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Ham21

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Joined
Aug 13, 2023
Posts
10
Location
Centre Alabama
We own a 1994 Winnebago Brave , the lights started to flicker inside the coach, tv above the captain chair started smoking ; google says in was the converter . Installed the new one 30 minutes ago tripped the only GFI in the bathroom. The tv in the bedroom came on , the microwave fridge , on demand water heater and coffee maker won’t make a sound. I have been powering it with my generator. Acquired a location and had a guy wire my 30 amp outlet. All things bad from the above statement happened within 10 minutes of using the outlet. I thought a new converter would solve the issues.
 
There are a number of people here who can help you figure this out.
Firstly, though, Can you start from the beginning with describing everything that happened, in order of occurrence?
 
I moved the RV to its current new location before the gentleman got here to wire my plug. I was running off of an external generator. There were no issues at all after he arrived, connected the breaker in the panel box, plug the RV into my surge protector, then into the outlet, about three minutes after that that’s when I noticed the TV was smoking so we ran out unplugged. It took the TV out heated that the TV was may have been just old and I’m like I was just using it earlier this morning. Aiden informed me that all of the breakers had tripped and to check my GFI so we reset the breakers inside of the RV , the GFI did trip so I reset the GFI we plug the RV back in to the newly installed outlet. The lights started to flicker. The coffee maker, would not come on the lights on the microwave would not come on the refrigerator started to beep and the message was DC low. The gentleman then said the reason the breakers tripped was because there is a switch as you were entering the RV well you can turn it off to own too, if your arm do use the batteries to power the inside lights through the 12 V system I told him that not a problem because I had been running it off of the generator and there was never an issue, I had not had it plugged into a regular outlet when we got it we immediately started to remodel so I would plug up the generator in order to run the AC unit in the top to keep me cool and use the outlets for my power tools, we have had no issues After he left that’s when I started to Google about the issues I was having and Google said that it could be the converter had been damage from the power surge. The surge protector that I have is just one ordered off of Amazon. It had the two orange lights indicating that the wiring is correct , so I ordered an in a converter installed it today the exact same converter that was in there. I ordered it an exact replacement and the refrigerator is not coming on. The microwave is not coming on the on-demand hot water heater is not coming on and the coffee maker will not come on , but if I plug up my regular drill into the outlet that the coffee maker is plugged into, it works fine same thing goes with the outlet. The TV was plugged into if I put my drill in there and pull the trigger. It works fine.
 
New update I just had a neighbor to stop by with a voltmeter and tell me the 30 amp breaker. The guy installed is not on a 120 circuit. It is on a 220 circuit.
 
Ham21 said:
New update I just had a neighbor to stop by with a voltmeter and tell me the 30 amp breaker. The guy installed is not on a 120 circuit. It is on a 220 circuit.
Click to expand...

I was going to say... I strongly suspected precisely that.
There are a couple of deices. Sounds like yours is a 30 amp rig... So...
Progressive Industries HW-30 C This is a hardwired box that goes between your power cord and your power distribution panel which is what feeds everything that smoked.
Now it's called someting like an Energeny Monitoriong system or some such But generically we call them SURGE GUARDS.. and unlike cheaper units it really is (the cheaper ones are spike guards)
If you plug into another 220 outlet.. it will just sit there and display an error message on the remote. IT WILL NOT allow 220vac into your RV.. It also cuts you off the the voltage goes too low (Which is hard on things with motors like Air Conditioners)
Another company, Southwire, Makes the TRC Surge guard... I'm not sure of the model number for the 30 amp hardwired but... See description above.

Be sure to get the remote so you can tell why it's not feeding you power.
Oh and they also delay power on.. this has some serious advantages if there is what I call a power "Blink" (Loss for just a second or .. anythign less than 3 mintues_)
 
Ham21 said:
So I now have the task of replacing the fridge, microwave , water heater, tv and what else am I missing?
Click to expand...
Probaly blew the new converter. There have been reports that even thougha regitered electrician installed a 30 amp outlet, they did not realize it was supposed to be 30 amp, 120 volt. The person who installed yours apparently did not read the wiring instructions.
PS: Google is not always your friend.
 
Yes I know , he told me to watch a video and install the breaker . I told him that’s what I’m paying him for so he came over wired it to the panel box and well you know the rest of the story . So the wife is online looking for new appliances as we speak
 
Quick question, once I replace my appliances that no longer work and converter should everything run smooth again?
 
The best bet is to test what is not working, and replace those, some modern electronics may be ok as they have power supplies designed to work at both 120 and 240Volts. If you have an RV refrigerator that also runs on propane you may have only burned out the 120V heating element which is relatively easy to replace as the control board is powered by 12VDC from your batteries. The same it true of most RV water heaters, if they still work on propane when the battery is charged then they are fairly easy sub 1 hour repairs. The roof top air conditioner may be ok if it was not running when this happened. If the microwave no longer works when plugged into AC power it is probably shot.
 
Breakers should be fine, if you need to replace the converter again, I would suggest potentially upgrading, Progressive Dynamics make some nice replacement converters with multi stage charging.
 
Before you start replacing expensive appliances, or even the converter, you need to have a qualified RV electrician (not a neighbor or friend who is an electrician that works on homes) check everything out--the whole electrical system. Until you know everything is wired correctly, you could be wasting money on stuff that will be damaged again.

People on this forum can guess on what is wrong or what you need to do, but I think at this point, you need an expert who is qualified to evaluate electrical systems on RVs.
 
Last edited:
You said the gentleman came over and installed the receptacle. What does that mean? Is he a licensed electrician?
 
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