On my daughter’s camper her AC wasn’t working. I took my 3 light tester and plugged it into an AC outlet in her camper and it showed reversed polarity. Stared checking and found that the 30 amp plug on the surge protector was not pushed in all the way. When I pushed it in all the way the AC was working.
My friend's Class A is showing reversed polarity in just one AC circuit. We unplugged and checked wiring in all receptacles on that circuit and replaced one damaged receptacle. Problem persists. Suspect circuit is 20A, likely GFCI.
This issue turned up at the same time house batteries were switched to Lithium batteries. I can't see how that switch could be revant, but just sayin'.
Good sleuthing Mike! An open ground bond combined with a reversed ground and neutral would be a dangerous combination with respect to a hot skin condition!
Plus the hot-skin voltage would come and go as an appliance plugged into the affected receptacle was switched on and off. This could explain seemingly random hot-skin voltage occurrences.
And I’m pretty sure that an upstream Advanced/EMS Surge Protector on the pedestal won’t be able to discover this condition, so it won’t disconnect power from an RV if this hot-skin situation occurs.
You might want to make a video of a demo of this and send it to the surge protector companies. Better yet, first file a patent on how to detect it if you can figure out a way. Hard to detect two simultaneous electrical faults but there’s may be a way. 😀
Here is our post from there. Sorry, it’s a bit long!
Hoping for some help. For second year in a row we have had hot skin. We first thought it was our dogbone adapter changed it last year and seemed to fix the issue
This year when we went to open up the same thing happened. We changed dogbone again yesterday and got no voltage reading as we continued to open the trailer (filling tires, balancing, etc.), my daughter thought it would be fun to play with the voltage meter. I heard it going off and we stopped everything the trailer was again hot skinned.
I noticed the plug into the rv was a bit droopy. My husband this time came and screwed it in. I don’t think we have ever done that before as he seemed surprised there was an option to screw it in.
The rest of the day we didnt have any hot skin reading issues .
My quesion is simple: can a loose rv cord connection at the trailer cause hot skin? I am hoping the answer is a simple yes since there were no further readings after it was properly tightened, but I don’t know enough about that question to feel comfortable at the moment. We came home last night, so haven’t been there today to see if an issue has popped up or not.
I did a google search, but didn't find an answer, just things like receptacles and such. I Watched all the RV electricity youtube videos, but nothing about this being a possibility. I doubt it is a trailer wiring issue since it goes away when we tightened or replaced things at the cords. We also have a guard dog surge protector that tells us that our post wiring is perfectly fine. So not that either. I am thinking just everytime we were nudging the loose cord we must've been creating a short or something? Is that a thing?
Our set up is:
Surge protector to 30/50 dogbone adapter to trailer 50 amp cord, into trailer. Never before screwed in, but is now.
We suspect this maybe our issue we are currently having and I have an electrician coming on Friday to test the whole trailer. But I am a dunce when it comes to this stuff. Is there anything specific I should tell him? When I called he said it sounded like a missing ground somewhere, but this post brings up another point completely which because of our intermittent hot skin may be our issue.
Posted on the Facebook group yesterday as Liz Plucky-Planner and someone sent me the link for this post.
On my daughter’s camper her AC wasn’t working. I took my 3 light tester and plugged it into an AC outlet in her camper and it showed reversed polarity. Stared checking and found that the 30 amp plug on the surge protector was not pushed in all the way. When I pushed it in all the way the AC was working.
Exactly.... And there would have been a hot-skin voltage on the RV while the 30-amp plug was not pushed in all the way.
My friend's Class A is showing reversed polarity in just one AC circuit. We unplugged and checked wiring in all receptacles on that circuit and replaced one damaged receptacle. Problem persists. Suspect circuit is 20A, likely GFCI.
This issue turned up at the same time house batteries were switched to Lithium batteries. I can't see how that switch could be revant, but just sayin'.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Good sleuthing Mike! An open ground bond combined with a reversed ground and neutral would be a dangerous combination with respect to a hot skin condition!
Plus the hot-skin voltage would come and go as an appliance plugged into the affected receptacle was switched on and off. This could explain seemingly random hot-skin voltage occurrences.
Yes, that is insanely scary. Someone turns on a hair dryer when someone else grabs the door and …. It’s hard to imagine how bad that could turn out.
And I’m pretty sure that an upstream Advanced/EMS Surge Protector on the pedestal won’t be able to discover this condition, so it won’t disconnect power from an RV if this hot-skin situation occurs.
You might want to make a video of a demo of this and send it to the surge protector companies. Better yet, first file a patent on how to detect it if you can figure out a way. Hard to detect two simultaneous electrical faults but there’s may be a way. 😀
I already know how to automatically detect it…. 😎
Here is our post from there. Sorry, it’s a bit long!
Hoping for some help. For second year in a row we have had hot skin. We first thought it was our dogbone adapter changed it last year and seemed to fix the issue
This year when we went to open up the same thing happened. We changed dogbone again yesterday and got no voltage reading as we continued to open the trailer (filling tires, balancing, etc.), my daughter thought it would be fun to play with the voltage meter. I heard it going off and we stopped everything the trailer was again hot skinned.
I noticed the plug into the rv was a bit droopy. My husband this time came and screwed it in. I don’t think we have ever done that before as he seemed surprised there was an option to screw it in.
The rest of the day we didnt have any hot skin reading issues .
My quesion is simple: can a loose rv cord connection at the trailer cause hot skin? I am hoping the answer is a simple yes since there were no further readings after it was properly tightened, but I don’t know enough about that question to feel comfortable at the moment. We came home last night, so haven’t been there today to see if an issue has popped up or not.
I did a google search, but didn't find an answer, just things like receptacles and such. I Watched all the RV electricity youtube videos, but nothing about this being a possibility. I doubt it is a trailer wiring issue since it goes away when we tightened or replaced things at the cords. We also have a guard dog surge protector that tells us that our post wiring is perfectly fine. So not that either. I am thinking just everytime we were nudging the loose cord we must've been creating a short or something? Is that a thing?
Our set up is:
Surge protector to 30/50 dogbone adapter to trailer 50 amp cord, into trailer. Never before screwed in, but is now.
We suspect this maybe our issue we are currently having and I have an electrician coming on Friday to test the whole trailer. But I am a dunce when it comes to this stuff. Is there anything specific I should tell him? When I called he said it sounded like a missing ground somewhere, but this post brings up another point completely which because of our intermittent hot skin may be our issue.
Posted on the Facebook group yesterday as Liz Plucky-Planner and someone sent me the link for this post.
Thanks so much!
Good on you Mike! Go for it!