Deadly Campground Pedestal Hookup!
What were they thinking?
Everyone,
I’ve seen some pretty crazy and dangerous campground hookups, and this one is certainly in my Top 10.
Why is this dangerous?
The biggest danger is if one white/neutral wire is pulled out of the 30-amp pedestal outlet it would be energized with 120-volts. That’s because the voltage on the black/hot wire would feed through the resistance of the appliances pugged into it, and back out the neutral wire. So while the appliance would stop working, it would provide enough current on the neutral to severely shock or kill you.
Since there’s no GFCI protection on this outlet, if the green ground wire pops out of the outlet, there’s a potential shock hazard if anything goes wrong in any appliance plugged into this jury-rigged extension cord.
There’s less chance of an electrical fire from overloading the skinny extension cord being plugging into a 30-amp outlet because that outlet strip most likely has it’s own 15-amp circuit breaker.
How to do it right!
All they needed to do this safely would be a 30-to-15 amp adapter plug like this one. I use these all the time in my lab for testing and they work pretty well. But they don’t have GFCI protection, so it’s extremely important that the ground pins on any extension cords are intact. You can get this Camco adapter plug for less than $10 HERE.
Make it safer
Since these adapters don’t limit the load current, it’s possihble to overload any extension cord plugged into it that has a heavy load, such as an the combination of an electric griddle and slow cookers. So an power strip with a 15-amp circuit breaker is still a good idea. You can get for around $10 on Amazon HERE.
Let’s play safe out there… Mike
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Those 30>15 amp adapters are also useful for quickly checking 30 amp outlets with an outlet tester (that we all carry, right?) that is 15 amp configured.
At the large aerospace company where I worked, plastic molded strips were forbidden by our in house fire department. All had to have metal cases for increased safety. I have adopted that practice at home.