Hey
I’m new on this forum and this is my first post so hello to all the members! I’m an electrician from England and I’m currently staying with friends on a floating fishing lodge in Canada. I’ve had a look at their electrical installation and found that there is no grounding, bonding and no GFCI protection whatsoever. They will be installing a new battery bank soon which will be a good time to get everything done safely and per Canadian regulations. I might need a few tips so will try and give and explain the whole setup as well as possible:
Currently there are around 4 separate floating wooden structures (1 lodge and 3 houses) which are connected together and wired back to the main lodge. The power is supplied by a generator (3kW) which charges a battery bank (6 x 4V) of around 500Ah. Both sources run through an inverter and additional electricity is generated by solar panels which charge the batteries. Because the batteries are old and recently failed they will be replaced by a new bank of 900Ah while the old generator will be replaced with a 5kW one. The new battery bank will be too big to fit in the old location so they’ve decided to build a new float which will act as a “floating power house” that can be moved around to any location necessary.
This is what I had in mind: The new float will have 3 small undercover rooms – one for the batteries, fuse box, inverter and other electrical accessories, one for the generator and another for the 24V freezers (connected to the batteries). Yet again the power from both the generator and batteries will be connected through the inverter which will in turn power a 6 way distribution panel (fuse box) mounted next to it. The way I thought to wire the new setup is to have 4 large pin and sleeve boxes mounted on the inside of the battery room which will supply each of the lodges separately with a plug mounted on a 6mm marine cable. Each circuit will be connected to its own circuit breaker (fuse). That way they will be able to unplug any of the lodges separately when doing maintenance or for re-jigging the structures. Would that be per Canadian regulations?
Where things get interesting and where I need help with is the general grounding and regulations regarding GFCI protection. As the whole structure is a floating one and the nearest land is solid rock, how/where can I pick up a main ground – I obviously can’t use an earth spike? I’ve read a heated discussion on another forum stating that a separate earth spike is not required according to the Canadian code as long as all bonding have been done with the main ground connected back the generator. Is this true? If not, again, where/how can I pick up a ground for the installation??? Next up would be GFCI protection. Where do I need to install the units to supply sufficient ground fault protection without causing nuisance tripping? In the UK our regulations (BS7671) state that specialized locations or certain areas require 30mA RCD (residual current device) aka GFCI. As the lodge is near water I can imagine that most, if not all, the circuits need to be connected to a GFCI.
I know that this is an “interesting” setup and not all that common so I would appreciate any tips.
Thanks!
