sort of like know that we did work on their boat and then that helped them feel safer. Make sure that that technician or that outfit is a good outfit that did good work and that should bring then your level of confidence go up. In the absence of that confidence or in the absence of that confidence with the owner or the technician that did the work, then yeah, I think it's not crazy and we've done it a lot and it's probably something that many surveyors would recommend is have maybe an electrical sort of like survey done on the things that you question on the boat to at least inform yourself of what you're getting yourself into because I again have seen this quite often. Many, many boaters buys boats hoping that everything is normal, good enough and over time realize that they need to spend X to get it to actually finish. So, doing sometimes your research, either figuring out the outfit that did it, the owner brings your confidence level and in the lack of that confidence level, you might want to bring an expert on board, like a surveyor or someone who's really good with electrical to make sure and that the system is done to completion and to safety, right? Because you You don't want to have shortcuts. And some people take shortcuts not because they know they're shortcuts, they just think that's the right way. So, all these things come into play and it's a good question and it really depends, but you shouldn't just hope that it's going to work. Uh because hope really has no place on a boat. It really doesn't. So, if you made it this far watching the video, thank you again. Uh help us grow the channel by subscribing. We, of course, offer electrical services, but those services for audits are only for the voters that are watching in our local area, but of course, if you're in the Pacific Northwest and you're wondering about the quality of your boat, we do electrical audits and even some pre-purchase surveys as well that are more in detail to understand the like the basis of your electrical system on your boat. Basically, be curious. Don't assume that everything on your boat is done right. Sad to say, but the truth. So, thanks for everyone for watching and uh we'll see you in the next tech talk. >> Hey, fellow boaters. We're going to be doing a lot more tech talk videos. If you've got any suggestions for future video, leave them in [music] the comments below. Once again, thank you for watching.