HELP AC Outlets blowing devices!
Hello all, I am currently living in a River Canyon 34RLQS0 5th Wheel that is hooked up to electrical power. I am having a odd issue with the electrical in the trailer. Some of the GFI outlets are b...
Forum Discussion
SDrummer wrote:
Also am i checking voltages on the two outlets on the same GFI plug or on different GFI plugs on different sides of the trailer?
Thanks for all the help
Your 50 amp plug actually has 240V across two pins (L1 and L2). Since this is AC they are out of phase with each other and each side is 120V to the neutral. Some things in your trailer are wired to L1/neutral and other things are wired to L2/neutral. When the neutral is open or resistive, things are ok so long as there is a nearly equal load on the L1 side and L2 side. The loads just work in series on 240V, each using 120V. When a heavy (i.e. low resistance) load is applied to one side, it will "drop" less voltage across it and the other side will see a proportionally increased voltage.
To figure out if two receptacles are on different phase, plug an extension cord in to one so you can have it near the other. Put a lead of your volt meter into the hot (smaller) pin of the outlet and the other into the hot pin of the extension cord.. If you see 240V, they are on different phases. If you see 0V, they are on the same phase. If they are on different phases and one is reading low (hot to neutral) while the other is reading high, especially if something is loading one of them, you have a bad neutral. The bad neutral could be anywhere between the panel in your trailer all the way back to the house panel or beyond. In other words the place your plugged into may have the issue.
