30 To 50 Amp Service

[wlowe]

My wife and I have been looking at fifth wheels lately with the idea of buying one later, just seeing which ones we like. One thing I've noticed is that most of the used trailers have 30 amp service, not many with 50 amp service. 30 amp would probably be adequate for us but would much rather have the capacity of a 50 amp. Has anyone out there ever converted a 30 to a 50? Is it even possible to do? If it is possible, how big of a job is it? Appreciate any info.



Thanks,

Bill

 

[TowPro]

We travel a lot of "first come first serve" campgrounds during the summer (Thousand Trails). If I had to always look for a 50 amp site 1/2 the time I would be out of luck.



I am glad I only need 30 amps, gives me lots of sites to pick from. I know you can run an adapter that uses the 20 amp and the 30 amp connector to "look like" 50 amp service, but I bet most campgrounds are only wired for 30 amp, and they have the 20amp and 30 amp connectors both wired to the same feed wire.



Now if I had not put that sat dish on the roof I would have even more sites available. In 2 years I have only been stuck in 1 site that I could not watch the Sat receiver.



With 30 amp I do find that if I run the AC, Refer and Hot water all the same time on the electric line I can blow the breaker it its real hot outside, so I just switch the Hot water and refer over to Gas during the daylight (if its real hot outside), plus this takes the load off the park system. If everybody did this we could have a lot less brown outs in some of these "out of the way" or old campgrounds. I lost a relay in an AC unit due to a brown out once, on the 2nd day of a 7 day camping trip down the Outer Banks of NC (man it was hot)

 

[klenger]

Without getting too technical, the difference between 30 amps and 50 amps is (... drum roll) not 20 amps. 30 amp service is 115 vdc single phase, and 50 amp RV service is 230 vac 2 phase, which means that you have two 50 amp 115 vac circuits that are out of phase. That totals 100 amps of 115 vac power, which is more than 3 times the power of 30 amp service.



We have 30 amp service in our 5er, and have always found it adaquate. 50 amps would be a must if you had two A/C units, or maybe a washer-dryer. This is usually only found in the bigger units.

 

[Josparkz]

Most of the campgrounds I've been in usually have a 15 or 20 amp outlet , and a 30 Amp outlet . When I renewed my powercord , I put the plug on there that is most commonly used these days in the 30 Amp receptacles . This eliminated the need for adapters . I do recall that the NEMA configuration of that particular plug was not really specified for that usage . I could not find a high grade plug in that configuration at the electrical supply houses . However , it is what the trailer parks are using , and they sell them at trailer supply houses. Since my cord and main breaker were sized for 30 amps , it was not a problem.

But here is the situation with a 50 amp service. If someone had a 50 amp 240 volt receptacle in their trailer spot and decided they wanted to modify their connection so they could plug in and get 50 amps at 120- volts , they could be heading for serious problems. If the wiring on the trailer is not of a large enough size , you have an extremely grave risk of burning your trailer down :{ . Anyhow ,what I'm saying is , make sure what you are doing is correct , or , like the disclaimers always say , "call a licensed electrician ".

 

[RustyJC]

With a dog-bone adapter, our 50 amp 5ver can always use a 30 amp site if that's all that is available. When 50 amp is available, we can run both A/C's, the washer-dryer and anything else we want.



With a 30 amp RV, you're always limited on power consumption, even if you're sitting at a 50 amp site.



We've had both - we'll stick with 50 amp every time.



And, yes, by changing the shore power cord and plug, plug to power distribution panel wiring and the power distribution panel itself, you can convert a 30 amp RV to 50 amp service. There are a number of threads on iRV2.com discussing these conversions with instructions by those who have done it.



Rusty

 

[MDW]

30 to 50

I did it in my Avion, it was a pain but I would do it again its great.

We now have 3 A/Cs in the trailer and washer/dryer, etc...

We had to run a 6/4 in replacement of the 10/3 wire and remove a bunch of switches that separated the power distribution so you couldnt run to many things at once when it was 30amp.

I will say though we havent had any problems finding 50 amp service but we don't travel very much.

If I had it to do over I would have passed on any trailer that wasn't 50amp.



Good luck