S2 owners..check ur shore power connections at the panel

woodster · Jan 27, 2015

Mark Maulden said:
Was at the boat today figuring out some dead wiring so I could use it for a wash down pump. Got all that figured out and was sitting on the quarterberth just staring at the back side of the panel which was flopped open. I've seen it and worked in it many times. In my never never land state, I happen to notice three ac breakers together with the same stickers on them. And it was the main AC input to the panel. I knew hot and neutral ran into separate breakers and it turned out ground ran through the third breaker. My main breaker is a three pole breaker. And then to make it worse, the green goes through the breaker and terminates to the neutral bus. There is no connection from the AC ground bus to 12v ground. This all appears to have been done at the factory. What really disturbed me was running AC ground (green wire) through breaker contacts as they could fail without any indication. My boat is '79 vintage and maybe they redesigned it sometime later.

So a little rewiring and a GI while I'm at it.

Mark that third cube in the three block set is not a breaker but a latching device that when you have a reverse polarity condition will not let you turn the breaker back live until the rev polarity condition is cleared up and it depends on the ground wire to activate the device

i don't know how to attach the semantic to this post but you can look it up in the paneltronics site......i will try this and see if it works for me

sailcruiser · Jan 27, 2015

I wonder if this is part of our problem. The bonding system installed which we have since disconnected had current from the panel. Since all wires are in a conduit it's been hard to chase down. The reverse polarity does make sense. The ground goes back to the panel and it's been down the list which is far behind looking after sick family.

SC

woodster · Jan 27, 2015

back when i first started coming to this site i posted that even my ground wire wire was protected through the main breaker and as you would expect i was corrected ....the thing i was referring to back then was the way the main breaker was wired ...the truth of the matter it was only connected to one side of the third cube on the main and that was so the latching device would activate in the event of a reverse polarity condition ...all ground wires(green) are never interrupted ..they are continuous other wise you will not be protected in the event protection is need ...the pdf i post above shows how it is supposed to be wire

woodster · Jan 27, 2015

Mark Maulden said:
Woody, Tnx for the correction. I was having a really hard time believing they would put the AC ground through a breaker contact but in looking at it...there it was and I was getting ready to rewire! Obviously, I need to learn more about rev polarity protection. I'll look at the panel website and Blue Seas is right up the road from me. Tnx for the reply and u made my day!!

when i had that mindset i was in mental hell till i started looking for a replacement and research helped me under stand what was going on glad to be of help

woodster · Jan 27, 2015

where did you put wire for the ac/dc ground connection ?

woodster · Jan 27, 2015

Mark Maulden said:
I put it between the AC GND (green) bus bar and the 12VDC ground bus bar.

thanks

S2 owners..check ur shore power connections at the panel

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