Battery charger - fried?

[boatsRus]

I think I may have fried my battery charger, but would be grateful for the opinion of Forumites on how serious it might be. The symptoms:

I normally keep my boat on a mid-stream mooring (far away from any mains electricity) but whilst alongside in Yarmouth on Saturday night I plugged into the mains supply to give the batteries a boost. All was working well: the right lights were showing on my Victron battery charger and the immersion heater was working. When I returned to the boat after dinner ashore, I noticed that the supply point which I was plugged into had tripped. It was re-set and I checked on board to see if I could find a snag. The auto trip in the mains supply panel had tripped - I re-set it and the mains electricity supply light came on, but there were no lights on the battery charger and the immersion heater was not working. My question is - have I missed something simple which I can easily put right myself, or should I be taking the cover panel off the Victron to see what has been fried inside before calling out the professionals? I would be grateful if you could please keep replies as low-tech as possible - I am not an expert electrician!

Thanks in anticipation

 

[sailorman]

did you reset the RCD & MCB on Your consumer unit

 

[boatsRus]

Yes

 

[sailorman]

is there anything else on that circuit apart from the Victron & Imersion Heater & the mcb on that circuit held in with the appliances switched on

 

[Robin]

It isn't easy to say without knowing exactly your setup, but the immersion heater does not need the charger in order to work, so if it isn't working and yet the main shoreside trip is 'on' there is a problem with 220v reaching the mains circuit inside the boat. This might be because there is another trip/RCD on board somewhere?

I don't know how much power you can take from the points at Yarmouth but often it is borderline useable with a big charger and an immersion running and it may flip the shoreside trips when either charger or immersion suddenly kick in, it can also be affected by other boats using the same access point. Our charger actually has a control panel we can use to cut output to 75%/60%/25% to overcome this on a limited amps connection. Also however sometimes, albeit rarely, if we have flipped the trips the charger doesn't restart when they are reset and needs to be switched off and back on again to get it going.

Anyway my suspicion is that the charger and immersion are probably OK and there is a problem in the 220v system getting to them. If you can't find another trip/RCD I would check and maybe remake all the plug and socket connections in you shore to ship cable setup because if these are faulty it could have caused the trip to go in the first instance and later be preventing it being OK again, something as simple as damp or a corroded connection would be enough.

 

[PeterGibbs]

Given the presence of RCD's in your circuit I would assume first that they had done their job and that nothing had fried. As we all know these things flip at the least provocation.

Fuses have caught me out before - sure you've checked all in the lines?

Immersion heater cutouts are notorious, as you may know, and often need resetting. Mine flips when the engine has heated the water in the tank! Is yours flipping before the thermostat control has cut the input on reaching the required temperature?

I would assume the battery charger is not the culprit until all the above have been certified bona!

PWG

 

[RAI]

Have you tested to see if any volts are reaching the boat? Plugged in another device to see it it works or not?

 

[sailorman]

the mcb might not be fully re-set.
lever in the up position but not fully engaged

 

[MoodySabre]

I've had a problem with tripping as soon as I plug anything into the 13A 240v socket on the boat. I am going to sort it out today. I suspect that it is corrosion in the socket that is causing an earth leakage. I am hoping that a clean up and new socket will sort it out.

I found this frustrated some work on the boat last week so I have bought a flylead to convert the 16A socket into a 13A socket to use direct on the boat and bypass the boat system if necessary. Comme sa http://www.machinemart.co.uk/images/library/product/small/01/010815300.jpg

 

[widgeon]

Like MoodySabre, I had similar symptoms that I tracked back to a combination of damp and resulting corrosion in the onboard shore power socket. The problem was intermittent initially as some pontoon boxes would trip when I connected, but often the next socket didn't - down to the sensitivity of their trips I suppose.
A good clean of the socket pins - including inside the housing - and a re-seal solved the problem.

 

[DannyB]

The fact that your heater is not working either would make me suspicious of the supply rather than jumping to the conclusion your charger is US, unless there is something else you have not mentioned, like a burning smell. It may be possible that your mains supply light is on but there is still a problem like a loose neutral connection. Do you have a 13 Amp socket anywhere in your system that you can use to check you are getting a supply ?

 

[boatsRus]

Thank you to everyone for your swift responses. I will now go and check the system thoroughly before doing anything else.

 

[DannyB]

Be very careful when working on mains electricty, specially in a marine environment, no guarantee live is live and neutral is neutral, treat any wiring as if its live, 220 volts can kill.

 

[sailorman]

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