Electrical Advice Needed

[beartrace]

I have a standard campground electrical box post which I keep my 5th wheel and truck slide-in camper plugged into when I'm not on the road with one of them.



The box has one 30 amp plug and two 110 amp GFI plugs. When I plug in the slide-in camper to the 110 amp GFI, to keep the batteries charged, using a 110 amp converter plug it blows the GFI. When I plug the slide-in direct into the 30 amp there is no problem at all.



I put the 5th wheel 30 amp cord with the 110 amp converter plug into the same 110 GFI and it works fine.



Any ideas why this would be happening?

 

[RADdodge]

Do you really mean 110 amp or 110 volt. I guess you can rule out the converter plug if it works in one and not the other. When the GFI blows, can you reset it with the load attached? It sounds like the slide in is appearing to the GFI to have a ground fault some where. If you turn off all the circuit breakes in the camper does the GFI blow. If not, you might want to leave it plugged in and turn on the breakers one by one until it does. That way, if the problem is with the camper's wiring, you will at least know where to start looking. Maybe the battery charger in the camper? Need more info. (110 amps is a lot of amps - whew!)

 

[B.G. Smith]

GFI

Sounds like you have eliminated the 30 amp to 15 amp adapter as being the problem although it could be one of the terminals is loseing contact as it is plugged in. You need to check out the ground/electrical system in the slide in. I would start by checking to make sure the ground is correct and secure then as suggested above, turn off all the circuits in the slide in and turn them on one at a time until the problem appears. bg

 

[beartrace]

Sorry about that ! I meant 110 Volts.



I will try the tests that you all suggested. If it were a problem in the camper, I would think that it would blow a breaker or something in the camper when I plug it direct into the 30AMP plug.



To answer your one question: when I reset the GFI it pops immediately.

 

[Rambling]

The GFI trips because the current in the hot(black wire) is not equal to the current in the neutral(white) wire.



It could be neutral and ground are reversed in the slide-in camper. There is no "short" so there the slide-in breakers don't pop.



You could also have a high resistance short that 'leaks' enough current to trip the GFI but not the breakers.



Just a couple of thoughts.

 

[emarsh]

gfi's only work on 2 wire circuits, if you are connecting a gfi device into a 3 wire circuit where you use a common neutral wire, anything plugged downstream into either circuit will cause an imbalance between the protected hot wire and it's common neutral, this will immediately trip the gfi, even with as little as 20 milliamps of differential. The gfi circuit device MUST be connected on a 2 wire dedicated circuit only! No sharing of a common neutral wire.

 

[beartrace]

Problem solved. I tried a new converter plug and now all is well. What really through me off course was that the old converter plug worked on the 5th wheel. Thanks for all the help.

 

[B.G. Smith]

Solution

Thanks for the comeback on the solution, I for one, appreciate knowing what ends up being the solution. Thanks again. bg