Shocking problem...lol.

S

Shore

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Apr 15, 2003
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11418
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598
Actually it is.I'll say this 1st.This may or may not have been happening all along but this is the 1st time I have noticed it...and boy did I!!.

I have a 95 Crownline 250CR.Standard small cruiser boat.

Here is the issue.On the trailer in the driveway washing her up.It has shore power and yes it was plugged in charging the batteries.If I am standing on the ground(wet driveway) and touch the trim tabs or outdrive I get a zap..not bad but enough to make you go HEY NOW!!..do it a couple times and it trips the breaker in the garage....I know it sounds funny but I am about 99% positive this hasn't happened before.If I stand on the cooler(to get on the swim ladder) and touch the drive nothing happens naturally.No where else on the boat does this.

It's obviously grounding through me on the concrete I would guess.

I do have to mention that the extension cord to the garage has the 3rd prong removed...I know I know bad idea.

What's goin on here???....I'm a little worried about being in the water with the generator(honda 2000i) and someone touching the drive.We moor in a spring so we are always touching the bottom of the spring at the back of the boat..Yikes!!

Everything on the boat seems to work fine.
 
"What's goin on here???" -- Shore

"the extension cord to the garage has the 3rd prong removed." Since the boat is not in the water, there is no ground "aboard", and since the extension has no 3rd wire, it provides no ground. So when you "closed the circuit", you became part of it.

You do realize that you should be using both the third wire ( prong ) as well as a GFCI outlet... Further ( though it is rare to see someone do it ) if using an automotive type charger, you should have the battery disconnected from everything but the charger.
 
The problem is that you must use a extension cord with a third prong which is your ground, your boat will be grounded by the extension cord. The reason you are getting a shock when touching the drive is that the boats grounding system is looking for a ground and you become the ground. The 120 volt system on your boat works the same as 120 volt in your home, you must have a ground to protect yourself from groundfault.
 
LOL, yes it was the 3rd prong.I switched cords and it is all good.It is a GFCI that was tripping.

I was more curious as to how long till someone noticed the obvious.I did this earlier and figured it out quickly when I touched the trim tab....More of a Food For Thought topic than a question...hehehe.I was just washing the transom BTW.
 
I asked this on a car board in this same manor and nobody has a clue yet....lol.
 
Something in your boat has the common (white) wire hooked to the ground bus bar.
 
Why would you say that?

I do get a good volt gauge drop when using the blower or dash lights.Running or not.
 
I am not an electrical engineer, but ground prong or not - you should NOT be getting any stray voltage.
That is what you are feeling, something is wrong and power (positive) is straying (shorting) to ground.

When I was a kid my father had a sh!tbox beat-up anchient winnebago. We would stay in that POS at the marina. If you went out at night to use the bathroom (closest tree) you would get a tingle on the door knob on the way back in. It got worse as time went on. One night I had to go, it was raining, I was about 12 years old. It had a house style door knob and it was hard to turn. I firmly grasped the door knob as I was wet and slippery - WHAM, knocked me to the ground triped the breaker on the light pole (all the lights went out in that section of the marina)
The next day revealed burned wires and a mess in the WBGO electrical panel. That was the end of anything working on any level in that junk wagon.

The ground prong on the new extension cord didnt fix anything, just isolated you. Might be a small short, but its not right.
 
quote:
Originally posted by Shore

Why would you say that?

I do get a good volt gauge drop when using the blower or dash lights.Running or not.

Click to expand...


Problem is on the 110volt side not the 12volt side
 
quote:
Originally posted by JimPend

Something in your boat has the common (white) wire hooked to the ground bus bar.

Click to expand...


My thoughts. I used to wash the Regal in the driveway with none of the problems you describe. Voltage leak?
 
Hmm. Maybe I should delve into the panel and have a looksie.What exactly should I be looking for?

All the 110v works right....even with the infamously touchy Honda 2000i hooked up.Never had an issue.
 
quote:
Originally posted by KiDa

quote:
Originally posted by JimPend

Something in your boat has the common (white) wire hooked to the ground bus bar.

