Electrical Issues
Hi all my first post here because of issues. My brother has a Wilderness 5th wheel and it started having issues with power. Sometimes it will run fine but with out warning it will lose power. It will ...
Forum Discussion
OK, so the GFCI is tripping. It's probably not the GFCI itself that's bad, since more than one are doing the same thing; so you have a problem in the RV wiring. A portable generator works fine because (most) are not equipped with a GFCI.
You have a ground fault of some sort in the RV. One common cause is a bit of water getting in to the outside outlet, or some other semi-exposed AC wiring (such as the fridge compartment). There are other possible causes, too.
Basically, there are two things that cause a GFCI to trip. One is when there's any leakage of current--that is, when the current going in the hot wire is different from the current coming back the neutral wire. A small leakage to ground somewhere causes this situation; and or wet wire connections can allow that leakage through the water. It could also be a fault in some device or appliance; water heater and RV fridge heating elements are common culprits for that.
The other thing that causes GFCIs to trip is a short between neutral and ground, even if there's no current imbalance. That would be due to a wiring problem: a ground wire in the RV electric panel that touches the neutral bus bar, a staple through an AC wire, a pinched or chafed wire....
You may be able to track down where the fault lies by selectively turning breakers in the RV off; if one breaker being turned on causes the GFI to trip, whatever is causing it would be somewhere in that particular circuit. This won't help isolate a neutral to ground fault, since the breaker doesn't cut off either of those wires.
Note that a GFCI in itself is not a fuse or circuit breaker, and doesn't trip due to excess current/power usage. (A GFCI breaker in a breaker panel does, since it's a dual-function device: a circuit breaker and a GFCI.)
You have a ground fault of some sort in the RV. One common cause is a bit of water getting in to the outside outlet, or some other semi-exposed AC wiring (such as the fridge compartment). There are other possible causes, too.
Basically, there are two things that cause a GFCI to trip. One is when there's any leakage of current--that is, when the current going in the hot wire is different from the current coming back the neutral wire. A small leakage to ground somewhere causes this situation; and or wet wire connections can allow that leakage through the water. It could also be a fault in some device or appliance; water heater and RV fridge heating elements are common culprits for that.
The other thing that causes GFCIs to trip is a short between neutral and ground, even if there's no current imbalance. That would be due to a wiring problem: a ground wire in the RV electric panel that touches the neutral bus bar, a staple through an AC wire, a pinched or chafed wire....
You may be able to track down where the fault lies by selectively turning breakers in the RV off; if one breaker being turned on causes the GFI to trip, whatever is causing it would be somewhere in that particular circuit. This won't help isolate a neutral to ground fault, since the breaker doesn't cut off either of those wires.
Note that a GFCI in itself is not a fuse or circuit breaker, and doesn't trip due to excess current/power usage. (A GFCI breaker in a breaker panel does, since it's a dual-function device: a circuit breaker and a GFCI.)
