Anyone changed two 30A inlets to a single 50A inlet?

[peterkvs]

My 400DA has two 125V 30A inlets. My slip has a single 125V/250V 50A 4 pin connector. Currently I use a 125V/250V 50A 4 pin cable which runs into the lazarette where it plugs into a Y splitter to power the two 125V 30A inlets. It is much easier to deal with a single 50A cable than two 30A cables. This weekend I got to the boat to find that one of the 30A inlets was all melted. Both the inlet at the female receptacle on the end of the Y splitter were melted and burned. Strange thing is that the only thing on that circuit was one of the Marine Air units which only draws 7 amps, so I don't know why it melted unless it had just been getting bad and finally decided to go. The connector on the splitter was new two months ago and the inlet had no signs of corrosion. So either it was a problem induced by a current surge (we did have some nasty storms last week) or perhaps running the space heater (all outlets are on that line) was just too much for it over time. When I removed the panel to look at the back of the wires, I saw that the #10 AWG wires were starting to melt together as well. The insulation on the black line wire and the white neutral wire had melted together, but the conductors had not yet touched. Damn close though. And, these wire were before the circuit breaker, which means to trip the circuit it would have had to trip the 250V/50A breaker on the pedestal. Not good either.

Now I am wondering if I should just replace the damaged 30A inlet, the melted wires and the 30A female connector on the end of the Y, OR should I upgrade the inlet connectors to a single 125V/250V 50A and feed the two 30A circuit breakers with the two 125V 50A lines and upgrade the wire size between the inlet and the breakers to a #8AWG so that I have no more heat problems here. The 50A contacts are MUCH beefier than the 30A contacts and so corrosion and heat issues in the connector would really be improved with this mod.

I realize when I travel I may get somewhere that only has two 30A feeds, but I can get a reverse splitter for that as I still have my old 30A cables.

Another idea is that if I did upgrade to the 50A inlet, I could increase the wire size and breaker size going to the main AC panel and get some more power in there. I would be nice to be able to run the heat microwave and water heater at the same time.

Anyone have any thoughts and suggestions.

Thanks,

Pete

 

[bahamabreisus]

I'm no electrician, but I would repair as built by Sea Ray. Most likely the lock rings were not tight or a loose wire behind the inlet. Somebody told me once, we should tighten the connections on the back of the plug every year.

 

[Boat Guy]

Pete, you would be going from 60A to 50A? Personally I rarely need over 30A and I find those cords much easier to manage so I run one 30A cord and split it at the boat. But I don't see the advantage to down sizing your amps.

I'm a little confused. You mention one 50A inlet yet you want to run more appliances? I could see that working if you ran a 50A and a 30A. I don't see any harm in running a 50A circuit as long as you have the proper sized wire and breakers.

 

[HUMPH]

Unless you want to do some major refit projects, leave them at (2) 30a inlets. You also have more options when at a transient dock...

 

[LMBoat]

His 125/240 V 50 amp service actually brings 100 amps of power to the boat, so it is more than 2 30 amp cables. FYI two 30 amp cable are about 20% of the cost of a 50 amp cable. The other issue about converting to 50 amp 240 service is that none of the appliances are 240 volt. You could get an electician to make it work, but not sure if it is financially feasible. We have 50 amp 240 v service on our boat. All the Air cond and water heater are 240. I do agree that 50 amp service is cleaner/neater/easier, until you need to replace the cord, which I need to do. Anyone know a good source for 50 amp cable?

 

[peterkvs]

When you are using two 125V 30A cables you have two 30A feeds to the boat and each one has 125V on it. If you use the 125V/250V 50A cable you get two feeds at 50A, each one with 125V on it. The only real difference is that on the 250V cable, the two 125V leads are out of phase so you get the 240V difference between the two phased leads which would allow you to operate equipment rated 220 to 250 Volts. The connectors and conductors on the 50A cable are far superior to the 30A cables and results in a lot less voltage drop and therefore less current draw. As we have only 50A connections at my marina I chose to use a 25' 50A cable instead of the two 50' 30A cables that came with the boat. The power available was improved by switching to the 50A cable. Our boat is power limited and in my opinion Sea Ray cheaped out by not making it a 240V boat. We are always shutting off one breaker so we can run something and keep the power draw per line less than 30A. Especially in the winter.

It would not be practical at all to try and modify it to a 240V boat because of the genset which I think only puts out 120V, not to mention having to rewire a bunch of stuff at little gain.

My intent of the post was to see if there was anyone who had upgraded the two 30A inlet plugs to a single 50A inlet plug. Electrically the boat would be identical with the exception that instead of having two inlets there would only be one. The two legs of line power on the 50A inlet would be run to the line1 and line 2 30A breakers. The result would be a much more robust 50A feed to a 30A breaker, and hopefully some less melting parts to have to deal with.

For now I ordered the 30A stuff to put it back the way it was. If it fails again I will consider the 50A upgrade concept.

Thanks for all your responses.

Pete

 

[peterkvs]

Larry, I bought a brand new in the box 25' 50A Marinco cord on ebay for $140 including shipping! I think it would have been near $400 from WM.

Bresius, I agree that the screws need to be tight and clean and you have to watch out for corrosion in the crimp connectors. I did note that the screws on the breakers were not very tight at all, nor was there any locking hardware, which surprises me on something that vibrates as bad as a boat can.


Pete

 

[dpmulvey]

I understand your intent, but have to agree with others. Leave as is.

 

[Robski97]

By switching to a 50 amp line u are losing 10 amps. putting a 60 amp load will do damage to the cord or the outlet . I know in the middle of summer im contantly tripping the boat breaker or the dock for the ac units the hot water heater and the random hair drier , toaster oven or curling iron. 50 amps is not what u want to do .

