Quote:
Originally Posted by FW28z
This is not good... shame on the RV industry. At a cost of a few dollars for skimping on a breaker on the main-neutral side, they are potentially putting our safety at risk.
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I'm Mike Sokol, author of the No~Shock~Zone article lined to above. Thanks for posting it here. Actually, there are no switches or circuit breakers allowed in neutral circuits according to the National Electrical Code. And since the RVIA follows NEC guidelines, then RVs don't have switched neutrals either. Actually, there's a lot of good safety reasons for that, including keeping the neutral and ground separated inside your RV (or boat). It only gets bonded together at the generator transfer switch, or by plugging into a campground pedestal which gets its G-N bond from the main service panel. At least, that's supposed to be how it works.
If you feel ANY kind of shock, then you must have an open EGC (Equipment Grounding Conductor) more commonly called a safety ground. This mostly happens in an inexpensive dog-bone adapter, cheap extension cord, or even a mis-wired pedestal or home power outlet. Also, be aware that 3-light testers and even H-N, H-G, N-G tests won't detect some outlet mis-wired condition I call an RPBG (Reverse Polarity Bootleg Ground). See my article on the subject at
The RV Doctor: Friends of Gary - Mike and
Failures in Outlet Testing Exposed | Contractor content from Electrical Construction & Maintenance (EC&M) Magazine
The best and safest way to find an RV hot-skin voltage is by using a NCVT (Non Contact Voltage Tester) such as a Fluke VoltAlert or Klein NCVT-1. Here's a video of me testing a 40-ft RV for a hot-skin voltage using a NCVT.
and here's video I recently did on how to test a campground pedestal for correct voltage, polarity and grounding.
Please let me know if you have additional questions about RV electrical hookups and safety.
Mike Sokol
mike@noshockzone.org
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