Fire at Titchmarsh

The boat that is burnt out seems to have little residue, so I suspect it was a wooden boat. The owner of the boat next door now has a badly damage boat. My heart goes out to both owners and pleased it spread no further. Any one local to give us more detailed information.
 
Last weekend I did a routine check on the mains systems on board, all installed by Beneteau 13 years ago. Signs of two overheating sockets as well as the water heater switch. All now replaced and refreshed but it did make me think about the risks of unmaintained 240v systems in a damp atmosphere. Then I saw this distressing event and I'm glad to have checked, there may be no connection but many of us have frost heaters and dehumidifiers running all winter.
 
Guise said:
Last weekend I did a routine check on the mains systems on board, all installed by Beneteau 13 years ago. Signs of two overheating sockets as well as the water heater switch. All now replaced and refreshed but it did make me think about the risks of unmaintained 240v systems in a damp atmosphere. Then I saw this distressing event and I'm glad to have checked, there may be no connection but many of us have frost heaters and dehumidifiers running all winter.
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Considering some of the things i see in the course of my work, it's surprising there are not more fires on boats.
 
I would like to thank matthewriches of this forum who came to check a non functioning AC voltmeter and ammeter and ended up doing far more to the 240v side of the installation. One thing he fitted was an RCD on the shorepower as there has never been one (the panel is all trips switches).
 
Whilst there are some poor 230v installations, I bet there are far more fire risks on boats in the 12v systems. With 12v safe to touch many people think they can just add on or modify it as they please. I have had some 12v issues on my boat which I won't go into here, but this winter I have been investigating. During my delving into the mess where an additional breaker panel had been added, I discovered I had a cigarette type 12v socket wired through three joined pieces of very flimsy wire direct to the unfused power supply. There was also a 12v feed going to the chart table, originally feeding an old gps unit, that I reused for a second chart plotter and AIS receiver. When I traced it out, I discovered it was partly data cable connected to a length of bell wire connected directly to the battery isolator switch with no fuse. I consider myself lucky I haven't had a fire in the last seven years of ownership.
 
FulmarJeddo said:
Whilst there are some poor 230v installations, I bet there are far more fire risks on boats in the 12v systems. With 12v safe to touch many people think they can just add on or modify it as they please. I have had some 12v issues on my boat which I won't go into here, but this winter I have been investigating. During my delving into the mess where an additional breaker panel had been added, I discovered I had a cigarette type 12v socket wired through three joined pieces of very flimsy wire direct to the unfused power supply. There was also a 12v feed going to the chart table, originally feeding an old gps unit, that I reused for a second chart plotter and AIS receiver. When I traced it out, I discovered it was partly data cable connected to a length of bell wire connected directly to the battery isolator switch with no fuse. I consider myself lucky I haven't had a fire in the last seven years of ownership.
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+1, While I have seen some real horrors in 240 V systems on boats (our current boat came with a cast iron case electricity meter and domestic solid copper cabling but no RCD, and no circuit breakers or fuses) I see far more fire risk with 12V systems. People forget all too easily that a 12V device will necessarily draw 20 times the current that an equivalent 240 V one requires. They also forget that the prime purpose of the circuit breakers is to stop the cabling catching fire, not to stop you from blowing up the appliance on the end of the cable.

Peter.
 
There are suggestions (this is unsubstantiated/about 3rd hand information) this was 240V heater plugged in, the owner abroad, with the coiled lead being the problem. As said, somebody told somebody who rang me yesterday. The part owner of the chandlers raised the alarm, & there was difficulty getting the fire engine in as it was early morning and the security gate was closed. All of this may be wrong/an exaggeration but should be down later in the week & may found out more.
 
I was recently doing some sand blasting which by nature meant the compressor was running considerably more than it usually does. Because I was outside I was using an extension lead, one of those 50m roller ones on a reel. After about an hours work I happened to walk past the reel and smelt burning plastic, on investigation the cable that was still on the reel was to hot to touch...... I wasn't overloading anything, the rest of the cable was fine, it's just the tightly coiled part had no way of dissipating heat.
 
If you read the label on extension reels it will tell you what max wattage is coiled up and uncoiled... I "break the rule" but only when I'm boiling the kettle, NEVER do it with a high wattage heater which you are leaving on, even for an hour...
 
Triassic said:
I was recently doing some sand blasting which by nature meant the compressor was running considerably more than it usually does. Because I was outside I was using an extension lead, one of those 50m roller ones on a reel. After about an hours work I happened to walk past the reel and smelt burning plastic, on investigation the cable that was still on the reel was to hot to touch...... I wasn't overloading anything, the rest of the cable was fine, it's just the tightly coiled part had no way of dissipating heat.
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All too common a mistake, I'm afraid. Wind up extension leads usually come with instructions to unwind before use, but few ever bother to read the instructions and even fewer pay any attention to them. The other common mistake with these extension leads is that some are rated at 5A and fitted with a 5A fuse in the plug. When this fuse blows, it is sometimes replaced with a 13A fuse. Again, the prime purpose of the fuse is to protect the cable from catching fire, which it won't do if it's of a higher rating than intended - the possible consequences are obvious.

Even with the shorepower lead uncoiled, if we use the fan heater on board, the snow around the shorepower cable on deck gets melted after 30 minutes.

Peter.
 
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I made the same mistake, not fully unreeling the cable, years ago with a fan heater in the garage. Fortunately I noticed a nasty smell of hot plastic before anything caught fire, but if it had been unattended, especially on a boat, it could have been disastrous. The cable was wrecked.
 
PeterWright said:
All too common a mistake, I'm afraid. Wind up extension leads usually come with instructions to unwind before use, but few ever bother to read the instructions and even fewer pay any attention to them. .
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Instructions? What are they, I'm a bloke FFS.....! As soon as I realised what I had done it was blindingly obvious how stupid I had been, it just hadn't occurred to me beforehand. Just goes to show you never stop learning.
 
ianc1200 said:
There are suggestions (this is unsubstantiated/about 3rd hand information) this was 240V heater plugged in, the owner abroad, with the coiled lead being the problem. As said, somebody told somebody who rang me yesterday. The part owner of the chandlers raised the alarm, & there was difficulty getting the fire engine in as it was early morning and the security gate was closed. All of this may be wrong/an exaggeration but should be down later in the week & may found out more.
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If that was substantiated, I would have thought the insurance company would reject any claim :( Not the best if that happened.
 
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