Click to expand...


My thoughts. I used to wash the Regal in the driveway with none of the problems you describe. Voltage leak?

Click to expand...


With your shore power hooked up and a two-prong extension cord?
 
Shore, the ground prong (third-prong) is there to protect you from a voltage leak. You found it (with luck) becasue you used a cord with a missing ground prong.

For whatever its worth, my boat and wiring is 21 years old and I plug it in on the hard every time I am down. I crank up the heater and charger and whatever power tools I might be using. I sometimes run several shore power cords together to reach the closest outlet and there have been a few times I use my male adapter to connect to a standard house hold outlet. The ground plug is missing on this adapter and I never once got a shock. This winter I was laying in a puddle to clan my running gear for most of a day, pretty shore my wife was down and inside cleaning or reading a book - everything would have had to be on for her to last more than a few minuets...no shocks
 
"Trips the breaker in the garage"--this means that there is a 15 to 20 amp "short" which you are inducing! Agree that the ground wire in the extension cord has only obscured the matter. Incidently the Honda generator does not have a ground--and in many boats will at least show a dim "reverse polarity" indicator. You need to get a circuit tester, which checks to be sure that the boat is correctly wired--this is has a 15 amp plug and 3 LED or Neon lights on the other side--it will tell of hot and neutral or hot and ground, or neutral and ground are reversed. You may also want to investigate if the boat is properly isolated. I suspect that the battery charger may be part of the problem. Often these tie the "ground" of the 110 volt circuit to the "neg" of the boat--or the "ground" of the boat.

Yes, there may be some risk, until you have resolved this problem. I would have all GFI sockets in the boat--I would also put a GFI socket in your garage. Be safe!
 
Do you have a mecathord system or calvanic isolator this is where you would be getting the leakage without the 3rd prong on cord.
 
One outlet in the boat and it is GFCI and the garage is a GFCI..It is a factory shore power wiring job.Stock everything and a marine battery charger.Only issue I have had is with the stereo and it is a ground issue.Too much amp drive and it shuts the headunit down for a second.It only occurs with the amount of gain/volume associated with the amp for the sub as the HU is an older Alpine and is very sensitive to lower voltage.I've improved my ground for both the HU and the amp and it got worlds better.It's just a very current heavy amp and not really ideal for the boat and deep cycles.Maybe this leakage has something to do with it?..I dunno it's on the 12v side.

I can't remember if it has a mercathode or a galvonic isolator.I want to say there is some sort of system on the backside of the engine compartment.The Mercathode kit for some reason.
 
I've had the boat for 4 yrs or so and I do remember the battery charger not being hooked up.I can't remember if it was disconnected behind the dash or at the batteries though.
 
You plug a boat into a shore side GFCI outlet and you will get this condition. I'll bet if you used the prongless extension cord and plug it into a regular outlet you wont have that problem. GFCI outlets dont like being plugged into GFCI outlets and that is what happens when you plug a boat into one.
 
Whatever is going on, it isn't supposed to shock you, even w/o the ground. You have current trying to leak from the hot side to the ground. If you used a grounded extension cord, it should trip whenever you plug it into the garage GFI. It might not do this if you plugged it into an unprotected outlet, but that would create a very dangerous situation. You should be able to find the faulty device on your boat by using a grounded cord (you really ought to replace that plug with the cut off ground) and try turning off all the 120 Volt loads on the boat either by unplugging, turning off the switch or pulling the fuse, whatever it takes. You should then by able to plug in shore power without tripping your garage GFI. Then re-energize each device, one at a time, until the GFI in the garage trips. When that happens, you will have found the problem. If you don't see some obvious problem with the wiring to the device, you will need to replace it, as it has an internal fault. It is important to fix this, as the worst case scenario is that someone could come along and touch a trim tab and be electrocuted. Right now, what is keeping you from getting really zapped is the fact that the garage GFI is limiting current flow thru you to 5 milliamps. Good luck
 
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