Carver Owners Forum

My Riv launches tomorrow. At long last! I have no experience with 115ACV shore power. My boat has 2 SP inlets but 1 power cord and no working A/C.
One panel is for 12V appliances and a 20W 115V for the range. The other panel is for 115V, Range and A/C.
After I manage to actually dock this wide beast I will want to plug in the SP cord - how will I know that I have connected to the correct circuit?
If I can get the A/C working, I will buy a second cord, but I believe I will only have access to a single SP source at the dock. What then???
Wisdom welcome.

Check out Marinco website and look for shorepower adaptors..there are many different ones, it will be obvious once you read up a bit.......you want one to go from a single 30Amp on shore to double 30 at the boat.......you will only get 30 no matter what but can be divided up on your boat as you will have both legs powered up.....give it a look first.......good luck...

Looking at the CAD price of an adapter, plus a 2nd cord . . .maybe invest in a super duper fan instead of the cost to get the A/C working? Hmmmm
And what about the first question, while I work the A/C issue out? I guess the appropriate panel will leap into life and I'll know then if I have plugged the right one in.

You will need to make sure they are 30a inlets - early boats might have been 50a which is uncommon today - for example, my 1988 boat is dual 50A inlets - one for the AC panel and one for everything else.

So in my case, each of those inlets is a 50-125 plug (50 amp, 125v). My marina provides a 50-250 outlet, which is two 125v circuits in one cable. Then i use a Y cable to for from 50-250 to dual 50-125.

If they are 50, it makes it a little more tricky to marina-hop as you will need adapters to 30a in most cases.

Guys, it’s a 28’ Riviera. No way does it have 50amp circuits and yes I know about those as I used to have a 3807 that came from the factory with 125 volt, 50 amp service.

To the OP, just plug in your one cord to one outlet and see what runs. Plug it in to the other and see what runs. When you have your answer, come back and let us know.

Buy a splitter cord. That's all I have ever used. Of course all my boats were 30 amp circuits. With the splitter you only will need one cord. The splitter plugs into your cord and then splits off to 2 cords that you can plug into each inlet.

My 32 express had dual 30a which is most likely what you have as dual 50a inlets were only used on boats with multiple AC units. Normally one inlet covers the AC and the other the rest of the boat. That being said, I never saw anyone using 2 cords on a smaller boat, always a splitter. Never did I ever have overload problems such as circuit breakers popping and I did have a 16,000 btu heat pump on that boat. Only time this ever happened was when I used an AUX plug in heater in fall to warm up the cockpit, with heat pump going and water heater kicking in this would trip the main circuit. Easy fix was to shut off the water heater breaker temporarily if I used the portable heater which was only a couple times a year.

After farting around with a splitter for many, many years, I finally saw the light and connected the 2 circuits behind the electrical panel to create a permanent Y connecter, basically a jumper wire. Only danger here is your unused shore power inlet prongs will become live when the other inlet gets shore power so it is important to disconnect the wires leading to it at the panel if you install a jumper between the two. This is easily reversible for what ever reason by simply removing the jumper and reconnecting the disconnected shore power inlet wires at the panel. If you want to get really fancy you could hook up a rotary selector switch to select splitter mode or conventional mode similar to selecting generator or shore power. Almost did this but then decided it was a little overboard.

In the water today, and as soon as I got docked and had a beer, I chose the right hand inlet, untangled the greasy yellow cord and plugged it into the shore outlet. Bingo! first try and the 12VDC panel was live! I don't have my A/C working yet so no issues with the splitter for now. I only wish! Still plenty of dumb questions though . . . for example, I plugged the aftermarket NOCO charger in and left the battery switch in #1. i don't understand the relationship between the 12V and 115V circuits. What should I do with the switch when leaving for the week but want the batteries to charge up and the fridge to cool down?

I couldn't fill the water as I need to find something to act as a key to open the filler cap. So: does the hot water tank fill automatically as you fill the water tanks? Two-syllable words only, please! LOL

Really, the only connection between the 12V and 115V circuits is the battery charger. Most of the stuff on the boat, with the exception of the water heater and air conditioning, runs off the 12V panel which is fed from the batteries. The batteries are recharged anytime the engines are running. If you shut EVERYTHING off on the 12V side then there'd be nothing draining the batteries and your boat could sit there for months until your next trip and would have fresh batteries to start the engines.

HOWEVER - there are some 12V circuits you don't want to shut off, particularly something like a bilge pump. Not knowing how often the bilge pump needs to run, you have no idea how long that pump could run off your batteries before it would run it completely down and then neither the bilge pump would run and the engines won't start. So most folks install a battery charger that can be connected to shore power to keep the batteries charged regardless how often the bilge pump needs to run. There might also be some other 12v circuits that you'd like to leave on too... such as a fridge to keep the drinks cold while you're away from the boat.

At the dock, you might like the convenience of hot water and air conditioning. Those circuits run off the 115 side. On a larger boat, you might also have a generator installed so you could also have 115 when you're away from the dock. On smaller boats that's just not practical.

When you fill the main (potable) water tank, that's what the potable piping is connected to and it provides hot and cold lines. There is a potable water pump in the boat somewhere that draws from the potable water tank and pressurizes the hot and cold lines. The hot line goes through the water heater before it goes to all the fixtures. Sometimes the water tank also has a heat exchanger built into it that's connected to the engine, so while the engine is running it can also heat water (just like a heater core in a car provides hot air). If you have this feature you can have hot water even though you don't have access to 115v power, like when you're out on the hook enjoying the water. If you don't have that heat exchanger feature then you'll only have hot water when you're connected to 115v shore power. Once you've filled the potable water tank, look for a breaker for the "water pump" or "potable pump". Turn that on and open some faucets to see if you get water out the hot and cold sides, THEN you can power up the water heater if you're connected to 115V shore power.

Before you fill the water tank, find it and id all the hoses attached to it. Make sure the hose leading to the fresh water pump is connected and the pump connected to the internal hoses. Reason, if it was left open you would be filling the boat hull as you were filling the tank.......just a quick safety check and check while you are filling for the first time.....good luck.