thejustin wrote:
mark_be wrote:
Found anything yet?
Here is what I have found....
The converter is indeed charging the house batteries when either the onboard generator is running or plugged into my Yamaha generator. The GFI on my garage outlet trips as soon as I plug in there. I opened the electrical access panel and see the power converter is plugged into a GFI outlet in the access panel under the camper. If I unplug it from there, and run an extension cord and plug it into a different outlet and then connect my shore power, everything works fine. Going to try replacing the GFI outlet under there and see if that fixes the problem....
Do I understand you correctly? This is how I understand it: you unplug the converter at the GFI socket and use an extension cord to another socket inside the RV where you plug in the converter? Correct?
And if it's correct, do you reset the GFI socket before plugging the RV back into shore power?
If you didn't reset it, then my idea is that there is something else on the same circuit that trips the GFI inside the RV. In that case should the garage GFI trip as soon as you reset the GFI inside the RV while testing with your extension cable.
If all what I'm saying is still correct, then is the biggest suspect still the electric water heater IMO.
Would it be possible to measure volts between the 2 wires and the ground wire somewhere while running the generator? You should measure zero volts ON GENERATOR (*) if there's nothing wrong, but you'll probably measure 110 volts between one wire and the ground wire. (You can measure at any free socket, if you'd like)
(*) that's why the GFI doesn't trip when testing on generator, because your generator is not actually grounded, unlike your garage socket. FYI: it is not unsafe when your generator is running while you have an earth fault in your system. Your generator works by the same principle as an
isolation transformer.
