FW Comes in Handy!

We've been sleeping in our camper almost every night this entire Summer, except when on the road. Only rarely do we sleep in the house. This will change in the winter, too much $$$ to heat the camper every night. But weather has been good this Summer, not too hot. Best thing we could have done was to install that 30 amp service for the camper. Since you have the 30 amp service and you can park at home, why not spend more time in the camper? It's a GREAT get away and it makes you feel like your camping all the time!

TomHayCraft,
I ran a 30 amp service in my garage. It has a 100 amp service, so I had lots of blanks in the breaker panel. My garage (not attached to the house) is insulated and paneled inside, so I removed the paneling around the breaker box and a section of panel where I wanted to put the outside hookup.

I then went to Lowes, talked to the guys in the electrical department and they fixed me up with the correct wire. I ended up getting 100 foot, measuring the distance from the panel, the to rafters, across the garage to the other side, and then down the opposite wall. It turned out to be about 80 feet.

I went ahead and strung the wire myself. I took it to the breaker panel and left it dangling. I went to my local RV dealer (Modern Trailer Sales, Anderson, Indiana) and purchased an exterior 30 amp box. (I found out later that Lowes had them also, about $10 cheaper, but not as nice). I like the set-up of this one, so it was a good selection.

I then ran the wire outside the wall through a short PVC (gray color) conduit and into the outlet box. I did not connect to the actual plug.

All the wire, plug, and everything was in place. I then had an electrician make the connection in the breaker panel, and he attached the wires to the plug in the outside box, and the election provided the correct breaker fuse.

The electrician and breaker fuse cost me $100. The wire cost me about $50 and about $20 for conduit. (I think, it's been a while), and I did the labor of running the wire myself to save labor costs from the electrician.

It took me a couple days to remove the panel, run the wire (because I ran everything through conduit from fuse box to outside connection (found out by the electrician I did not need to do that, but he was very impressed anyway). It took the electrician 10 minutes (no kidding) to hook up all the wires and install the breaker.

He flipped the breaker and I had power to the camper! We've run the air conditioner and all the electronics just fine in this camper ever since.

What I'm suggesting is, if you run the wire yourself, get the outside electric box and prep everything ahead of time, you can have an electrician do the final connections and get out much cheaper than you may expect. For a couple hundred dollars, you can have a safe and convenient power source for those times you do have the camper at home. Just a suggestion how you can do it and reduce the expense. Good luck!

TomHaycraft wrote:
Just the "rationale" (and no, don't read that as "excuse"!) I need to have a 30A line run in garage. Couldn't quite justify expense for the couple hours the trailer is parked in our driveway to unload and wash after trips. With a home A/C unit that is 12+ years old, I know we are on borrowed time and as luck can have it, early Friday evenings seem to have a high probability of being linked to failures!

If your not doing it yourself besure the electrician knows that it is a 110v circuit. There have been several horror stories where it was connected as a 220 line and messed up everything.

Just the "rationale" (and no, don't read that as "excuse"!) I need to have a 30A line run in garage. Couldn't quite justify expense for the couple hours the trailer is parked in our driveway to unload and wash after trips. With a home A/C unit that is 12+ years old, I know we are on borrowed time and as luck can have it, early Friday evenings seem to have a high probability of being linked to failures!

We had a straight line wind whip through our Village in June this year. I have a Generac back up natural gas generator that took a lightning strike so I had no A/C or fridge until the power came on 48 hours later. So we slept in the camper for 16 nights in our side yard waiting for the new A/C to be installed. Best 30A service I have ever used. LOL

My 5vr is parked next to house with full hookups.......fridge is always ON & COLD

All we need to is open slideouts and it's a: Emergency shelter, guess house, man-cave etc.

Does make it nice having it right there....ready!