Electrical Issue

Yes you have a grounding problem.
Open your power distribution panel and verify the white and the green wire on your main power cable are not connected together.
Get an electrician to help you if you need it.

Call me if you want.
Jerry Parr
602-321-8141

Short answer is yes you do.
Assuming you have a good 30-20 adapter, experience has taught me that 90% of the time it is a water heater element that has failed, next is the electric element in the refrigerator.
Quick troubleshooting is to turn the water heater breaker off and unplug the refrigerator, then plug the coach back into the GFI and see if it trips.
If the GFI trips with refrigerator unplugged & WH breaker off time to look at power cord / adapter & overall wiring.
If not, turn on the WH breaker and see if the GFI trips. If not plug the refrigerator in and again see if the GFI trips.

try this test. turn off the gfi circuit in your RV. plug into a GFI shore power and let us know if it trips.

This raises the question, why are 30A pedestals not protected by GFCIs. I believe it is because there could be a lot of false trips due to the normal leakage current expected from any individual RV AC distribution of capacitance. JMO.

Harvard wrote:
This raises the question, why are 30A pedestals not protected by GFCIs. I believe it is because there could be a lot of false trips due to the normal leakage current expected from any individual RV AC distribution of capacitance. JMO.

I suspect it's just the NEC editors haven't gotten around to thinking about it yet. 30A GFCI circuit breakers are available. (One could reasonably ask why 50A RV pedestal outlets are likewise not GFCI protected; two pole GFCI breakers do likewise exist, though they are not exactly inexpensive.

I don't think too many RVs cause false GFCI trips due to expected capacitance or leakage in the electrical system (though that is indeed a possibility sometimes). Rather, I think most trips are caused by people having wiring faults (such as neutral/ground faults) or other problems they don't know about, problems that are a potential hazard. Fridge or water heater elements that are breaking down and leaking current to ground are one distinct possibility. I don't have any actual data to back this up, however.

If GFCIs were to be required, it may possibly make sense to have the fault current trip limit a little less sensitive than for standard 20A GFCIs.

Common problem. My last three RV's did the same thing. I am not an electrical engineer, but I think somehow the GFI outlets and RV's don't like each other. I would not worry about it.

DownTheAvenue, I like your answer. I’ll go with it.

Common problem, probably nothing wrong. GFCI RVs do not like to be plugged into GFCI outlets.

I think this is a problem with the way the fuse box is wired in the RV's in that the white wire is grounded inside the fuse boxes, so if there is any current passing back through the ground, the gfi will trip as you now have both the white and the ground that can pass current rather than just the White..

77rollalong wrote:
I think this is a problem with the way the fuse box is wired in the RV's in that the white wire is grounded inside the fuse boxes, so if there is any current passing back through the ground, the gfi will trip as you now have both the white and the ground that can pass current rather than just the White..

Nope. The white neutrals are not connected to the grounds. This doesn't happen until it gets back to the campground main service. Pedestals and RV's neutral are floating. and not connected to the grounds.

GFI's are special built to detect a 5 MA leak hot to neutral and neutral to ground.

Remove your panel cover and have a look inside. They have separate ground bars. The grounds are bonded to the frame of the RV.