breaker at campsite post tripping

[Kingfish58]

For the second time, at two different campgrounds, the 30 amp breaker switch at the campsite pedestal keeps tripping when running my 30 amp 270bh. At the first campground, I called the camp station and they sent someone out to fix it, and the issue stopped. The second time was last night at a different park, and there being no one to call, I ended up connecting to the 50 amp with a dog bone and the tripping stopped.
Both times I was running A/C and TV, but not much else.

What causes this?

[mark5w]

Poor maintenance at the campgrounds. I see this often.

[Stan]

What about the water heater? Was it on electric?

[Kingfish58]

It happened with the water heater on and off. Electric.

[Darrell]

Electricity supply at many campgrounds is far from what is advertised. Many things will dictate how much juice you actually get. First and foremost (and something you will never know) - is, how much power is actually coming intro the campground, then, how many campers are "plugged" in, what their individual "draws" are. I was told recently that my post was 30 amp, plugged in - could not even handle a coffee maker. I took a good look at the pedestal, two small wires feeding the post - with two large units plugged in. Best bet - make sure you have lots of propane to run yer stuff!!! You may want to invest in a surge guard - good insurance for your electrics.

[sleepyT]

Kingfish
Better yet check out this web site Progressive Industries RV Surge and Electrical Protection industry lea ...I think you will find that their warranty at Progressive is much better than Surge Guard...Also Progressive is made in the USA and Surge Guard is made in China...Either way I would suggest if you don't already have a surge protector it would be a good investment to get one...

PS...they also check several malfunctions, reverse polarity, low or high voltage, lost or open neutral, and several other things...

[scoutdad]

This happened to me 2 weekends ago, tripped the 30 amp couple of times, worked okay till next day, then tripped every 5 minutes, we also did the same 50 to 30 dog bone and it stopped. Took out trailer this past weekend hooked up to 30 and ran just fine. Think pole had bad/weak breaker the other time. I also have 2710 bh.

[Kingfish58]

I do have a Progressive surge protector and it was indicating that all was well.


Many thanks to all for your input. In the future, I'll call for camp maintenance if it is available to fix, switch to the 50amp if not, and then try to reduce amp load if all else fails. I'm mainly happy that there is nothing wrong with my trailer. This is all still fairly new to me and I suppose one more thing to anticipate.


On a side note, it was a blazing hot 97 degrees with high humidity here in South Louisiana this weekend and I wanted to see how the trailer did outside of the nice fall, winter, and spring camping weather down here (yes, winter is a great time to camp here). The unit took about 4 or 5 hours to get down to 74 degrees, and the refrigerator was cooling and freezing nicely by the morning. I hooked up at the hottest part of the day, 3pm.

[johnboytoo]

Camped many times at Fairview Riverside and Cajun Palms, and so somewhat understand this humidity thingy

What I found on a large 5er was to
close all blinds on the drive out to keep sun out, (maybe even get some reflective panels)
open the roof vents before getting there
to let it 'exhale' while going down the road...

then when there, plug in first thing and get ac going, (DOOH ! )
we kept the slides in to cool the least amount of space until it cooled off...
on ours we had an ac vent distribution system that we basically closed off at first (didn't want to cool roof panels until we got the inside air cool first!)
on our ac there where down draft louvers we could adjust/open and the cold air dumped straight down into the rv, not thru the ceiling vents...

that's how we did out best... let it cooled down and go have a beer either in the idling diesel truck or in the friends cool rv !!!

With the new (to us) mh, the 10kw generator is going before we get there and all 3 ac's are blowing cold so MUCH nicer !