Electric Gadgets "Blowing"

[Hartlebury lad]

Hi all

 

Last week two of my onboard gadgets - Radio and a Bluetooth speaker - both expired within 24 hrs of each other whilst connected through my 2.5KW Sterling Pro Combi Q Inverter running on 240v canalside.The engine was not running at the time. I am wondering if there is an issue with it, although I have had no problems up to now (2yrs). The RCD hadn't tripped!

 

"Coincidentally" I was putting the tv arial up same day and got a small shock off the base (steel against steel and raining!) The mast/cable is not powered, just a standard co-ax cable.

 

I am understandably a bit worried - never was really happy with the spaghetti like wiring on the boat, although it passed the BSS two years ago after the Inverter was fitted.

 

Can anyone offer some advice here. I think I may need to get a boat sparky to check it out for my peace of mind. I am near Chester.

[Guest]

Hi all

 

Last week two of my onboard gadgets - Radio and a Bluetooth speaker - both expired within 24 hrs of each other whilst connected through my 2.5KW Sterling Pro Combi Q Inverter running on 240v canalside.The engine was not running at the time. I am wondering if there is an issue with it, although I have had no problems up to now (2yrs). The RCD hadn't tripped!

 

"Coincidentally" I was putting the tv arial up same day and got a small shock off the base (steel against steel and raining!) The mast/cable is not powered, just a standard co-ax cable.

 

I am understandably a bit worried - never was really happy with the spaghetti like wiring on the boat, although it passed the BSS two years ago after the Inverter was fitted.

 

Can anyone offer some advice here. I think I may need to get a boat sparky to check it out for my peace of mind. I am near Chester.

I think the best advice any one could offer is for you to follow your own suggestion in the last paragraph.

[bizzard]

Agree. He could be nearer heaven or hell than Chester.

[by'eck]

Assuming the Sterling Combi accepted the shore power, its inverter would be off and it would simply pass through the supply and its earth, so unlikely to be the cause of the problem.

 

You could check the integrity of the shore power earth connection to the boats hull though, especially as it should be through a galvanic isolator (GI) which may have failed. This assumes an isolation transformer isn't fitted instead.

[bizzard]

Surge guard sockets are available, if that's what happened to blow the radio and speakers. Like an extension lead. Called Surge guard. I bought one from Sainsburys for £3 special offer.

[Hartlebury lad]

Assuming the Sterling Combi accepted the shore power, its inverter would be off and it would simply pass through the supply and its earth, so unlikely to be the cause of the problem.

 

You could check the integrity of the shore power earth connection to the boats hull though, especially as it should be through a galvanic isolator (GI) which may have failed. This assumes an isolation transformer isn't fitted instead.

Thanks - I may not have worded it well, but I was not connected up to the shoreline. I had the inverter on at the time out on the canal. Good advice nevertheless.

[Hartlebury lad]

Surge guard sockets are available, if that's what happened to blow the radio and speakers. Like an extension lead. Called Surge guard. I bought one from Sainsburys for £3 special offer.

Despite the wiring worries, that would make sense anyway. Cheap insurance for expensive bits of kit.

[by'eck]

Thanks - I may not have worded it well, but I was not connected up to the shoreline. I had the inverter on at the time out on the canal. Good advice nevertheless.

 

Could be that the quasi sine wave output of the inverter blew the switch mode power supplies on the devices then.

 

Regarding the tingle, I would check that the nominal inverter neutral is connected to distribution earth and that this in turn is bonded to the hull. The former should happen automatically when the inverter kicks in but check in the Sterling manual.

[Chalky]

It's possible that the inverter has an internal fault and is either producing more than 240V consistently or is generating 240V and putting big voltage spikes on it. Both of these would cause devices plugged in to it to fail. If it's either of these then a surge protector won't help since it'll blow that as well. As said above - get an electrician who knows about boat electrics to check it out. At the cheap end it could be a wiring issue or a new inverter - both are cheaper than funerals.

Surge guard sockets are available, if that's what happened to blow the radio and speakers. Like an extension lead. Called Surge guard. I bought one from Sainsburys for £3 special offer.