Rob

 

[peterkvs]

Rob,

its 50A per line and there are two lines in a 50A cord. So it is a total of 100A of power. This is a lot more power than the 30A per line or 60A total that the other lines deliver. So, it would be much improved rather than a downgrade.

Regards,

Pete

 

[Carver370]

One thing that would deter me is the price of a 50A/240 cord. A 50' will be well over $400.00 plus they are a huge hassle to muscle around, I have handled plenty of both and 2 30s are way easier than a stiff 50A.

 

[peterkvs]

I bought a brand new 25' Marinco 50A cord on ebay for $140 including shipping. You are right though, it is stiff especially when cold. It is much easier to use that one cord than the 2 50' 30A cords I had.

Pete

 

[Boat Guy]

25' seems like it would be limiting.

 

[Alex F]

By switching to a 50 amp line u are losing 10 amps. putting a 60 amp load will do damage to the cord or the outlet . I know in the middle of summer im contantly tripping the boat breaker or the dock for the ac units the hot water heater and the random hair drier , toaster oven or curling iron. 50 amps is not what u want to do .

Rob

I totally agree with Rob. For the reasons he stated I use 2x30amp when available, otherwise I use the splitter from a 1x50amp.

I would keep the same setup to keep things simple. After switching to a single 50amp, glendinning would be your next project.

 

[Carver370]

Maybe around you a 25' cord is enough but anywhere around here you need at least 50' if not 75' for most 40' boats.

A lot of our docks are bow in only and most place the power pedestal in the middle of the two slips, if you're like me you don't want to run the cords up the side of the boat.

 

[Sea Ray Mark]

I agree with Pete on this. When you run 50 amp 240 to the boat it gets split into two 50amp 120 volt lines giving you a total of 100 amps instead of 60. I think this upgrade is a wise decision if the 50 amp connection is more robust. I've had several 30 amp connections burn out over the years even though I maintain them properly. I'm very careful now to keep an eye on the current draw when several things are running at the same time. I'm afraid to have my a/c units on if my wife is making breakfast for fear of the boat catching on fire. I'd almost rather see two 30 amp pigtails about 3' or 4' long hard wired to the boat so the connection/fire hazard could be out on the dock instead of inside a locker on board. Mark

 

[fwebster]

Here are some observations on this:

I run a lot of different boats up to about 60 ft. I absolutely hate lugging a 50A power cable down the dock....in some cases 100 ft or more to get to a power outlet that accepts the 50A male plug. The one thought I always have as soon as I get back to my boat is, "Wow- I love the 30A service, even though there are 2 of them". It is a local thing, but here, there are far more 30A plugs than 50A.

A 400/410DA with 2-30A inlets should power up and run everything on the boat without a problem, unless you leave the switches on the main panel on and switch the power on from the main breaker. That can mean multiple compressors trying to start up at the same time. Otherwise, if you switch the individual breakers on one at a time, the boat's power system should be handling everything Sea Ray installed on the boat effortlessly. If you are browning out or tripping breakers while running everything, then you have a problem that needs a solution other than more juice.


If you have verified current at the cable end that plugs into the shore power entrance on the boat and you have 120VAC at t he end of the 30A cables, then you need to physically check every wire connection inside the boat from the Marinco shore power entrance recepticle to the main panel breaker. Some boats have gotten out of the factory with the crimp-on terminal end on the power wiring crimped down on insulation instead of wire. It is easy to shove too much wire into the crimp sleeve and the result is a high resistance connection that causes extreme heat in the wiring. Some boats have sustained smoke and fire damage as a result of this problem, but others just burn off the crimp-on terminal and lose one leg. In a case like yours where the panel still has voltage, you may have a high resistance connection which will reduce the amps that pass and lower the voltage as the amp load increases. This isn't one to be taken lightly or to talk your self out of checking. You have the definite symptom of the crimp end problem.......i.e. loss of power at the panel. if you find indications of the above issue, then you need to check every connection on both circuits. In my case, the power cable ends we hot enough to burn you and when I finally figured out the problem, I had to replace the Marinco power entrance recepticles and all the wiring to the main panel.....even though it was a short run since my power plugs are on the side of the arch...... it was definitely not a fun project.

Hope that helps........

 

[peterkvs]

Frank,

I always turn off all the circuit switches first and then the main switch and turn on the main switch and then the individual breakers for all the systems so that the load comes on gradually. That's not to say that during the various winter storms and multiple power outages we have had that the boat hasn't at times come on line all at once. And I agree that the two 30A circuits should run everything installed on the boat, but that might not be true when you add a 1200W heater to heat the cockpit area as the Forward HVAC, Water Heater, Microwave and Outlet with heater can easily exceed 30A. I always check the current panel when I turn on the microwave as that damn thing draws 15 amps on its own. However, I am not always the only one to turn things on and others on the boat just don't grasp the idea of limited power availability.

All of the slips in our marina are ONLY 50A. So you have to use a splitter on one end or the other. Since my power post is only 10' away from the inlets on the boat the 25' cable is more than enough. I keep the splitter located in the lazerette and use the 50A cord. If I go somewhere else I can always get the two 50' 30A cords out from storage and use them alone or in combination with the 25' 50A to get up to 75' of cord. I have not been anywhere yet that I could not easily get power to the boat, but I don't really travel that far.

I completely agree that I might have an ohmic connection somewhere that is causing a heat issue. I was not at all happy with the tightness or condition of the ring terminals on the 30A breakers that are right after the inlets. In fact the wires there had gotten hot enough to melt together and when I pulled them apart I could see copper. Not good. I'll definitely be checking the wires and connections from the inlets to the breaker on the inside panels.

Here are a couple of pictures of the melting connectors and wires.





Thanks,

Pete