New campgrounds near me are all going with GFCIs on the pedestals and man, do I have service calls. Folks who have never plugged their RV into one before discover they can not get power off the pedestal. Some are easy to trouble shoot, some really eat up the time.

If you have a GFCI at at home, plug into it and see if you can get power or get one of the little ones you can plug into an extension cord and then plug your RV into that. If it trips, get it fixed before you happen into a campground and can't get power.

Not sure how common this will become. It is written into our code here and some of what I am working on is brand new or nearly so. You can not test for this using generator power as a generator has a bonded neutral/ground.

Just a thought,

Steve

 

Code only requires a GFCI on the 20 amp rec only and that's been that way for years. The 30 and 50 amp don't require a GFC but I know from personal experience that the COE puts GFCI breakers on their 30 amp rec. The Corp parks close to use did this year's back and after way to many service calls on the weekends and many complaints I took my code book on in to them and showed them the error of their ways, they changed them all out.

Our trailer because of our generator trips a GFCI, I carry a 30 amp breaker with me and put it in and remove out when I leave.

Denny

 

This is a TVA regulation given the campground is below the lake flood plain, although the company I talked to that did the wiring said it became mandatory in all campgrounds after two kids were electrocuted a couple of years back. you will see this issue in other campgrounds whether reg. or not I can't address.

The greater issue for me is why are so many campers are unable to hook to a ground fault? The manufacturer sure say they can. Is this not basic wiring or am I missing something? In the one I worked on last night, the distribution panel had a receptacle on the back for the power converter and that receptacle was bad. Converter worked fine when I tied it to an extension cord and plugged it into the 20 amp GFCI on the pedestal. I've got Montanas, a Tiffin diesel pusher, and all varieties and vintages waiting to get this issue resolved.

Just got off the phone with two more requests, but about 80% of the campers set up are not having any problem. It is, as you can image, a real mess, and the campground is not going to change the wiring.

Steve

 

I'm lost. What on the trailer needs to be fixed?

 

Given the quality of electrical connections I've seen in campers I seriously doubt many will work correctly.

 

The neutral and ground can not be connected together or touching each other anywhere past the GFCI. The worst part of this is if you have a GFCI circuit like your bath circuits and you put a CFCI upstream it can cause as trip.

What's causing the problems is the 30 to 20 amp reducers, it will allow you to plug into a none GFCI circuit with a 20 amp cord. I have one of them but I use it to check polarity with my circuit tester not to run a extension cord.

Denny

 

The GFCI in essence protects people. It says the power is going where it is supposed to go. Circuit breakers protect wiring and nothing else so you can have really severe wiring problems and never blow a breaker. One camper I worked on would shock the crap out of you if you touched anything metal on the frame, but everything in the camper worked just fine.

As Denny said, the ground buss in the box and the neutral buss are not supposed to touch or connect. That connection can occur in any number of places so tracking it down can be a bear! A current flow to ground means shock and the GFCI thinks that means a person may have become a ground and cuts the power is the way I think of it.

It can really be a problem for RVs because, as Superrangerman2002 said, the quality of the wiring in RVs is often garbage. This is not a problem because of campgrounds, in my opinion. It is a problem with the way RVs are wired.

Steve

 

Mine is ok. I plug into 110V at the house all the time.

Have used the outlets on the outside of the trailer that are tied into the GFI.

My last 5th wheel, the electrical was a mess.

 

Ours is good too. I rewired the distribution panels when I installed the inverter. We keep ours plugged into a GFCI circuit on the house.

I think messes are more common than we like to think.

 

What I did was go into the main panel and start by disconnecting the leads coming into the panel, then turn on the power. If it still tripped I looked at the connection where the shore cable came into the trailer. If it stayed on I would start disconnecting each circuit one at a time, taking all 3 wires off until I found the one tripping it. Then I would ask just how much they wanted to spend or if they could live without that circuit until they left.

Denny

 

Denny,

You may like this. I now have about a dozen campers waiting for service with all varieties of things not working. So, I contacted Dometic to see what their policy was on products which have a problem while on a GFCI and was advised they do not design their products for that possibility and will not honor warranties if the problem occurs while on a GFCI only.

WFCO converters told me the same thing when I called and talked to John this morning. Pretty much " that's not our problem sort of thing", so even if I can identify the problem child, if it will work on a generator or in a regular campground circuit, as far as they are concerned it is fine.

I canceled all the service calls in that campground and will not go back as I would have to assume liability for anything I installed that did not work there. The electrician who did the installing for the large company that did the design said he told them there was going to be trouble. The campground has agreed to allow anyone with power problems to exit their one year contract and so far it looks like about half the folks will be leaving!

Steve

 

Some things just won't run on a GFCI, any heating elements like in the frig or water heater can trip one and still be in factory leakage spec. GFCI are designed to protect people that can have a very low resistance, another little known fact is they don't protect kids because their resistance is very low so TVA shot themselves in the foot by doing what they did.

Denny

 

GFCI's look at the current differential between the hot and neutral. Depending on the brand they trip at either 20 or 25 ma differential. Having the neutral and ground connected together can upset this balance and cause a trip.

 

Who is the TVA. GFCI's are governed and mandated in the NEC. National Electrical Code. Cities and counties can be more stringent but the NEC is the base they have to live by.

 

TVA is Tennessee Valley Authority as in my neck of the world I do a lot of work in campgrounds surrounding the TVA lakes. I was told by the electrician that wired the park it was done the way it was because the campground is technically in a flood plan. That is part of it is at the same level as the dam overflow and part of it is level with the top of the dam, so if the water were to go that high, the campground would be under water (it has never happened in the history of TVA, but TVA is one tough cookie when it comes to what they control.

I am just repeating what I was told here as there is no way I can argue code with anyone on this issue.

Steve