 

These contain MOVs (metal oxide varistors) which are simply resistors whose resistance drops rapidly above a preset voltage. They're usually good for one or two decent transients. After that they either blow open circuit and do nothing or blow short circuit and short out the entire mains supply taking the fuses with them (and the central heating in the middle of winter - ask me how I know!) They're better than nothing, but not a fix for the underlying problem,

[cuthound]

I agree with Ecky Thump. It is most likely the distorted waveform of a QSW invertor blowing the SMP's of things. If it was overvoltsge it would affect everything connected.

 

The "tingle" is probably because the neutral is not earthed u, and requires immediate investigation and rectification.

[dor]

I agree with Ecky Thump. It is most likely the distorted waveform of a QSW invertor blowing the SMP's of things. If it was overvoltsge it would affect everything connected.

 

The "tingle" is probably because the neutral is not earthed u, and requires immediate investigation and rectification.

When my electric toothbrush failed after being used on a Sterling MSW iinverter (The inverter was quite new and I thought it had a fault) I rang Mr Sterling to tell him about it. . His response was "Well yes it would"

[bizzard]

It's possible that the inverter has an internal fault and is either producing more than 240V consistently or is generating 240V and putting big voltage spikes on it. Both of these would cause devices plugged in to it to fail. If it's either of these then a surge protector won't help since it'll blow that as well. As said above - get an electrician who knows about boat electrics to check it out. At the cheap end it could be a wiring issue or a new inverter - both are cheaper than funerals.

 

These contain MOVs (metal oxide varistors) which are simply resistors whose resistance drops rapidly above a preset voltage. They're usually good for one or two decent transients. After that they either blow open circuit and do nothing or blow short circuit and short out the entire mains supply taking the fuses with them (and the central heating in the middle of winter - ask me how I know!) They're better than nothing, but not a fix for the underlying problem,

Good lord!!! Thank goodness I'm only running and electric cooker, laptop, washing machine, dishwaser and electric kettle on it.

[forsberg]

Quote:

"Coincidentally" I was putting the tv arial up same day and got a small shock off the base (steel against steel and raining!) The mast/cable is not powered, just a standard co-ax cable.

 

That is probably just "Coincidentally" and you would probably not have thought much about it had it not been for the prior incidents.

Thanks to the "Electromagnetic Compatibility Directive" there is all sorts of "Radio-frequency interference" suppressors buildt into electronics.

The fun ones are the capacitors that are connected between the AC and DC side and it is they that usualy gives you a small shock when fiddling with antennas or trying to interconnect audio appliances. Hence the smallprint to unplug mains before touching connectors.

And thanks to RCD's its not possible to connect said capacitors to earth as the cumulative effect from multiple appliances would eventually trigger the RCD. But as RCD's saves lifes we'll have to live with minor shocks now and again, they are not dangerous just unpleasant.

[tommytelford]

A tingle from the aerial coax is quite normal as the TV will feed a small voltage to power various items in some instance if the TV is set up that way

[by'eck]

A tingle from the aerial coax is quite normal as the TV will feed a small voltage to power various items in some instance if the TV is set up that way

 

Its true that some active aerials, LNB's and masthead amplifiers require DC squirted up the aerial coax to power the remote device but not on a regular freeview TV surely. In fact there would typically some form of de-coupling to prevent this accidentally happening.

[OldGoat]

You'd be hard pushed to get a shock off 12V - but you were wet...

[smileypete]

A cheap socket tester (with the three lights/neons) will help tell if the combi has a functioning earth when in inverter mode.

 

cheers, Pete.

~smpt~

[Hartlebury lad]

Thank you for all the really useful replies and contributions to this - I will take all the advice "on board"

[saltysplash]

I fried a Babys Bottle warmer once with an inverter on our old boat.

 

It didnt like the digital version but ran the non digi version fine. I think it was a quasi wave.

Other digital items though seemed to cope fine such as dvd recorders and like, and the PS2

[Hartlebury lad]

Back to the top- sorry!

Turns out it was both of the 240v adapter/ chargers that blew whilst on 240 on the inverter (boat stationary canalside) and not the gadgets themselves.

An appointment with a boat sparks looms (no pun intended)........

[Roger Crown]

PM sent

[by'eck]

Back to the top- sorry!

Turns out it was both of the 240v adapter/ chargers that blew whilst on 240 on the inverter (boat stationary canalside) and not the gadgets themselves.

An appointment with a boat sparks looms (no pun intended)........

 

As suggested in post #8 - they didn't like the quasi sine wave output of inverter.