****CLICK ON THIS IMAGE TO MAKE IT LARGER****


Just from this one single picture we have:


#1 A dead short circuit that caused a small gauge wire to physically melt and almost catch this boat on fire. This melt down was cause by NO OVER CURRENT PROTECTION.


#2 Improper lug stacking in multiple locations.


#3 Extremely poorly executed terminations.


#4 Improperly wired main AC breaker. This is only breaking the HOT/BLACK wire in the 120V system. I NEEDS to break both HOT/BLACK and WHITE/NEUTRAL!!!


#5 Improperly supported/non-supported terminal strip hanging by what looks to be a 16GA black wire.


#6 Unused over current protection which has been bypassed.


#7 Complete and utter lack of over current protection where the wire gauges drop from 4GA to 14 - 16GA. Over current protection is NOT optional when wires change size. Most often the fuse or OCP for the larger wire is too large for the smaller wire to handle...


#8 A 4GA wire disappearing into a mess of electrical tape. What surprises is this hiding?


#9 No AC/DC isolation, in the form of a cover for the AC wiring/terminals, on the back of the panel.


#10 Improper use of color coding. Black DC wires connected to positive DC terminals and not marked as positive.


#11 Complete lack of adequate wire support. This may be what led to the dead short somewhere else that caused this melt down.




Image courtesy of B. Weinmann