120 VAC

Big Duck came with a 9,000BTU roof mount air conditioner.This unit does a wonderful job for the back 1/2 of the boat, but forward it is still a sauna. We wanted to put in a circuit for a second air conditioner up front which meant another breaker in the breaker panel. In moving some wires around to make room, we discovered that the insulation was cracked and flaked off. We pulled the cover plates off all the outlets and found the same thing - deteriorated insulation. All the 120 would have to be replaced and the kicker was that it was all foamed in.

The 'we' in this equation is my son in law. He's an electrical engineer, and a good one. We ended up cover plating the wall outlets in the head and dinette.

There won't be an outlet in the head for now; the dinette outlet was lowered and moved to the forward dinette seat face.

This new dinette quad recepticle has 2 regular outlets and two special outlets which are a separate breaker. The special outlets service 1) the 9,000BTU roof air conditioner and 2) a line thermostat on the hall wall.

For heat, we like to use an electric space heater, and the best place for it is under the dinette whether it's set up for eating or sleeping. The trouble is the heat collects there and the heater cycles off. So we just leave the dial on the heater itself set wide open and turn the line thermostat in the hall to the temp we want. This keeps the heater going until more of the boat is warm.

The single outlet in the galley was replaced by quad and double surface mount units. These are easily wired down thru the counter and are GFI.

There is also an outlet in the forward nook whose wiring was updated,

and while we were in there, we added a breaker and new wiring for the 120vac water heater.

There were two extinct devices next to the original breaker panel. We wired one on a separate breaker for a forward air conditioner and the other I used as a place to install an alarm for each of the two bilge pumps. I like to have a little noise when the bilge pumps kick in so I can keep track of what's going on.

We also put in a breaker unique to 120 vac fridge.

And because the generator to be will be on the roof way aft, I thought it nice to have a shore power connector there.

in addition to the one up front.

I made a special 'dead plate' to insert in whichever shore power inlet isn't being used, because without a switch to isolate them, when one is live, so is the other.

There's another set of outlets on switches to service the on board charger and engine room outlets.

And to complete the project, all the 'regular' outlets are wired through a 3000 watt inverter.

For now, the inverter will have it's own isolated, single AGM installed next to it.  But future provisions will be made to have it's 3 stage, 130amp charge capability available for the house and starting batteries.

 Update - at the encouragement of the surveyor, instead of the 'dead plate' I made a cheap transfer switch that allows only either the front or rear inlet to be active.
Click here for details on the transfer switch.