What's Wrong With This Picture??

[Maine Sail]

I took this photo yesterday.... It's an AC panel equipped with a 30A main AC breaker with four 15A branch breakers. It feeds a water heater, battery charger, outlets and one breaker is used as a spare.

Aside from:
Improper grounding (which can't really be entirely seen)
Some improperly non-factory crimped terminals
Sawdust
Improperly mounted bus bar
Corrosion



What's really wrong with it????



First one to get it wins a self applied chest thump, followed by two self applied thumbs up gestures..

[erps]

I don't believe I've ever seen a green wire going to anything hot before.

[FarCry]

From this photo it's hard to decipher where the incoming feed is etc. It does look like one of the breakers may be jumpered on the right, I believe.

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by erps

I don't believe I've ever seen a green wire going to anything hot before.

It did not, it just appears that way in the picture....

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by FarCry

From this photo it's hard to decipher where the incoming feed is etc. It does look like one of the breakers may be jumpered on the right, I believe.

The AC double pole main breaker is the one closest to the top of the panel oriented vertically.. There are four branch breakers below it running in the opposite orientation..

[FarCry]

Originally Posted by Maine Sail

The AC double pole main breaker is the one closest to the top of the panel oriented vertically.. There are four branch breakers below it running in the opposite orientation..

Then it appears that there is an undersized wire (black) coming off of the load side of the main breaker that should be on a branch circuit. There are also numerous 2 wire cables that both conductors are black, one needs to be white and there aren't any grounds in those cables either.

Looking again I see that there are black 110v conductors on the ground buss, another problem...

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by FarCry

Then it appears that there is an undersized wire (black) coming off of the load side of the main breaker that should be on a branch circuit.

That is the feed to the LED "Shore Power On" panel indicator light..

Originally Posted by FarCry

There are also numerous 2 wire cables that both conductors are black, one needs to be white and there aren't any grounds in those cables either.

I think what you are referring to are the panels indicator light circuits. Both leads on these 120V lights are black, just the way it is...

This panel has shore power on, branch circuit on indicators, and a reverse polarity circuit indicator.

Originally Posted by FarCry

Looking again I see that there are black 110v conductors on the ground buss, another problem...

There are two "black" wires on the ground/neutral bus one for the panel indicator lights neutrals and one for the reverse polarity light on the Earth/green side. They should have been properly color coded but these are not the main "issue"...

The main issue has still not been caught....

[Coquina]

Is the purple arrow on the incoming double pole? They are jumpered together

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by Coquina

Is the purple arrow on the incoming double pole? They are jumpered together

Bingo!!!!! We have a winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



What's wrong with the photo is;

In a marine application the double pole main breaker is intended to interrupt both the NEUTRAL/WHITE wire and the BLACK/HOT wire. The main breaker should not be jumpered like that to break only the BLACK/HOT wire.

Red is also an improper color to be used on this particular panel. Red wire denotes 12V DC + or one leg of a 240V AC system. This is a 120V system and as such only BLACK/HOT, WHITE/NEUTRAL and GREEN/SAFETY GROUND are to be used not red. While not the main problem it is one of the many smaller "issues" ....

The other major issue on this boat was that the AC/DC grounding bond tie was non-existent. The GREEN AC safety ground wire is to be tied to the ships DC grounding bus, it was not.

OK now thump chest and give two thumbs up!!

This is what the panel looked like a few hours later. Notice the difference in how it is wired. The top two wires, white and black are the AC input from shore. Out the bottom left of the breaker the white/neutral leads back to the AC neutral bus for distribution and the black/hot feeds the individual branch circuit breakers out the bottom right of the main AC breaker



If your boat is not wired to interrupt both BLACK/HOT and WHITE/NEUTRAL, in a fault, please get this fixed..

[FarCry]

I suppose that double pole breaker should be breaking the neutral and the hot conductors and not be jumpered.