Electrical Issues on new travel trailer

[beachdrmr3369]

Hello,
I'm a new owner of a 25' travel trailer. So I am completely not up to speed on the electrical. A situation happened when I was hooking it up to the meter panel for the first time. I was not told that the trailer should be hooked up to 110. The rv site is set up for 220 hookup. The plug on the trailer is also set up for the 220 hookup as well. So when I plugged it in, there was a loud pop and smoke came out of my tv and the control panel inside the trailer. I quickly unplugged it. But then some of the lights, microwave and tv didn't work. I called the dealership I bought the trailer from and they informed me that the trailer is 110 and not 220. Very frustrated at the moment. Then much later there was another pop and then the microwave, A/C and tv turned on. But it appears they were only running on the battery. Because now everything appears very dim which means the battery is losing power. So is there anything I can do to figure out this problem I'm having? If the items came back on, can I assume it didn't fry them? Please help! Thanks!

[MEXICOWANDERER]

The MEE is me.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

That came from an MEE. There should NEVER exist a deadly chance of error ignored by IEE or UL standards. These people earn a hundred million dollars to disallow this kind of stupid mismatch. It is not the fault of the OP.

Industrial twist lock interfaces POSITIVELY ELIMINATE the chance of error. This is a near criminal act of regulatory ignorance.

[BB_TX]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
OPINION

MULTIPLE SLOPPY DANGEROUS OMMISSIONS BY OUR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

This Fuster**** should never have been permitted to occur. This is damning proof that job one for government is the well being of government itself.

Dsmned right this makes me angry. But it is the mere tip of the iceberg.

Not sure where this is coming from. It is not clear whether he was at home on an existing outlet or one installed for the new to him RV, a private RV park, or a government park/campground. The last two are not likely as it would be unlikely, though not impossible, an RV park or campground would have a 30 amp outlet wired for 220 vac.

[happy2rv]

First, welcome to the forum. Hopefully all the negative responses don't scare you away. There are many people here who are genuinely interested in helping but there are many others who look for any excuse to put others down or show their "superiority".

As others have said, some in less polite ways, if someone else provided an RV plug that fit your trailer, a campground for instance, they have some explaining to do and possibly some liability. If you installed it yourself or used an existing plug of unknown origin, you've probably learned a valuable lesson. We all make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.

So, now to tackle some of your questions. There will almost certainly be damage to the electrical system, especially if you saw/smelled the "magic" smoke escaping. The extent is the question. The full extent may take a while to know because some damage will show up as immediate failures and other failures may be delayed.

Methodical testing is the best path forward. If you're not comfortable testing, you may need to get a technician to check things out. You indicated that "much later there was another pop and then the microwave, A/C and TV turned on." That being the case, they don't appear to have suffered instant failure. How were they being powered when they came back on? The microwave and A/C are almost certainly not powered by an inverter, so you must have moved to another outlet?

Proper troubleshooting will require opening the main breaker panel in the RV and checking voltages with a voltmeter as well as some knowledge of electrical system. You can do limited testing without doing that. Start with turning off all of the circuit breakers in the RV's electrical panel. Hook up a surge suppressor with indicators to a known good/correctly wired power source and verify the indicators show proper wiring. Turn off the breaker at the hookup and connect the trailer with all of the circuit breakers still off. Once the trailer is plugged in, turn the breaker at the hookup point back on. Assuming it stays on and the surge suppressor still indicates good power, go inside the RV and turn on the main breaker in the RV panel. Check the indicators on the surge suppressor again and verify they are still good. Then one by one step through each circuit breaker turning them on and verifying whether the appliance or outlet they control works.

One of the circuits will be your DC converter. This is usually installed behind the RV electrical panel or sometimes it's part of the electrical panel. This converts 110V AC to 12V DC. This is what powers your lights, refrigerator control board, and furnace among other things. When this is not plugged in, these things run off of the battery. You may or may not have an inverter that provides 110V AC from the batteries for a few plugs and/or refrigerator, depending on the style of refrigerator. The inverter would not power things like the microwave or air conditioning.

