profdant139 wrote:
So I plugged the trailer into my 25 foot 12 gauge extension cord and a heavy duty "dogbone," and used my heaviest circuit in my garage. Success! The air conditioning worked perfectly in the trailer -- we had never tried to run it at home.
I later checked the extension cord and the plugs -- they were warm (but not hot) to the touch.
I'm guessing that lots of folks have done something similar, but this was a first for us.
My 31 yr old Carrier A/C here at the house finally cried uncle after 3 recharges over the last 5 yrs. Naturally it waited until this recent heat wave here in the east to fail so last week was pretty miserable in the house. As luck would have it our guests visiting from Downunder had just left so our trailer which we had used to take them camping was still sitting here on the driveway. My recourse to survival in this extended heat wave was to do exactly what you did - run the trailer A/C. Since my closest drop in the workshop is only 15 amp I made up an adapter so I could instead pull from one of the two 30 amp legs that normally feed the house dryer. It works just fine but before I'm chastised once again here on the forums NO I'm not recommending this as a solution for everyone, just saying this is how I solved the issue for myself. :B
If the house service into which you plugged your rig is 20 amp (common in the US but not here in Canada) then I would expect it to work just fine assuming nominal voltage wasn't excessively low but a 10 gauge extension rather than a 12 gauge still would have been a better choice. In my case the 15 amp drop in my workshop
will power my Dometic A/C but even with no extension cables involved voltage drop when the compressor starts is significant and better to be avoided. My 30 amp adapter solution does just that so I'll keep it for future use, if ever necessary.
