110V Electrical Issue-May Save you some trouble.

[chiefrcd]

I felt kinda of foolish today when we found the problem....but I'll post this hoping that it might help someone down the road.

The other night, about 4:00AM all of my 110V. recepticals stopped working. Since I only have one breaker on the panel for that circuit, and it was on, I had no idea where to begin looking. I thought that I'd go home, pick up my tester and head back on the next trip and try to figure what was wrong. Well, the breaker was working fine....so I'm guessing that something is wrong along the line. To make a long story short, the first inline receptical is a ground fault and it's flush mounted flat on the port side just in front of the sink. Not being an electrican....and knowing practically nothing about wiring or electrical circuits, I did what I thought was the best thing...I called my dock mate over to look at it. He's one of those computer wizzes....so he comes down below, looks at the panel and then goes over to the ground fault and pushes the reset button and the fan, TV and radio all come on..... Now, I know this seems silly, but it never occurred to me that the entire circuit would be dominated by this one ground fault. So in the future, to avoid you feeling as stupid as I did.....if you have a problem with any of your recepticals, including the one outside behind the starboard helm seat.....check your reset button.....

[Mariner]

Yes, the purpose of a GFCI outlet is to protect all the outlets on that circuit.

[chiefrcd]

.....and that it does.

[Russell]

That is good information chief. I found this out during the survey otherwise I would never have guessed that the reset button in that one receptical was for all the outlets. The ones in our bathroom do not control the whole house.

[Mariner]

In a house, any outlet that is near water is required to be on a GFCI circuit (there is a specific distance, but generally any bathroom or kitchen outlets are wired as such). This can be accomplished several ways. In newer homes, typically, a GFCI breaker will be installed in the panel for any circuit that serves a bathroom or kitchen, or the outside of the house, then normal outlets are used. Alternatively, the first outlet on the circuit can be a GFCI outlet, protecting the entire circuit. It is not necessary for ALL outlets in the bathroom to be GFCI, but for added safety, it is not uncommon that they will be anyway.

On a boat, usually, the entire system is considered to require the protection of GFCI. Since your boat has just one circuit, it needs only one GFCI outlet. If it is tripped, the entire circuit downstream of the GFCI outlet is disabled. In your case, this means all the outlets.

GFCI outlets are also often used when there is no ground available. Older houses with knob and tube wiring are often updated to GFCI outlets to accomodate three prong devices without requiring a complete rewire. In this case, every outlet must be a GFCI, as one does not adequately protect the entire circuit.