Did I blow my converter?

drsteve wrote:

Bobbo wrote:
We are all missing something here. We are all so attuned to 30 amp RV outlets, that is what we are discussing. That is NOT what was said in the first post. Here is what he actually said (edited down to the pertinent lines).

rpetritsch wrote:
When I built the house I had the electrical install a 30amp service in order to connect to a generator. I connected the mh to the outlet.

He did not have a 30 amp RV outlet installed. He had a 30 amp outlet installed to backfeed his house from a generator. (Illegal and dangerous way to do it, but that is another discussion.) Now, whoever wired this up assumed that the generator would be a 240v generator so they wired up the outlet's current carrying wires to feed both sides of the panel, probably with the third pin attached to the neutral buss bar in the breaker box (although attaching it to the ground buss bar would have identical results).

The lack of electrical knowledge demonstrated in using an outlet to backfeed a generator into a house indicates that the lack of electrical knowledge could cause a 3 wire outlet to be used, and wired as 2 hots and a neutral (or ground). Of course, the RV expected to see 1 hot, 1 neutral, and a ground.

Now, he had a 30 amp 240v outlet wired up, and hooked his 30 amp 120v RV to it, with predictable results.

The question is, why a 30A 125V RV outlet, which has a different pin configuration than a 30A 250V outlet of any sort, was used? The OP should not have been able to plug his RV cord in to this outlet, since it was meant to backfeed a 240V generator.

This is the answer to the question of "Why?".

Bobbo wrote:
The lack of electrical knowledge demonstrated in using an outlet to backfeed a generator into a house indicates that the lack of electrical knowledge could cause a 3 wire outlet to be used

I suspect that all of this was done by someone who didn't know what they were doing.

Dusty R wrote:
A device to plug a generator into in not an "outlet" but an "inlet".

Yes, but the OP stipulated that he had a "service" installed to power the house from a generator. If he had installed an actual power inlet, he would never have been able to plug his RV into it. I suspect he installed an outlet and planned to use a suicide cord to backfeed it.