a breakers tale

[pianotuna]

Hi all,

Last year I started having a problem with one circuit in the RV.

It was fine on shore power.

When I used the Magnum 3000 hybrid inverter, it would overload the inverter in about 2 seconds.

The circuit involved feeds the gfci in the bathroom, and is daisy chained to the kitchen, as well as a floor plug.

The failure happened 5 or 6 times. I could eliminate the problem by flipping the breaker off. Of course, it is the most used outlet in the RV, making it a nuisance.

This only happened in temperatures well below freezing, making it hard to trouble shoot.

On a guess from my cousin, who does most of my electrical work, the gfci was eliminated.

Success--the inverter no longer overloaded.

But there was a fly in the ointment. The circuit would sometimes be dead. This happened with both shore power and inverter.

Finally power failed again, and I wiggled the breaker. Power returned.

The breaker was a twin 30 amp (main) and 20 amp (feed to kitchen etc).

My cousin happened to have a single 20 amp breaker that would fit--so it was added to the bottom slot of the panel.

I'm hoping all will be well.

I think what may have happened is that the 3000 watt overload from the gfci made the 20 amp breaker flaky.

Do any other folks have an idea of what may have happened?

[wnjj]

Yes, breakers can fail.

Its not a great idea in the first place to use a twin as the main and a heavily-loaded/continuously used branch circuit. Now you have 2x the heat in the same container since the same current passes through both sides. When a twin breaker is instead used for 2 branch circuits it's less likely (and in a 30A RV impossible) to have max current in both.

Since you have a spare slot for the branch circuit you already solved the problem. Otherwise I would have swapped a different 20A circuit that sees less frequent use with the one twined with the main if possible.

[pianotuna]

The breaker tabs are tight. It is the "switch" that wiggles.

It may be that me switching it on and off to prevent the overload contributed to the failure.

[dougrainer]

1. The fact you could just "wiggle" the breaker and power was restored points to the breaker MOUNT lugs and not a defective breaker. I would suspect after 20 years, the breaker box metal 120 breaker tabs are not secured for that breaker mount.
2. I HOPE you have reinstalled the REQUIRED GFCI. Doug

[Bobbo]

Breakers DO fail.