[C38] Questions, questions

[T. Troncalli]

Hello Charles,

I'm behind in reading my emails but if I'm not too late, there is an
alternative to having a dual wiring system on your boat to accommodate an
inverter.

I ran the receptacles from three outlet boxes to a double pole switch.  The
common terminal on the double pole switch ran to the three receptacles and
one of the switchable terminals ran to my 120v service and the other to the
inverter.  With this system those outlets would deliver either shore power
or inverter power depending on how the double pole switch was set.

I had one outlet box in the corner of the quarter berth above the mattress
and below the electrical panel.  With that outlet, I could run things on the
nav station like TV's, phone chargers, etc.

I had another outlet just forward of the sink drain valve door on the side
of the end of the aft table seat just to starboard of my house batteries.
This outlet was fairly central to things in the cabin and with an extension
cord I could reach anywhere in the boat.

The third outlet on this system was in my sail locker which ran my 120v
refrigerator when underway as well as giving me a source of 120 volts in the
cockpit if the sail locker was open.

A good double pole industrial grade switch is cheap but you can also use an
industrial rated 3-way light switch found at any hardware store like Lowe's
or Home Depot.   The nice thing about using a 3-way switch is you can use a
plastic residential switch enclosure making installation very cheap and
easy.

If you want, you can even make two or three transfer switch circuits
allowing more dual voltage outlets as well as allowing more current from an
inverter or genset without exceeding the amperage limits of your switch.

I've have also used this system to run my whole house when we had power
outages.  I had 10 transfer switches.

One other nice thing about using multiple switches to transfer the loads to
an inverter or genset is that this system stages the transfer so the
inverter or genset can adjust to the increased loads as the loads are
switched.  When I tried to use a large single 40 amp motor contactor relay
to power my house it would stall my generator with the same loads that
worked fine using multiple double pole switches to accomplish the same
transfer.

I wrote an article about wiring generators using multiple double pole
switches back in the Y2K daze when everyone thought the sky was falling.  MY
article was cloned and plagiarized all over the world and no telling how
many people used this technique.  Every now and then I still run across a
clone of my original article, usually including spelling errors and all.

Good luck,

Tom Troncalli
Recovering ex-Catalina 38 owner  




-----Original Message-----
From: listserve-bounces at catalina38.org
[mailto:listserve-bounces at catalina38.org] On Behalf Of Charles B. Finn
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 10:41 AM
To: Catalina 38 Listserve
Subject: [C38] Questions, questions

I finally am going to do the right thing and set up separate wiring for my
2500 watt inverter.  My plan is to split the existing outlets so the top
receptacle is for the inverter circuit and the lower is shore power.  I will
do this simply by running separate wires to the outlets and removing the
jumper to separate upper outlets.  But I have two questions.

1.  What type of wire was used on the AC side of our boats?  Are they
stranded wire?  What gauge?
2.  I would like to use the common ground that is already wired in, which
will save running a third wire.  I don't think this is a problem, but sure
would like to hear if it is!

On another topic, the forward in my transmission went away three weeks ago
just before I had to leave for two weeks of business in California.  
This meant I had to pay folks to remove it and repair it.... something I 
hate to do!   But, I will shortly be able to report on shop times and 
costs for a repair like this!  I also have researched parts costs and even
found additional manuals on our transmissions, which I will shortly 
be posting to our website.   But for now, I can report that the HBW-5 
(50) is another part of our boat (like the heat exchanger) that is at the
outer design limit for our powertrain.....  We should expect to see an
increasing number of failures and it is forward gear that wears out.

Happy Sailing!
Chuck Finn
Mighty Quinn #114
Great Lakes

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