I was checking the wiring on our Catalina 310 and noticed a jumper wire connecting the AC Neutral bus to the AC Ground bus (pic below). This isn’t correct is it?
Neutral and Ground wires connected in AC Panel
- Thread starter Catalina310#175
- Start date
No it is not. But the AC grounding bus should be connected to the DC neg/ground bus
I have often wondered about that. When you are plugged in to shore power, is your boat's panel a sub-panel, or the main panel? The former would say no, don't connect ground to neutral, the latter, yes. Isn't that so?
I guess you’d think of it as the sub-panel, not the true source of the power. Ground and neutral should only be tied together at the actual power source. The risk of tying them together on the boat is that if there’s any amount of resistance in the shore connection neutral wire some amount of current will try to get back to the source over the ground circuit. That current will flow from the boat’s grounding circuit out through grounded metal like through hulls back to the shore. Bad for metal, and bad for any swimmers in between.
Now should the connection be totally removed. Or should there be a redirection to another post from the ground to ??? Any picture setups of an alternative would be great.
The connection to AC neutral should be totally removed, and nothing new connected to the neutral bus. There should be a connection from the AC ground to the DC ground, which may or may not already exist.
I’d also cover up that neutral bus. If the boat were connected to a power source with reverse polarity having the neutral bus exposed to clumsy fingers could be too exciting for my taste.