Damages could be as simple as blown fuses, but if there was smoke, the damage is probably deeper. Verify what works and what doesn't.

[Camper8251]

GordonThree wrote:
Anyone taking wagers on whether the OP comes back after such a warm welcome to the forum?

LOL I was just thinking the same thing...........:B

Its like a pack of wild Hyenas on a fresh kill at times on here...

[Lwiddis]

"there was a loud pop and smoke came out of my tv and the control panel inside the trailer."

Probably toast unfortunately. Take it back to the dealer and hopefully you will get warranty service. While you are waiting for the repair, READ about RV electricity.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

OPINION

MULTIPLE SLOPPY DANGEROUS OMMISSIONS BY OUR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

This Fuster**** should never have been permitted to occur. This is damning proof that job one for government is the well being of government itself.

Dsmned right this makes me angry. But it is the mere tip of the iceberg.

[GordonThree]

Anyone taking wagers on whether the OP comes back after such a warm welcome to the forum?

[opnspaces]

I've heard of people plugging their three prong 120v trailer into the electric clothes dryer outlet in their garage and causing damage as you've describes. True the 30A RV and 30A clothes dryer outlets are kind of similar. You would think it's not possible to plug the trailer into a dryer outlet. But it gets reported here often enough that apparently it is in fact possible to do so.

But if you were in fact at a campground as you say then there should not be a 220v outlet to plug into. Did you use an adapter to plug your 3 prong plug into a 4 prong outlet? If so the adapter should have prevented the damage.


If you plugged your three prong cord into the sites 3 prong outlet and damaged your trailer. Then you need to talk to the campground manager or owner about replacing all the failed parts as the outlet is miswired.

[CA_Traveler]

rhochnadel wrote:
I cannot believe the misinformation posted on this forum, some of you need to become educated if you want to expound on electrical issues of someone else. I hope they do not believe everything they read here.

A 50A RV plug is often confusing to RVers. It is a 4 wire 120V/240V very common household 50A circuit and plug. Very few RVs have 240V appliances and use the circuit design as 2x 120V 50A circuits after it's distributed by the dual 50A RV CB in the RV panel.

[CA_Traveler]

OP The video in the first posts shows the 3 and there are only 3 RV plugs. From left to right: 3 wire 120V 30A, 4 wire 120/240V 50A and 3 wire 120V 20A - the one shown is actually a GFCI.

The above posts show the common 3 wire 240V 30A dryer plug which is not a RV plug. Most current dryers now use a 4 wire 120/240V plug of 30+ A.

Did you plug into a miswired dryer plug? You would not be the first...

[valhalla360]

Sorry to hear about your problems...but once the magic electrical smoke escapes it's really tough to get it back in the box.

Did you use an adapter to get it connected to 240V? Did you wire up the outlet yourself? It would be highly unusual for such a small trailer to be 50amp/240V and there is no way to put a standard 30amp/120V plug into a 50amp/240V outlet without adapters.

If you are thinking of going back on the dealer for not warning you...unless you have something in writing where they recommended using a 240V supply, don't count on them doing anything and it's not likely covered under warranty. I'm not sure if insurance would cover you or not since it's operator error. As someone else mentioned, it's stamped right on the plugs what the voltage limits are.

The devices that were turned off are likely to be OK (so if the air/con was completely turned off, it might be fine) but if they let out smoke, odds are at best they will have a short life. Only question is do you want to deal with it as things fail or pay someone to run thru the systems and replace them prophylacticaly.

[BB_TX]

Here is a very good explaination of RV electric. 30 amp RVs are 120 vac only. But 50 amp RV have both 240 vac and 120 vac "available" in the RV. However few RVs other that really high end models actually have any appliances that actually use the 240 vac.

Here is another good site on RV 50 amp.

[rhochnadel]

I cannot believe the misinformation posted on this forum, some of you need to become educated if you want to expound on electrical issues of someone else. I hope they do not believe everything they read here.