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thank you for joining us today we are

continuing our conversation with maya

and aladino on their sailing magic

carpet adventure

you had mentioned that uh in your

previous vote you had an ac panel with

the reverse polarity light

uh can you explain to others why you

think that's an important feature

oh

i think you'd be better at this

i can i'm fine from my understanding

it's just because a lot of the or not a

lot but some of the docs

we

went to had reversed polarity like their

wiring was just done incorrectly so so

to to put it simply from my

understanding it's just some devices can

handle it some devices burn out so if

you plug in something with reverse

polarity you might burn that device

or yeah so

reverse polarity uh maya brought a good

point happens actually a lot more often

than we'd all like

uh reverse polarity is where the hot and

the neutral are uh basically swapped

right uh so

what that means is

you know it's a little bit like you know

imagine if you had a front door in the

back door and in a home and you always

would come through the front door and

always leave through the back door right

it's almost like there's an entry and

there's an exit and you can never leave

through the entry you always have to

leave through the exit

now you could um and this is where it

gets dangerous you could power an ac

circuit on the

through the exits

go through the load and then leave the

load and go through what used to be the

entry at your exit

and that's really what reverse polarity

is it's someone um at the dock

has actually swapped the hot for the

neutral and the neutral for the hot

now

you know it's

a little bit

more important than just some loads

might burn out

it gets a lot more serious than that um

there's risk of electrocution uh with

reverse polarity

because um

what happens is um

you never

once first of all multiple things once

once you energize the neutrals think

about how we do certain things even with

the positive or the dc side right when

you think about energizing any circuit

it could be a water pump a hot water

heater it doesn't matter

what you're doing is you're effectively

stopping current from going into the

device

before it gets to the device you're

actually starting it at the source

right and so

you start at the source you're not

letting any current go through any of

the device

and really in most cases

especially on an ac panel what we're

doing is besides the main breaker we're

only turning we only have one circuit

breaker right so we're stopping the

entry of current

before it even gets onto the circuit

now if you've got a reverse polarity and

the hot is uh now a neutral and the

neutral is a hot what you're actually

doing your panel is energized but now

all your ac loads

actually have current they don't have

current but they have voltage in them

right they're all energized right the

only thing is there's no current going

through because you're stopping them

from actually exiting

by getting back but it's actually coming

through the device

so all devices where you would think

that would be disenter de-energized

because the breaker is off wouldn't

matter

actually the whole circuit would be

energized what you're doing is you're

stopping the current from

being

it's almost there

and then just you turn the breaker on

and now so now if you were going to

let's say play with a hot water heater

right and your you know breaker is off

and you're like oh it's all fine it

doesn't matter there's no current to the

device

well what you don't realize is there's

no current that yes there's no current

flowing through the device but the whole

device is energized

right so if you're there

um

the neutral would be the hot and so the

whole thing would be there just waiting

for the current to be let through at the

panel so that's one reason why reverse

polarity is really important and

definitely all new panels have reverse

polarity lights

that's one thing and the other issue too

is what happens is

and this is

pretty important is that unfortunately

on land

um

in many installations uh

what some people do is they do a and

they're not supposed to do this but they

do this because they just don't know

they're doing a connection between the

ac neutral and the ac ground

thinking that both of them should be

tied together on the boat

and the moment they do that and this is

something that is probably on five

percent

maybe a little not production votes but

votes after they've left the factory get

you know obviously modified and updated

and changed and worked on

about probably five percent of the votes

that we do electrical audits what

happens there which is interesting is

that you end up having the

neutral and the ground tied together

and they shouldn't and if they are and

you have a reverse polarity then your

battery your engine uh everything your

chain plates everything that was

grounded is now energized with 120. oh

wow

yeah so two little errors make a big

error and so that's why reverse polarity

is a big now you won't have that problem

because you're not going to make that

second simple mistake right but making

the first simple mistake does happen

not all the time but here where we are

i'd say maybe five percent ten percent

of the docs that i connect to when i'm

traveling around will have reverse

polarity

and that's fine

you know as long as you're not you know

you shouldn't but if things work and

that's why you know there's not a big

issue that comes out of it where it gets

really bad is if you're playing around

with your ac system and you have reverse

polarity you might get yourself in

danger and then if you've got an error

on your boat where someone shouldn't

have done it but they did and they tied

your ac neutral to your ac ground

um you could be in a lot of trouble

totally uncomfortable and it's a pretty

simple solution to it though so

everybody

check your reverse polarity and by the

way it's simple you know i i didn't

understand that it's literally a light

an led light that's at 120 volts uh that

is between your ground and your neutral

and as we know uh if two things are at

zero uh you know you connect a light to

a negative post and a negative post

the light's not gonna work you connect

you connect the light to something

that's zero

and something suddenly that has voltage

the light will be bright or dimly bright

and that's basically what a reversible

area light is is only basically a light

that is should never be turned on and if

it is it means that effectively your

neutral is energized

and it shouldn't

so there you go

also the first polarity um

fans run backwards right that's what

happens yeah yeah because that happened

to us in the netherlands oh i said and

our heater was running backwards

that's bad yeah exactly we were getting

concerned that that was dangerous

because it like it wasn't cooling

properly and stuff then it just would

get hotter exactly yeah

it's amazing little things matter yeah

yeah stay tuned for our next episode

with the crew of sailing magic carpet

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