50 Amp Surge Protector

Maxtar wrote:

Bumpyroad wrote:
what is "reverse polarity" on a 50 amp outlet? I can see on a 30 amper where the hot and neutral could be reversed, but on a 50 amp outlet if one of the hots was switched with the neutral making the neutral hot, you would have a hot to hot connection???????? wouldn't that be sort of a "mess"?
bumpy

I know, that's what I was thinking. You've got 2 110 amp lines coming off the box, so what difference to which side it is hooked up inside the box make?

It doesn't make a difference when the 2 hot sides are swapped and that will not create a fault...

Hot to neutral will create a polarity fault.

Bumpyroad wrote:
what is "reverse polarity" on a 50 amp outlet? I can see on a 30 amper where the hot and neutral could be reversed, but on a 50 amp outlet if one of the hots was switched with the neutral making the neutral hot, you would have a hot to hot connection???????? wouldn't that be sort of a "mess"?
bumpy

I know, that's what I was thinking. You've got 2 110 amp lines coming off the box, so what difference to which side it is hooked up inside the box make?

Renee, you have a nice set-up but Larry only has a small Honda so he can get by with this ->

ken white wrote:

larry barnhart wrote:
thanks for the come back. More than a carpenter can understand. I can do something different for our needs using a Honda invert 1000. thanks again
chevman

Larry, all you need to do is to make a Ground to Neutral connection in a dummy plug, plug it into the spare receptacle, and your generator will work without causing a fault.

Larry and Ken - this is what ours looks like -

50A reverse polarity

Hot to ground.......no 120V but ground to neutral shows 120V

Reverse Polarity condition 50A (ground and hot lines coming into the RV are reversed, or an open conductor)

I don't think it matters which hot wire is hooked up to the two hot screws on the outlet. even if it was wired with both hots from the same breaker source wouldn't matter as it would deliver 120 to both legs, but of course no 240 which I assume 90% of the RVs out there do not use. yes in that case it could overload the neutral.
bumpy

larry barnhart wrote:
thanks for the come back. More than a carpenter can understand. I can do something different for our needs using a Honda invert 1000. thanks again
chevman

Larry, all you need to do is to make a Ground to Neutral connection in a dummy plug, plug it into the spare receptacle, and your generator will work without causing a fault.

thanks for the come back. More than a carpenter can understand. I can do something different for our needs using a Honda invert 1000. thanks again
chevman

larry barnhart wrote:

ReneeG wrote:
I can't tell you how many times our surge protector has protected our unit by detecting bad wiring - has happened a lot in state campgrounds. We're always questioned too and they think it's our rig, then we run off the generator (clean power) and prove it to them.

Renee what generator do you have? We have had the surge protector since 2001 and a 2000 Honda inverter gen would shut off because the surge protector would not allow that low of power to enter the fifth.

chevman

The surge protector detects an open ground with the Honda eu2000, but DH made a "cheater" box similar to one in this thread and the open ground no longer occurs - open ground correction

Bumpyroad wrote:

ken white wrote:

Bumpyroad wrote:
what is "reverse polarity" on a 50 amp outlet? I can see on a 30 amper where the hot and neutral could be reversed, but on a 50 amp outlet if one of the hots was switched with the neutral making the neutral hot, you would have a hot to hot connection???????? wouldn't that be sort of a "mess"?
bumpy

No different than at your house where you typically have a 240 VAC service entrance with 2 - 120 VAC branches out of phase.

The transformer secondary acts as a voltage source and unless the 2 hots are shorted together, there won't be an issue.

EDIT: Poor spelling... :(

that still does not clarify it. in 50 amp hookup, you normally have two hots and a neutral (ignoring ground) if anything is hooked up wrong you have two hots together, they are shorted together and should be an issue.
bumpy

bumpy, it is no different than a branch in your house having this issue...

The pedestal is just a 4-wire branch circuit, and in this installation, the wires were connected to the wrong terminals.

If the 2 hot wires were out of phase, then 240 VAC would be applied to a 120 VAC branch and all of the smoke would be let out.

If the 2 hot wires were in phase, the device under load would see a zero voltage difference in potential. EDIT: This occurs when the campground wires a 30 amp service into a 50 amp service socket - fake setup...

Without knowing exactly what occurred, all we can do is speculate.