50 amp cheater box

BillyBob Jim wrote:
At the campground I am familiar with its not going to work. It will work from the standpoint that you will power up both legs of your 50 amp system, but you're not going to have more than 30 amps.

The main feed is 30 amp, the 20 amp receptacle is tapped off of that 30 amp feed. They did not run a separate/independent 20 and 30 amp feeds to the pedestal. If they would of done that they would of simply installed a 50/30/20 pedestal and if they would of, that would not mean you can somehow dog-bone 100 amps out of it.

I bought a park that was exactly that way. Nothing at all wrong or out of code. The feeder wiring fed a 30 amp breaker that fed both the 30 amp receptacle and a 20 amp breaker. The 20 amp breaker fed the 20 amp receptacle. Draw more than 30 amps from both receptacles combined and the 30 amp breaker trips. That wiring was actually over-protected since there was a 30 amp breaker at the box and the box was wired back to the distribution panel where another 30 amp breaker protected the line. Also, since there is only one leg of power feeding both the 30 and the 20 your energy management system would see 0 volts instead of 240 volts between the two legs if you one of those cheater boxes and automatically know you are connected to 30 amp power. You would gain nothing by using one of those cheater boxes over just using the normal 30 to 50 adapter.
The park ran just fine other than 50 amp rigs often tripped the breakers for that first year. After that, we upgraded all the sites to 50 amp service.
FYI, that is a BIG job! You have to run all new underground wiring, add distribution panels, repair all the roads and sites that are crossed and then redo all the landscaping. And it has to be done when the ground is thawed and the park is closed or you lose revenue. That is a very small time window and the weather is much less than ideal. Thank the high holy it is a one and done job.