We have a cheater box hook up to 20 & 30 amp receptacles. The 20 amp has trip a couple of times and the AC has quite working! So I am thinking the air is working off the 20 amp. If I switch the 30 amp plugs around on the cheater box will the AC be pulling off the 30 amp?Thanks for all comments

Here is a neat discussion about your subject line...CHEATER ADAPTERSI added some diagrams of the various cheater cords in this link...The one that scares me the worse is having two MALE PLUGs on one end and a FEMALE SOCKET on the other like when using one of these adapters.What you don't want to happen is plug in one MALE PLUG to a 30A Pedestal and then read a 120VAC potential on the open OTHER MALE PLUG on the 20A Plug. Having a HOT MALE plug laying around can be real dangerous...Normally if you plug in both of the MALE PLUGS first and then plug your 50A Trailer plug into the adpater next will solve this problem...If you don't flip your main 50A Breaker in the trailer and plug one of the MAL PLUGS into the source you may indeed have a 120VAC POTENTIAL on the other MALE PLUG before you plug it into the source. I would think plugging in BOTH MALE PLUGS first and then plugging in the 50AMP Trailer MALE PLUG into the FEMALE SIDE of the adpater next would be the safe way... I have no idea how the Electic manageent systems or GFCI receptacles on your trailer react to the adapters... I think it depends on how the camp ground pedestals are wired up. Normally the 30A receptacle and the 20A Receptacle are wired on the same hot leg of the pedstal fed by separate breakers is what I have found...Reading the above link you see alot of modifications to the varios situations is done to make this idea work at the various different wired up camp ground pedestals...Like I said in the link listed above "Be safe out there" haha... Hope my diagrams and pictorials listed in the above link helpsThe only RV ADAPER I have played with any is the RV30A-15A ADAPTER to hook up my POPUP trailer to my 2KW Honda generator to charge my batteries... It is pretty straight foward... Roy Ken

Every time this comes up, I feel the need to remind folks that although this cheater cord gets you 50 amps at your 50 amp plug, 50 amps service at the pedestal is 2-50 amp circuits for a total of 100 amps. Using the cheater gets you HALF the normal amps.

RoyB wrote:Here is a neat discussion about your subject line...CHEATER ADAPTERSI added some diagrams of the various cheater cords in this link...The one that scares me the worse is having two MALE PLUGs on one end and a FEMALE SOCKET on the other like when using one of these adapters.What you don't want to happen is plug in one MALE PLUG to a 30A Pedestal and then read a 120VAC potential on the open OTHER MALE PLUG on the 20A Plug. Having a HOT MALE plug laying around can be real dangerous...Roy KenI don't disagree in the least that having a hot male plug is a very dangerous situation (and not permitted by code). However, assuming everything is wired properly and there are no 240V appliances in the RV, this cheater cannot create a hot male plug under any usage condition. If one or both of the outlets are miswired, say by having their hot and neutral reversed, then it can have a hot male plug, and cause other problems like producing a dead short when both plugs are inserted. That's true regardless of whether there's an RV connected.The bigger problem is that these create a sort of ground fault by bridging the neutrals. (It's not technically a ground fault, since it's not current flowing through the ground that shouldn't be, but it properly trips a correctly working GFCI.) Should one of the neutrals to one of the campground sockets be open or have a high impedance, it's quite possible to significantly overload the other neutral, particularly if the two sockets are on the same phase which is quite common. You could have a 50A current on the 20A neutral line without tripping any circuit breakers.I would not feel comfortable using one of these cheater cords. I'm rather surprised they're permitted at all, to be honest.

I don't understand the part that sayswant-a-be wrote:......If I switch the 30 amp plugs around on the cheater box will the AC be pulling off the 30 amp?If you cheater box has two male 30 amp plugs and you use a 30 to 20 amp adapter on one of those male plugs (to adapt one of your 30 amp plugs to the campgrounds 20 amp outlet), then yes, switching the 30 amp male plugs will move the A/C to the other phase (if the pedestal is wired using two phases).NOTE: I can see where a "cheater box" could come in handy but a understanding of A/C wiring and a meter would seem to be a necessity. I would think the campground panel would need to be tested for proper wiring before using the adapter and anyone using such a device should know which side of the adapter would benefit from the 30 amps and which side could still function on the 20 amp phase. If I expected to have to use one of these devices< I might even move some of the wiring round in my RV's panel so I could "adjust the loads" to cope with the 20 amp phase.EDIT: One more thing to worry about is the cheater plug is hanging out in the rain. Isn't that lovely?If I owned a campground these devices would not be permitted.

Electric Cheater Box | Good Sam Community

DrewE
Explorer II
Jun 22, 2016
Rick Jay wrote:

DrewE, while I agree with most of your summary, I believe there CAN be a situation where a male plug WILL heat up. Let's assume there's 15Amps flowing into the 20A male plug and 25A flowing into the 30A male plug. Both 20A and 30A breakers think everything is OK and will not trip. However, the neutrals to each plug are connected together and there is no way to determine HOW that 40A of combined current will get back to the neutral in the power pedestal. Maybe it'll split 15A/25A just like it did through the hots OR maybe it'll flow 10A through the 30A neutral and 30A through the 20A neutral. There is no way to be sure, and since the breakers don't protect the neutral wiring, there definitely could be an overheating and potential fire hazard issue should this occur.

I mostly agree with this, and that's one reason why I don't like or recommend these. There is in fact a way to determine how the current will split (namely, through application of ohm's law), but the impedance differences could very easily work out such that it's not splitting the way it ought to for safety. It's much more certain to be problematic if there's a poor or broken neutral connection. In the case of an open neutral, where you'd get no power without the cheater, you get power with a reasonable possibility of fire on the side...not a very comforting tradeoff.

It was perhaps a poor choice of words, but I meant "hot" in the sense of "electrically live" rather than in the sense of "having a high temperature" with the comment you're referring to. With proper wiring and no 240V appliances in the RV, there's no way one of the two male plugs to be electrically live if it's unplugged and the other one is in use. If either of those preconditions conditions is untrue, then there could be the possibility a (dangerous) live male plug.

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