Does seem strange. If ground and neutral were bonded together on the boat I would anticipate a much lower resistance reading. Even 18 gauge wire, which is light duty, has about 1 ohm per 100 feet. A normal measurement if neutral and ground were connected together even with a 50' boat cord set would be more like 0.5 ohms.
It is possible that something is wired from hot to ground rather than hot to neutral, but 20 ohms would be about a 750 watt load. Is there a heater on, maybe a hot water heater or something like that? I would take the fellows offer and see what is wrong. Mike Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 11:46:55 -0700 From: Tom Buscaglia via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com, cnc-list-requ...@cnc-list.com Subject: Stus-List AC wiring Message-ID: <201406021846.s52ikz9e021...@jax4mhob01.myregisteredsite.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" I received the following email from our club regarding our AC electric. Any C&C listers able to elucidate as to what this means and what you would anticipate it will take to correct? >Tom, > >I have been doing electrical tests on new boats in QYC docks >recently. In reviewing the records of previously tested boats I >noticed an anomoly in the recorded results of one of the tests that >was done on Alera. Apparently, I overlooked or ignored this when I >tested Alera. > >One of the measurements recorded indicates a very low resistance (20 >ohms) from your AC plug neutral wire to the AC plug ground wire. All >the other measurements were high resistance and OK. This low >resistance would indicate that your boat's AC system has the neutral >wire connected to AC ground somewhere. While this is normal in home >wiring it is not standard on boats. It creates a shock hazard. It is >against ABYC standards for small boat 120 VAC, 30 A systems. > >I highly recommend that you have this looked into and corrected. I >would be happy to help you checking this out if you want to deal >with it yourself. > >J thx Tom Buscaglia SV Alera C&C 37+/40 Vashon Island WA (206) 463-9200 www.sv-alera.com
_______________________________________________ This List is provided by the C&C Photo Album Email address: CnC-List@cnc-list.com To change your list preferences, including unsubscribing -- go bottom of page at: http://cnc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/cnc-list_cnc-list.com
