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well let's talk for a moment Jeff about galvanic isolators because for decades there was one brand that basically dominated Marketplace and they those galvanic isolators if you've got a boat that say I'm not sure what point it's really changed but 20 years older 20 years or older and it has a galvanic isolator on it it's likely to have one of those isolators on it which which are potentially going to fail safe or may not be working anyway it might have been decades ago that they actually failed and and there's no way of knowing that but back in the early 2000s the abyc toughened up its government isolator standard to require essentially a Fail-Safe circuit so that for example if the the boat gets hit by lightning the Galva the isolator will fail in the closed position but at that point you've no longer got galvanic protection on the bone but at least you've got the the safety ground back to shore because there's failed in the closed position and so either way with any galvanic isolator on the boat you you do want to periodically test it to make sure that it's still working and it's doing its job and I don't know anybody that does that on a regular basis but you really should because it's if it's a newer one it may have failed closed and then it's not providing galvanic protection and if it's an older one it may have failed up failed open in which case it's not providing the Essential Safety protection okay another question here Nigel that we didn't go into that I'd like to for you maybe to talk about is how do we go about or how does a boater go about testing a galvanic isolator make sure that it has not failed either open or closed depending on the model they have and why is that so important on testing your galvanic isolator I have a couple of pages on this in my boat owners mechanical electrical manual and I think maybe you need to get a copy a whole of that and go to the library or and take a look at that it's not hard to do but there's a there's a number of steps there that you need with a multimeter I don't think that works too well describing it just verbally without some illustrations yeah there's some to-do's for the voters out there are curious you need a multimeter you need to have a diode testing the direction at which you test is important and to a little bit Echo what Nigel said prior older models of galvanic isolators used to fail open which is the worst part you lose your Shore power connection on the grounding connector that is losing the shoulder on a road it's it's like those narrow bridges that you can't pull out on I mean you can this categorical you cannot lose your grounding connection on an AC Shore power connection you just can't and it does happen because Galvan guy Slayers do fail and in the past when they failed they weren't Fail-Safe they would fail open which is just terrible so it is part of the routine to test those the manufacturer's manual is going to say so so it's something that everyone should add on their list and like Nigel said there's a bunch of videos on how to go about testing a galvanic isolator with a multimeter and make sure your multimeter has a diode testing mode and you have to do it within one way not the other so that would be a wrap-up do you want to add anything else on this really useful point to make here Jeff is that a decent multimeter is the prerequisite and that to my mind is the single most useful tool on a boat when I go visit other people I always take a multimeter with me and and then of course knowing how to use it but the other piece of Kit while I'm thinking about this which almost nobody has on the boat is a meter lead extender you can buy them for less than twenty dollars it's a spool about this size and you can pull the leads out and they come out either way and they'll stretch up to 30 feet and then you can unplug it into your multimeter and then you can connect one end of that say at the battery if you're looking to see if there's a break in a circuit somewhere and then you can take your meter all over the boat for for a Basics simple troubleshooting processes long medally like that and a meter in its faults mode you can track down pretty much any fault on a boat and and the benefit of being involves mode if you're not an experienced media user is that it's almost impossible to hurt yourself the boat or the meter you can get into trouble in some of the other modes so I I think the the key here is to get a decent multimeter and you need to expect to expend it at least a hundred dollars and and to make sure it's got the basic volts amps resistance and a diode tester which you've just mentioned which many of them don't and then to get that extent meter lead extension and then get some practice using the meter so you know how to use it when you need it and we have a quite a bit of information in our boat how to course we have a troubleshooting seminar on on a video on on using a meter for troubleshooting but but it once you get the hang of it it's a superb troubleshooting tool yeah and especially the ones that are DC clamp-on AC and DC clamp on are huge to be able to measure current current without disconnecting a conductor or putting into series just through magnetic flux is a huge advantage and I would say to Echo and Nigel is saying even if you don't know how to use it just the fact that you have one on board is going to allow someone else to use it so it could be that someone else could you know we help Builders sometimes over the phone to troubleshoot with a multimeter you might have a friend or someone in the marina or in the Anchorage that knows how to use it without the tool you're it's hopeless you need that tool to be able to isolate and figure out a lot of common nuisance type of electrical problems like changing a fuse knowing that it's actually you know that it's now you don't have a circuit all those little things can be done with a DC multimeter AC and DC multimeter and hopefully a clamp on it's highly recommended highly recommended to be resourceful on the water yeah definitely all right it's worth also pointing out that the vast majority of those clamping meters read AC amps and note DC and We've very rarely need to measure AC amps on the boat what we want is a DC clamp meter if it will if it reached DC it will also read AC but if it reads AC it doesn't mean it'll be DC so we need to make sure it's a DC clamp meter yeah that's why I did that when I bought my boat in 2006 went to Home Depot bought a clamp on meter so happy and I've kept it as a reminder because it's an AC only clip-on meter so if you're curious again go on our website and find out more answers and solutions with this sort of setup and thanks for asking and thanks for all of you for listening and tuning in