electrical help

[Montana Girl]

After my husband painstakingly researched this for hours, I simply switched to a different plug in on any different breaker and we have no problems. I'm assuming that that breaker is just a little weak. But we have no other problems with it so far.

[ccl]

Correct, hot at the breaker panel in the camper

[ccl]

just replaced the main wire, same thing is still happening. Really baffled on this one.

[beeje]

So, you replaced the wire from the plug at the back of the camper to the breaker panel ?

[pyoung47]

If the circuit is on a GFI, this could be an issue.

[Renegade1LI]

With the camper unplugged do you have continuity from hot to neutral? or hot to ground? If you don't have continuity I would revisit the circuit your plugged into making sure it is 30 amps single pole & the hot is on the correct terminal.

[Clutchvarg]

Had similar issue last season with caveat of stray voltage to chassis ground. Got slight poke a couple of times. Went through all the steps you have gone through. It wound up being a bad house receptacle. Took it out and there it was an arc trace on the side of the outlet. Replaced it. No more stray voltage to chassis ground. No more circuit breaker issues.
Good luck.

[David Leak]

Find the electrical switch on the water heater out side behind the gas tubes and switch it off, then check and see if the breaker pops. Generally the water heater and anything else is more than 30 amps.

[rohrmann]

Originally Posted by Renegade1LI

With the camper unplugged do you have continuity from hot to neutral? or hot to ground? If you don't have continuity I would revisit the circuit your plugged into making sure it is 30 amps single pole & the hot is on the correct terminal.

With the rig unplugged from shore power, there should not be continuity between the ground and neutral. The only place the neutral and ground should come together is at the main panel where the shore power cable is plugged into. The neutral is a current carrying conductor, the return from the hots to complete a circuit. The ground is not designed to carry current, and if everything is working properly, there should not be voltage on the ground conductor. That is why there are four conductors in your 50 amp shore cable, and three conductors in a 30 amp cable, so in both cases, the ground and neutral are isolated from each other. If something in the rig has burned up or damaged, that is where the problem will be.

[Renegade1LI]

Originally Posted by rohrmann

With the rig unplugged from shore power, there should not be continuity between the ground and neutral. The only place the neutral and ground should come together is at the main panel where the shore power cable is plugged into. The neutral is a current carrying conductor, the return from the hots to complete a circuit. The ground is not designed to carry current, and if everything is working properly, there should not be voltage on the ground conductor. That is why there are four conductors in your 50 amp shore cable, and three conductors in a 30 amp cable, so in both cases, the ground and neutral are isolated from each other. If something in the rig has burned up or damaged, that is where the problem will be.

You are correct, I left out " you should not have continuity " thanks for catching that!

[pyoung47]

Should be no continuity and flipping breakers should allow you to isolate the offender.

[ccl]

Originally Posted by beeje

So, you replaced the wire from the plug at the back of the camper to the breaker panel ?

Yes, it still trips

[ccl]

Originally Posted by pyoung47

If the circuit is on a GFI, this could be an issue.

Not on GFI

[ccl]

Originally Posted by Clutchvarg

Had similar issue last season with caveat of stray voltage to chassis ground. Got slight poke a couple of times. Went through all the steps you have gone through. It wound up being a bad house receptacle. Took it out and there it was an arc trace on the side of the outlet. Replaced it. No more stray voltage to chassis ground. No more circuit breaker issues.
Good luck.

I replaced the house receptacle

[ccl]

Originally Posted by David Leak

Find the electrical switch on the water heater out side behind the gas tubes and switch it off, then check and see if the breaker pops. Generally the water heater and anything else is more than 30 amps.

The water heater switch is turned off, i have never used the water heater with electric, always used propane

[ccl]

Originally Posted by pyoung47

Should be no continuity and flipping breakers should allow you to isolate the offender.

flipped every breaker, no luck

[ccl]

Here's an update, late yesterday we started checking the neutral wires in the camper breaker panel. When we removed the neutral for the living room breaker everything worked fine except for that circuit, the main ground was no longer hot. If we remove the main ground and connect the neutral on this circuit everything works but the ground is hot. Doesn't make sense.

[rohrmann]

No, it does make sense. The hot leg is shorting to the neutral. One of the places to look is, where the flex cable enters a slide, and there will be a junction box either under the slide or inside the slide. Finding where the box is located is easy, just get under the slide and look for where the power cable enters. The outside boxes have a history of getting water in them, which can cause the problem you are having. It's also possible to have a problem in an electrical outlet inside the rig on that circuit that has the problem. Good luck hunting.

[beeje]

A cable/wire somewhere on/in you camper is rubbed through (guess) contacting the frame. May be very difficult in not impossible to find. You just have to keep trying to isolate the circuit's until you find the answer.

[ccl]

Spent most of the day working on this along with the electrician, we got everything working. I should be overjoyed but the problem is we didn't really fix anything. This afternoon we took everything apart that was related to the circuit which we identified as having a bad neutral, which was the ceiling fan, light above kitchen table and an outlet near the kitchen table. We identified the problem being the neutral wire going from the ceiling fan to the light over the kitchen table. The ceiling fan of course is on the ceiling but the light over the kitchen table is on the slide out which runs across the ceiling to the back wall underneath the camper to a junction box which then goes into the slide out and to the light over the table (everything was good in the junction box).
We bypassed that neutral by running a temporary wire directly from the ceiling fan to the light and everything worked perfect.
Ok now it gets even more puzzling. First of all for the last couple of days during all of our trouble shooting we disconnected the shore line from the back of the camper to the camper breaker panel and ran a direct line from the house breaker panel the camper breaker panel (we did this to eliminate the possibility of it being the main line from the camper plug to the camper breaker panel). So i started thinking of a way of running a new neutral from the ceiling fan to the light over the table but i couldn't come up with anything that didn't involve major work and possibly cutting the wall or ceiling.
So, i started to put everything back together that i knew was good, unhooked the temporary line from the house breaker panel to the camper breaker panel and hooked the main line back up, this involved pulling the maing breaker out from the camper breaker panel hooking the main wires back up ( i was having a hard time with it so i pulled all the breakers off and put them all back in one at a time). Everything was working just as before but we still had the temporary neutral running from the ceiling fan to the light. Meanwhile a friend stopped over he is also works in the electrical field (but is not a certified electrician) he wanted to do some trouble shooting of his own so he unhooked the temporary neutral that we had running from the ceiling fan to the light and hooked up the original neutrals back up. Guess what, everything worked....
Everything is hooked up as it originally was before all this happened and it's working.
So, bottom line is, we didn't really fix anything and everything is working.