Pedestals open grounds.
I know open grounds are a serious and sometimes deadly safety hazard. Haven't thought a whole lot about it until we stayed at a Thousand Trails last year and our EMS shut us down on an open ground. So for this season I bought a receptacle tester so I can check a pedestal before backing in. It's a Greenlee GT-10 which I got at an electrical wholesaler and should be top quality.
I just arrived at another Thousand Trails CG a few hours ago for the long weekend in the US. I tested 3 pedestals in a row and they all showed an open ground. The 4th site I tested showed it was okay. I mentioned it to the CG manager and a maintenance guy came around and checked them. I just went over to a fellow camper's site that I had previously tested and chatted about what I found earlier. So we tried my tester and it still shows an open ground. Then I went and retested our pedestal and it now says it has an open ground. But our PI EMS has not shut the power off.
So is my tester faulty or can there be an open ground situation that the EMS does not detect? The area of the campground I am in floods over the winter and supposedly drowns pad-mounted transformers and some pedestals so it is possible for wiring & connections to be faulty. Could this entire section of the CG possibly have a problem with grounding? My tester worked fine when I tried it at home. My voltmeter shows 120 volts from the ground pin to the hot though.
I just checked the tester one last time and now it says our site is okay. Maybe there's an intermittent ground somewhere? The wiring in this CG is so old there are no 20 amp recepts. in the pedestals (as required by NEC for some time).
I just arrived at another Thousand Trails CG a few hours ago for the long weekend in the US. I tested 3 pedestals in a row and they all showed an open ground. The 4th site I tested showed it was okay. I mentioned it to the CG manager and a maintenance guy came around and checked them. I just went over to a fellow camper's site that I had previously tested and chatted about what I found earlier. So we tried my tester and it still shows an open ground. Then I went and retested our pedestal and it now says it has an open ground. But our PI EMS has not shut the power off.
So is my tester faulty or can there be an open ground situation that the EMS does not detect? The area of the campground I am in floods over the winter and supposedly drowns pad-mounted transformers and some pedestals so it is possible for wiring & connections to be faulty. Could this entire section of the CG possibly have a problem with grounding? My tester worked fine when I tried it at home. My voltmeter shows 120 volts from the ground pin to the hot though.
I just checked the tester one last time and now it says our site is okay. Maybe there's an intermittent ground somewhere? The wiring in this CG is so old there are no 20 amp recepts. in the pedestals (as required by NEC for some time).
