Electrical System Audits
What is the status of your boats electrical system?
Is your grounding system working? Are your through-hulls bonded to your shaft zinc? Are your batteries fused?
Call today to see how we can check your AC system, bonding system, and DC battery system.
Once we thoroughly evaluate your boat's electrical system, a plan to remedy deficiencies can be made.
We thrive on the challenging audits and electrical system troubleshooting. One such occasion, a vessel's main AC breaker would intermittently trip. The challenge was that it only occurred once every 12-36 hours. Often in the middle of the night and seemingly without rhyme or reason. Various dock “experts” suggested various solutions: replace the power cords, replace the breakers, replace the air conditioner, shut off your fridge, select a different pedestal. When the breaker tripped, critically, the fridge/freezer would shut off and the food could spoil.
Conor, with his unique skill sets, utilized a data-logging system that could read and record the amperage, several times per second, at several locations in the system. Plotting the current data, the issue became immediately clear.
The brand new Dometic Air Conditioner was programmed to execute a short heat cycle to defrost the coils and exercise the reversing valve. Once every 20 or 30 cycles the system would switch to defrost cycle too soon and the compressor would hydrolock and trip the breaker.
Thankfully the repair was easy: change the settings on the Air Conditioner control board. No more tripped breakers.