Has anyone ever used a 45 AMP adapter?
I usually require a 50 amp outlet to power my coach but sometimes, all I can get is 30 amps. A year ago I saw this nifty 50 amp adapter that had two ends, a 30 amp male plus a 15 amp mail leading...
Forum Discussion
DrewE wrote:Thanks Drew, I had no idea. Sounds like good advice.
I would suggest throwing the "45A" adapter in the trash. IMHO those things are dangerous, or potentially dangerous, especially if there is a fault in the pedestal wiring.
Basically, it connects one leg of the 50A to the 30A plug and the other to the 15A plug. The neutral (and ground) are connected to both. There are several problems or potential problems with this arrangement:
1. As you've found out, it creates (what looks like) a ground fault that will trip a GFCI every time. Since the NEC requires that all 15A or 20A outlets that are outdoors be GFCI protected, the chance of this not happening is quite slim.
2. If there are any 240V devices in your RV (which is not the usual case), you can readily have a live exposed male plug.
3. If there is an outlet with reversed polarity, connecting the adapter creates a short circuit and leaving one end unconnected creates a live male plug.
4. If there is an open or poor neutral connection on one of the outlets, the other neutral may well be overloaded. If the two outlets are on the same phase, it almost certainly will be; and if it's the 30A neutral that's open, the 15A one will carry up to 45A--a quite significant overload, and enough to be more than a theoretical fire hazard.
In the meantime, I think I'll check all my outlets to see if any have reversed polarity. That could be one reason it's tripping. But that would only be the case if something was plugged into the outlet, right?
