1987 MK 1 Electrical System Upgrade - Feedback Requested

[KWKloeber]

The main 30 amp circuit breaker, not the source selector?

[Jon W]

I thought the switch was also a breaker, but turns out it isn't a breaker. I'm looking into the cost of getting a breaker to replace the switch.   Jon W.

[Jon W]

MaineSail, Ken,
      Question on ELCI breakers. I've heard an issue with ELCI breakers is nuisance trips. In talking to Blue Sea, they said the breaker trips due to an electrical leak the breaker has identified and not due to a sensitive/poor quality breaker. Most common culprits are an inverter followed by the water heater. I don't have an inverter, so just the water heater and electrical outlets. In your experiences how frequent does tripping of an ELCI occur? Does the breaker require labratory conditions? In other words if faulty items are corrected, does time factor in causing this to be a regular maintenance item? Would it be better to go with a traditional 30 amp 2 pole breaker for a 29 year old boat with minimal AC loads?  Thanks for the help.

Jon W.

[KWKloeber]

MaineSail, Ken,
      Question on ELCI breakers. I've heard an issue with ELCI breakers is nuisance trips. In talking to Blue Sea, they said the breaker trips due to an electrical leak the breaker has identified and not due to a sensitive/poor quality breaker. Most common culprits are an inverter followed by the water heater. I don't have an inverter, so just the water heater and electrical outlets. In your experiences how frequent does tripping of an ELCI occur? Does the breaker require labratory conditions? In other words if faulty items are corrected, does time factor in causing this to be a regular maintenance item? Would it be better to go with a traditional 30 amp 2 pole breaker for a 29 year old boat with minimal AC loads?  Thanks for the help.

Jon W.

Sure there always some issues with trips, but more so in the past with my experience.   RC? what say you?

Personally speaking, I WOULD NOT go with anything but an ELIC. 

IIWMB and I was rewiring/a new panel.  I'll put up with a few nuisance trips for the safety of those aboard.  I'd feel real bad if someone got dead or worse from leaky equipment and it was because I didn't care to reset the breaker on a trip.

If you're rewiring and NOT installing an ELCI, you might have an insurance issue -- better verify if you go that route.

Note that a GFCI trips at 5 ma, and ELCI at 30 ma.

kk

[Jon W]

I may regret this, but have just ordered the ELCI breaker for my panel.

In case I have trip issues with the water heater AC wires, I looked behind the removable panel on the water heater where the wires enter. They disappear behind some insulation. I didn't move the insulation. Does anyone know how to get to the terminals to disconnect the AC wires?   Thanks for the help.

Jon W.

[Stu Jackson]

Just pull the insulation out to expose the connections.  The metal in the third picture covers the connections for the hot & neutral.  IIRC, there's no insulation in the new heater.  First two pictures are the old one.

[Jon W]

Thanks Stu. Hopefully I won't need to change anything. Jon W.

[J_Sail]

Presumably you are putting the heater on its own breaker in your new panel. Even if it has leakage issues, they shouldn't cause problems when its breaker is off.


**** Update ****
I wasn't considering all possible cases and paths in the statement above. Although in the vast majority of the cases, turning off the water heater breaker will stop it from causing nuisance trips, it will not 100% eliminate it as a source. Even with the breaker off the heater's neutral is still connected to both the heating element and boat's AC neutral bus. If the heater has leakage between its element and the water, that will result in a leakage path from any neutral on-board to the AC safety grounding wire and/or the water (branch circuit breakers open only the hot, not the neutral). That means that current consumed by other appliances on-board has an alternate path rather than returning back thru the the ELCI's neutral circuit. The current will divide up between all possible paths proportionally to how low resistance those paths are. IF the leakage to ground is severe enough AND the neutral connection back through the dock is not very good, then enough current could take the route thru the ground to trip the ELCI. Remember, the ELCI trips if there is an unbalance greater than 30ma between the current in its hot wire and its neutral wire that lasts longer than 100ms. If any of your neutral wires downstream of the ELCI have a leakage path to ground then such an in-balance can occur. Such a scenario of leakage back thru the heater's neutral would not likely cause enough imbalance to trip the ELCI unless you had a very poor neutral connection back to the dock or the dock's neutral voltage rose due to problems dockside. AND unless the cracks in the heating element were right at the neutral end of the element, turning on the heater would cause far more ELCI trips than with the breaker off. Thus the far more likely scenario would be that any leakage in the heater element would create problems ONLY when the heater breaker is on and the heater is actively heating up. BUT it is theoretically possible for a leaky heater element to cause trips with its breaker off in just the right conditions.

A relatively quick check for leakage in your system from neutral to ground that does not require special instruments (though unsafe if not done carefully) is to disconnect the neutral at the output of the ELCI (must be at the output not input because the ELCI circuitry needs power), connect shore power, turn on the ELCI with all other breakers off, then try turning on each of your AC load breakers. If any of then have a leakage path to ground, the lack of a neutral wire path will magnify the effect and should cause the ELCI to trip. I have not tried this test personally and it may produce a false positive with some appliance's noise filters, so I'd be interested in commentary from MaineSail or others who may have tried it. Keep in mind, it is UNSAFE to normally operate without both the neutral and ground wires connected, so be sure to properly re-connect the neutral when the test is completed.


*** Stu - Was the bottom photo taken during installation? It looks like not-yet-shrinked heatshrink tubing over the three AC connections.

[Stu Jackson]

1.  Presumably you are putting the heater on its own breaker in your new panel. Even if it has leakage issues, they shouldn't cause problems when its breaker is off.


2.  *** Stu - Was the bottom photo taken during installation? It looks like not-yet-shrinked heatshrink tubing over the three AC connections.

