Hot skin issue please help

CA Traveler wrote:

buck2 wrote:
Glad to report everything is fixed it was a bad adapter plug I bought a new one and it took care of it ....thanks everyone for the help

The second apparent problem is a ground fault as indicated by the hot chassis. The new adapter with a good ground can mask a ground fault. Plug the rig into a known good GFI plug and turn various equipment on and off. If the GFI trips then you need to find the ground fault.

I'm Mike Sokol... the author of the NoShockZone.org articles. Please know that just about any appliance plugged into a 120-volt circuit leaks just a little current to its chassis. Most of the time this is a high-impedance fault with fault currents in the sub-milliamp range and not terribly dangerous. However, it can easily turn into a low-impedance fault which is VERY dangerous. A GFCI will trip around 6 mA (milliamperes) of current, so if your appliances are leaking less than that amount of current, then it will drain the hot-skin voltage to ground without tripping. However, any currents over 6 mA will cause a ground-fault trip, exactly what it's SUPPOSED to do. One thing that most people aren't aware of is that a common Surge Protector strip will often leak 2 or 3 mA to ground all by itself due to how MOV's work. So plugging in a pair of "surge strips" can be the cause of GFCI tripping of the 20-amp outlet on the pedestal.

So the real lesson is that you should NEVER have any more than a volt or two on your RV skin or chassis in reference to earth ground. Any more than that indicates a failed safety ground path, typically caused by a broken connection in an extension cord, outlet or adapter. NEVER accept feeling a shock from your RV as that's a sign that your ground has failed and your RV's skin voltage can be elevated to 120 volts by an insulation failure in something as simple as your refrigerator or microwave.

Mike Sokol
mike@noshockzone.org
www.noshockzone.org