Little Shop of Electrical Horrors...

[DesertAlbin736]

Bringing this topic over from recent thread on the Electronics board regarding automatic charging relays, talking about this and that led to a discussion about electrical systems. What brought me into the conversation on charging relays was that I'm in the process of a winter project to install a larger holding tank on my A25, which necessitates relocating battery banks from under the floorboards between the driver's seat and the main cabin bulkhead to the storage lazarette under the starboard cockpit bench seat. While at it I decided to upgrade the main battery switch to a Blue Sea Systems "Add a battery" kit with ACR-SI automatic charging relay. Doing so has opened a real can of worms, especially when forced to pay closer attention the AC shore power system.

Picture 1) below shows the woefully obsolete fuse/breaker setup where the only overload protection is an antiquated screw in fuse socket for a 30 amp fuse, or as shown here a breaker with reset button. There is one existing circuit feeding three household outlets, and all hot wires stacked at the fuse block, the neutral wires are joined via an open terminal block, and green AC ground wires terminated on a post, but no ground wire interconnect to the DC negative.

Picture 2) shows the back side of one of the three outlets, this one located near the top of the forward wall of the hanging locker inside the main cabin. Notice the back side of this outlet is not even enclosed in a junction box, which the other two are. The small white wires seen running along the top inside edge go to a propane leak sniffer, since he had a jerry rigged propane Coleman camp stove in the galley.

So, in this installation there is no switchable breaker, only the old style screw in fuse/breaker on the main inlet. No reverse polarity indicator, no breaker on the neutral side, no GFCI in the outlets. So in case of a hot to neutral AC short in this outlet the main would not trip until fault currents exceeded 30 amps in a 15 amp circuit.

One might ask, why didn't you pay to have a survey done before buying this boat? Well, this boat came from rural Idaho, where marine surveyors are few and far between, and I wasn't as well versed with ABYC code as now. Also, the previous owner was a degreed engineer who owned the boat for 12 years and claimed to have done an extensive refit during that time. And there aren't exactly an over abundance of Albin 25's to choose from. One would have thought he might have caught some of this stuff, but apparently he must have gotten his degree from Harbor Freight Technical Institute or a Cracker Jack box. So now what started as a simple battery relocation project has turned into a major rewiring job.

[Nancy]

All I can say is that you're going sleep a whole lot better at night when this project is complete. Lovely cabin, by the way. It will be really nice when the infrastructure is in sync with it.

[DesertAlbin736]

Nancy: Thanks, I will feel a lot better when this project is complete. This boat is 45 years old, so I guess this sort of thing comes with "This Old Boat" territory. But overall structural build quality says a lot about Albins. The original hull gelcoat still takes a shine after 45 years, and no sign of blisters or structural problems. The previous owner did put a lot of work into cosmetic restoration. He had stripped out the cabins, removed all the joinery, re-lined the sides with new material, painted all the exposed fiberglass on the overheads, had cushions recovered and put it all back together.

I actually like the Albin 25 cabin layout better than the larger 27FC. It has a center drop in cushion that converts the forward cabin into a large and very comfortable double berth. Besides, with a 25 footer one can easily trailer it anywhere, as we have done the last two seasons, over 9,000 road miles to and from the San Juan and Gulf Islands in the Pacific NW, the Erie Canal in NY, Long Island Sound in CT & RI, and the Chesapeake Bay.