1.  Of course he should. 

2.  Good eyes.  Yes, exactly.

[Jon W]

The water heater, charger, and outlets each have their own breaker with one spare. Jon W

[mainesail]

MaineSail, Ken,
      Question on ELCI breakers. I've heard an issue with ELCI breakers is nuisance trips. In talking to Blue Sea, they said the breaker trips due to an electrical leak the breaker has identified and not due to a sensitive/poor quality breaker. Most common culprits are an inverter followed by the water heater. I don't have an inverter, so just the water heater and electrical outlets. In your experiences how frequent does tripping of an ELCI occur? Does the breaker require labratory conditions? In other words if faulty items are corrected, does time factor in causing this to be a regular maintenance item? Would it be better to go with a traditional 30 amp 2 pole breaker for a 29 year old boat with minimal AC loads?  Thanks for the help.

Jon W.

Sure there always some issues with trips, but more so in the past with my experience.   RC? what say you?

Personally speaking, I WOULD NOT go with anything but an ELIC. 

IIWMB and I was rewiring/a new panel.  I'll put up with a few nuisance trips for the safety of those aboard.  I'd feel real bad if someone got dead or worse from leaky equipment and it was because I didn't care to reset the breaker on a trip.

If you're rewiring and NOT installing an ELCI, you might have an insurance issue -- better verify if you go that route.

Note that a GFCI trips at 5 ma, and ELCI at 30 ma.

kk

ELCI's have had a bumpy ride getting off the ground.

#1 Early ELCI's checked for a neutral to ground bond on the SOURCE side. Under marine standards the "source" must be neutral to ground bonded. If this bond was not detected the ELCI tripped. Marina's are horribly notorious for dropped grounds and thus this created many nuisance trips. Current versions have dropped the SOURCE side neutral/ground bond check. ELCI's will also trip if there is a neutral to ground bond on-board, also called a bonded neutral. Many, many, many boats in the US are IMPROPERLY wired and have bonded neutrals on board. This can be from folks simply not understanding marine wiring to the wrong charger (auto chargers), inverter, appliances with internal neutral/ground bond, an improperly wired source selector or even an improperly wired reverse polarity light. Bottom line is that on an improperly wired boat or boat using non-marine compliant appliances, chargers or inverters, you will have issues if you add an ELCI.

Sadly a metric $hit-ton of DIY's and yard employees believe they are smarter than the standards organizations and thus create dangerous issues they are completely unaware of. In my experience only about 3 out of 10 boats is properly wired for AC....  Heck I measured 84V AC on a battery last fall due to an owner who wired a cheap inverter into his ships AC panel. He was unfazed by it.....

Obviously a V.1 ELCI will not work with a floating neutral generator, not that these devices should be used on boats to begin with, but that's a different Darwin Award discussion for another day, like the two blokes down under killed by carbon monoxide a few weeks ago from a gas generator. Oh and just today a guy on SBO wanted to install a portable gas generator below deck........

Inverter transfer switches were also causing occasional nuisance trips as the relay contacts were not always "making" at the exact same point in time and in V.1 this was recognized as an open ground/neutral fault. In some rare instance the EMI filtration in inverters was also causing nuisance trips but in V.2 I think this is behind us.. Non-marine inverters wired into a boat also cause ELCI trips because they are NOT proper marine inverters that bond neutral to ground. They put out 60V and 60V not 120V and 0V. Of course the installation of non-marine inverters, wired into the ships AC system, is also another Darwin Award situation waiting to happen.. In short the V.1 & V.2 ELCI's have exposed a lot of the problems with US dock wiring, boat wiring, inverters, chargers, appliances and generators.

Old V.1 versions look like this:
PBD-X019

New V.2 versions look like this:
PBD-X021

#2 Until we fix our horribly outdated shore power plug standard there will continue to be nuisance trips. I hesitate to install an ELCI without also installing a Smart Plug it is just a poor decision to do so because I will see nuisance trips. A high resistance situation in a shore plug can create situation which creates an imbalance which can also lead to nuisance trips. The heating and embittlement of wire jackets, resulting in cracks, and melting and moisture can all potentially lead to this.

#3 Some early V.1 ELCI's could be tripped by "noise" such as keying a VHF. This is no longer an issue.

ELCI's are a great safety device, now mandatory for new boat builders, but they need to be installed in boats with compliant systems and wiring and ideally I don't believe they should be paired with our outdated twist lock plugs. Even without the neutral/ground check on newer V.2 ELCI's a floating neutral generator can still nuisance trip them...

[Jon W]

Were PBD-X019 and 021 meant to be links?

The ELCI I'm buying is the Blue Sea 1502 that I will install in my new Blue Sea main panel. Pdf of the panel is attached (the blank label should say ELCI). The new main panel came with a 5 screw dual busbar, but I'm adding an additional 10 screw dual busbar to completely replace the terminal block currently installed.

I purchased the Smartplug, but have not installed it yet. The plan was to complete this project, take a short break then install it. Guess I need to add it to the punch list for this project.

Thanks for the reply.   Jon W.

[mainesail]

That is the Carling model # on the back of a toggle style Blue Sea ELCI 3106100. This is the most common ELCI I retrofit. The last of the V.1 were over a year ago..

[KWKloeber]

This is comical.....

http://www.sailmagazine.com/cruising/cruising-tips/how-to-avoid-shore-power-problems/?utm_source=sail-enewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=textlink&utm_campaign=enewsletter

Not even a mention of the SmartPlug - who is in whose pocket?
A Typical Sail magazine piece of do-do -- the best use of the paper it arrives printed on, is cleaning up do-do.

kk

[Jon W]

Thanks jsail. Very helpful information, I gave you a little karma for that one. Jon W.