bargeboy

yes this is the intention, once i have all the lights out, i shall see what happens, fingers crossed it shouldnt trip, if it does then its going to be a headache as it must be a fault with the wiring behind the panels. assuming that nothing trips once all the lights are disconnected (think positive here!no pun intended) i'm hoping it will simply be case of reconnecting them all up one by one until i can isolate the offending light. cheers for the supply cable info btw, i assume this will be behind the ceiling panelling so this could be a first port of call for an electrician should i have to get to this stage, as its probably easier for me to unwire lights than start removing panelling etc

thanx for the replies extremely helpful, its given me some food for thought! one of the light switches is a normal house type one, the others are on strings that you pull, i've checked the wiring on the house type one and it seems fine. as for the bollard tripping, it doesnt when the lighting circuit is turned off, but as someone pointed out, surely it should be tripping the isolator switch on the boat before the one on the bollard? weather could have a part to play with condensation etc, its just a pain as i've no real way of telling until i have disconnected all the lights themselves. once i've done that whats the next step? check the switchs? i'm a bit hesitant at messing around too much as i'm not an electrician and feel if i get to the checking switch stage its time to call in someone who knows. i still think its that flouro tho!

thanx for the feedback, it seems to be an intermittent fault which makes it all the more frustrating, what seems to happen is that i can leave it for maybe a day or two no problem, then it will trip, then it will keep tripping every ten mins or so until eventually it trips instantly. as soon as the light circuit is inactive i have no problems. i'm hoping that its just a cases of taking out all the lights, then seeing what happens as the wiring itself is behind panels. i have a feeling its got something to do with the flouresecent light fitting, but can't see any visible signs, i guess i'll know for sure once i've disconnected it! one other thing, when i plugged the boat directly into the shore post via a cable which bypassed the RCB, the trip still occured so that should rule out any fault with the isolator?

Hiya, just thought I'd ask on this forum to see wether I'm going about this the right way before I have to possibly call in an electrcian. Firstly let me explain the problem. I'm hooked up to 240v shore line and have a RCB onthe boat which has two circuit breakers in it. Now somehow a fault has developed that is causing the shore post trip to trip out, which as you can imagine, is annoying for my neighbours. Now i've checked all plug sockets, the extension cable to the shoreline, turned everything off, bypassed the RCB on the boat (something i was hesitant to do) and the problem still occured. This led me to believe then that there was a fault somewhere on one of the ringmains. What I did next is to plug it all back in so that it was running through the RCB again and see wether i could work out what was causing the trip via the two circuit breakers. One seems to be for the plug sockets, and one seems to be for the overhead 240v lights. with the circuit breaker for the lights turned off, i havent had any problems with annoying trips so that has led me to believe that the problem is with the light circuit. I've figured that the next step is to check all the light fittings and make sure there are no loose wires, i've had a quick look and can't see any loose wires anywhere, its probbaly worth mentioning that the trips have occured when there are no lights switched on. So now i have started to disconnect each light fitting, making sure each one is insulated with electrical tape to avoid any nasty suprises and that they cant touch anything metal or each other. I havent done them all yet and the problem is still occuring, but i assume once all the lights are "disconnected" then that would just leave wiring with no circuit and if the problem still persisits, then somehow a fault has devloped in the wiring behind the actual boat panelling (though i cant see how this can happen) i think if i get to this stage I will have to call in an electrician in as its beyond my level of knowledge but could there be any other possible causes? One thing i should mention is that i have a flouresecent light in the bathroom and i have heard they can be a bit twitchy sometimes tho i have removed both the tube and the choke and the trip still happened. as I said, with the lighting circuit switched off then i havent had any problems with shoreline trips and the boat RCB still works when "test" is pressed. any suggestions would be much appreciated, thanx.