Leaving Shore Power Connected.

Do you Leave Shore Power Connected and on when you are not on your boat

  • Yes I leave it connected and on

    Votes: 71 78.9%

  • No I switch of and or disconnect

    Votes: 19 21.1%
  • Total voters
    90
Bigplumbs

Bigplumbs

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I always disconnect and switch everything off when I leave my boat. This is now obviously relevant to using a tube heater. I was wondering if I was in the minority or not..... What do you do
 
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Only time I would leave power on was for dehumidifier and heaters in winter, all other times it was unplugged and everything switched off when I went home.
 
I leave it on, just on the off chance that the boat develops a leak that the bilge pump can keep up with, the shore power should keep the pump running indefinitely.
 
My concern with everything unplugged is what happens if a shaft seal failure or similar starts a serious leak, the bilge pump may flatten the battery/batteries before the alarm is raised, and down goes the boat. At least with Shore Power connected there is a little more time.

Graham
 
Does leaving it on mean a higher risk of fire or do you think there is enough trip protection on most boats and in most marinas ?
 
Bigplumbs said:
Does leaving it on mean a higher risk of fire or do you think there is enough trip protection on most boats and in most marinas ?
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we spend a lot of time onboard during summer and weekends in rest of the season, with shore power, genny power, or invertor 230V power.
at that time all chargers and 230V systems are permanently used and sometimes under stress, but alway's under observation.

when we leave the boat, we switch off everything that is not necessary,
and the remaining systems that are on, are in a soft running mode; chargers topping up the battery's for alarm, safety systems , wifi router and camera's,
nothing under stress, I'm totally relaxed when home,
I get nervous when the shore power gets interrupted occasionally.
 
Higher risk of fire?? I, and most in my marina, keep plugged in all year. Never seen or heard of any problem in over thirty years.
Probably more chance of fire at home.
 
The only reason we do not leave the boat plugged when afloat is concern regarding accelerated galvanic corrosion.
If you shared this concern you could plug the tube heater's directly to the shorepower socket thus bypassing the boat electrics.
 
dpb said:
The only reason we do not leave the boat plugged when afloat is concern regarding accelerated galvanic corrosion.
If you shared this concern you could plug the tube heater's directly to the shorepower socket thus bypassing the boat electrics.
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The point about direct connection is a very interesting one. There are special leads for that as well with a 3 pin (uk) plug at the other end....
 
We leave it connected for the bilge pump explanation, the chargers are left on .
No heaters needed in the Med ,
Also it’s always turn key when we arrive .I think the batteries are cared for better on a permanent float / trickle program as opposed to just left on there own turned off .
 
I think your poll is too binary. I dislike leaving the shore power connected because of the increased risk of electrolytic damage - we had an alloy propeller dissolve almost completely a couple of years ago. The boat is almost new with all the required safety measures and I'm not particularly worried about fire - in the unlikely event that it did burn out, the insurance would replace it.

My policy tends to be to disconnect when we are away unless there is something running on the boat that requires shore power. In practice this means that it is plugged in most of the time from early December to early March to run a tube heater in the engine bay. I don't usually bother with dehumidifiers while we are not on the boat - don't have anywhere convenient to place one with an outlet for the drain pipe on this boat.

In the warm weather, I will usually disconnect unless we expect to be away from the boat for several weeks - under which circumstances I will leave it plugged up so that the batteries can stay on trickle charge.
 
Always on. I don’t think there’s a significant risk other than de humidifiers which do seem to crop up quite regularly as a source of boat fires. I used to have one I don’t now. In large part this is as I have nowhere to store it in season
 
Plugged in all the time and have a galvanic in-line isolator.

This time of year...tube heater, oil rad inside, dehumidifier and batt charger.

Having just done my outdrive anodes interestingly.....starboard side anode more degraded. Guess which side the finger pontoon is, to which a run down yacht that never moves is attached. The owner does however pretty much live onboard and regularly runs a washing machine!
 
In my experience, whether you leave your boat connected to shorepower or not when you leave is not always up to you. We've been berthed in Med marinas where the management deliberately disconnect your shorepower if they know you've gone home, in order to reduce fire risk and fire risk is a genuine hazard in my experience. Some years ago we returned to our boat in Italy, which had been left connected to shorepower, to find that one of the batteries was failing and literally boiling.
I still prefer to leave shorepower connected when we leave for the bilge pump reason given already but I keep a careful watch on my batteries when on board to try to ensure they are always in good condition
 
Portland Billy said:
Higher risk of fire?? I, and most in my marina, keep plugged in all year. Never seen or heard of any problem in over thirty years.
Probably more chance of fire at home.
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Which is odd because the perception I am getting locally is more boats as in FAR MORE boats are lost to fire than sinking at berth. I'd rather close off all seacocks than have unsupervised leccy no matter how convenient.
 
BruceK said:
Which is odd because the perception I am getting locally is more boats as in FAR MORE boats are lost to fire than sinking at berth. I'd rather close off all seacocks than have unsupervised leccy no matter how convenient.
Click to expand...
Do you disconnect your electricity supply at home when you leave the house?
 
Deleted User said:
In my experience, whether you leave your boat connected to shorepower or not when you leave is not always up to you. We've been berthed in Med marinas where the management deliberately disconnect your shorepower if they know you've gone home, in order to reduce fire risk and fire risk is a genuine hazard in my experience. Some years ago we returned to our boat in Italy, which had been left connected to shorepower, to find that one of the batteries was failing and literally boiling.
I still prefer to leave shorepower connected when we leave for the bilge pump reason given already but I keep a careful watch on my batteries when on board to try to ensure they are always in good condition
Click to expand...

They are not super keen on leaving the shore power on unattended here in Loano , Italy .

How ever most do for the usual reasons mentioned already .

Ironically imho a fire risk ( if it’s not already gone up by now ) is actually from users onboard and appliances.

This article pre dates my tenancy but illustrates grimly the point and further raises another point.........= if the fire risk is greater / riskier while on board ? .......what sort of escape route(s) do you have from your bed area ?

https://www.maritimeherald.com/2017...ring-yacht-fire-at-marina-di-loano-in-savona/
 
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