Converting a travel trailer to all 120/240 volt electric

schlep1967 wrote:

Flute Man wrote:
My neighbors fifth wheel has all been converted over and he just loves it. It is now a park model. The plumbing was even changed to residential. His rig is now permanent in an RV park.

I'm just not seeing the benefit. What does he love about it? The only real improvement I can think of is getting rid of the propane heat so you don't have to fill the tanks. Everything else should be the same as long as you are hooked up to electric.
My concern would be a power outage. With no 12 volt back-up your at the mercy of the parks power. You lose your cold storage, hot water, heat and even water if the park has a well instead of public service. With your 12 volt systems you keep all of these for a little while until the power comes back on.

Guess you have never priced "Park" models, have ya.. They are not cheap, most likely switching to all 120V lighting would be far, far cheaper than any Park model even if you had to pay an electrician to do it.

Romex can be added after the fact to walls and ceiling, does take some work to do it, but can be done without ripping up the interior.. At the same time can add in wall mounted light switches which makes like easier for folks that are height challenged.. Would only need one 120V lighting circuit for the entire RV and with the use of all LEDs it isn't going to amount to any big load but you will get far more light than any 12V LEDs..

No need to change outlet wiring, those can be put into a new 240/120V breaker panel.

Heck you could even just add a new 240/120V panel, use a 30A SINGLE POLE breaker to feed the existing panel and you would be pretty much all set.

The only issues I see is you would need to convert or replace the existing furnace, conversion I would not imagine that would be easy or cheap and a new 120V park model furnace would be insanely expensive..

Water heater if DSI would require 12V for the ignition and safety system board ( although if they have a pilot only water heater there is no issue with no 12V, Replacing the water heater with pilot only is going to set them back $00 easily) and the RV fridge would need to go since it also requires 12V for the control board, that would cost $400 for a 10 cu ft home fridge.

As far as the reasons to replace the 12V system, well I am sure the OP has their reasons.. Part of it is they may be wanting to get rid of the battery maintenance/replacement costs..

If this is the case, it can be done even if they plan to travel, with one caveat.. They WILL still need a SMALL battery for the emergency Break away braking system. That can be a small gel-cell system like this..



About $40 for that box with battery..