Trailer shocked me...HARD!
Our trailer is new. We've camped in it about 10 nights so far. No issues, until yesterday. It was raining very, very heavily. I stepped out to put things away. One hand on the support handle an...
Forum Discussion
robsouth wrote:
Check pedastal for correct polarity. Likely wired incorrectly puting the hot side to your camper instead of the neutral. Could also be ground fault at the pedastal. I would suspect that first. Do you have a polarity checker with you? If not get one, and check every pedastal before plugging in. May be something else, but I would start there.
If wired to code this would NOT result in a shock. By code the trailer ground is to ONLY be connected to ground. Neutral MUST NOT BE BONDED TO GROUND Neutral will be completely isolated from ground and the trailer frame. neutral/ground bonding is against code at the trailer.
If the trailer has a GFI circuit, they will also trip if they see neutral/ground bonding downstream of the GFI device.
Therefore even if hot and neutral are reversed, the trailer frame is at ground potential and the only way to get across a 120V potential is to also be touching in some form the hot or neutral wire or connection, not the trailer frame.
and by code, anything he has plugged in also must have the ground and neutral isolated.
The OP would only get a shock for hot/ground reversed if he is touching a neutral Wire and earth ground. Which doesn't sound like he was doing.
So. two possiblities are
1) pedistal ground isn't really ground
2) trailer ground is bonded to neutral in the trailer against code and pedistal hot and neutral are reversed.
3) trailer ground isn't connected to ground but to neutral and hot/neutral reversed, or trailer ground connected to hot
maybe a few others. the post above by john&bet describes a very possible senerio on how the frame could end up hot.
