Roger Long wrote:
Dear Mrs. Manners,

What do you do when your marina neighbors are endangering other users,
your guests, and the metal parts of your boat?

The nimrod on the face of our pier, absent for the past few days, has
compulsively screwed his shore power cord down to the dock with cable
clamps on about 9" spacing. That's good, I guess. While admiring this
arrangement, I noticed that he had also put a screw in the cover of
the power stand so it couldn't be opened. That made me wonder, when I
looked at the power cord coiled neatly in the driving rain with the
live end about six inches from the edge of the dock, whether he
unscrews it every time to throw the breaker.

Inquiring minds can't leave well enough alone so I got a screwdriver
and removed the screw. All breakers were on. The paper labels that
tell you which breaker goes to which outlet are long gone at our
marina and I didn't want to risk turning off someone's boat so I just
disconnected the cord and hung it over the hook.

I can just see it. One of the (generally under the influence) sunset
watchers comes down and kicks the cord in. They reach in to retrieve
it and follow it in with the shock.

The question I have WRT this is simple - don't you people use RCD's
(residual current devices) instead of straight breakers? If you did,
this scenario would be plain impossible. Any current over milliamps
leaking from active to earth would trip out the breaker.

All circuits in this sort of scenario should be done in this way.
Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

PDW

Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

Like relying on the marina to have it properly set up?

"Bill Kearney" wrote:

Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

Like relying on the marina to have it properly set up?

Well Roger did say they got their equipment at salvage.

Bill Kearney wrote:
Relying on people to do the right thing WRT power is a waste of time.

Like relying on the marina to have it properly set up?

Well, yeah, you should be able to rely on the marina to do what's
technologically possible and cheap to protect fools from themselves,
and others from fools. As I said, RCD's are cheap. There really isn't
any good excuse for not using them and it makes a live cable immersed
in sal****er impossible, barring some sort of wierd RCD failure. The
only time I've had one of these things go bad, it went open circuit so
no current flowed ie a fail-safe condition.

PDW