Keystone Arcadia electrical diagram

[Jmendez]

I have a 2022 Keystone Arcadia 3660RL that my gf and I are living in full time. We're currently moochdocking off a friend's house and the sewer hookup is about 50 feet uphill of us. I bought a macerator pump on amazon which has been an issue. I've been pulling the car up next to the camper and plugging the thing into the Cigarette outlet. The plug itself overheats within about 2 min of running it and then the motor dies. I have to unplug it, let it cool, then plug it back in. This is the first issue. Any idea why this would happen?

Issue 2: I don't want to continue to use the car, or a generator to run it. I'd like to wire it directly to the camper, so when I need to dump our tanks, I can just plug it into the camper, flip the switch to turn it on and proceed from there. I would like to find an electrical diagram of the camper, but there doesn't seem to be one in on the website. Any ideas of how I can get one and learn more about the wiring?

[chuckster57]

You won’t find any schematics anywhere.

You can run your own wire, just make sure it’s the proper gauge for the load. I would install an auto resetting circuit breaker.

[sourdough]

^^^^What Chuck said. Note his comment about sizing the gauge of the wire to the load - that is critical. It's also what is causing your existing setup to overheat and shut down in all likelihood.

[NH_Bulldog]

It sounds like the macerator pump has a limited amount of head pressure (the ability of the pump to move “product” uphill). It could be working too hard against gravity. The cheaper pumps can only handle a small amount of lift over a short horizontal distance, and will shut off after a few minutes of continuous running under even ideal conditions.

As an example, even one of the best famous name brand pumps is limited to 25 ft through a 5/8” hose and 50 ft through a 3/4” hose. This is horizontal distance only and any height needs to be factored in. So a 10 ft rise in elevation to a drain that is 50 ft away is 60 ft and is too much back-pressure for the pump and will cause it to overheat and shut down.

[firestation12]

Install alligator clamps on the macerator’s wiring and connect directly to the car’s under hood battery. The macerator’s 10 gauge wiring should be your first clue that a lighter socket isn’t going to provide enough amperage. Several years ago when I used a macerator, I had a spare car battery that I placed next to the macerator to power the motor.

[JRTJH]

As others have posted, you probably are facing multiple problems.

You have a long way to pump the waste and you're using far too light of wiring through a very limited connection in your car to attempt to power your pump.

Solutions,

1. STOP using your automobile cigarette lighter socket to power your macerator pump. It's going to either burn up your car wiring or burn up the windings in the pump motor.

2. Use the largest diameter hose to connect to the macerator pump. A 3/4" minimum diameter would produce less "pressure against the distance", but you may wind up needing a 1" diameter (even though both ends of the hose are 3/4" fittings.

3. ALWAYS run water into the tank as you're pumping the waste out. The more liquid you have, the thinner the "paste in the bottom" will be and the easier the pump can push the LIQUIFIED not pastey material.

4. Buy a quality, heavy duty cigarette lighter extension with alligator clips and connect it to your trailer battery (the trailer power center will recharge the battery if you're connected to shore power).

You can find the type of cigarette lighter extension here: https://www.amazon.com/YCIND-Battery...1zcF9hdGY&th=1 There are cheaper ones that are "lighter duty" for less money, but you need, at a MINIMUM, 12 ga copper wire and a 25AMP rating. This link has three selections, a 3', a 6' and a 10' wire length. Choose according to the distance from your trailer battery to where the connection to the macerator pump is located. There are cheaper devices like this available, but they do not have the wire gauge to provide the amperage you need. DO NOT CHEAP OUT ON WHAT EXTENSION CORD YOU BUY.

DO NOT SKIMP ON WIRE GAUGE. The reason why your pump is overheating and shutting down is because it's not getting enough power to push the waste. That's a combination of "light duty power supply that can't provide the amperage needed and the distance waste is being pushed combined with the thickness of the waste liquid. Increase the extension cord capability, reduce the thickness of the waste liquid. You can't do much about the distance, so use the largest diameter hose as possible.

[wiredgeorge]

We have a macerator pump (it is a good one but can't recall the brand) and connect it to the trailer's battery using 8 ga. wire and we pump over 150' (a lot of it is downhill). Never had any overheating and use aligator clips to connect to the battery. My BIL/sis used it for quite a few months on their Class C when they stayed on our property. The hose is either 3/4 or 1" and outdoor heavy duty.

[bigrockk]

I did the same thing as "firestation12” mentioned. Big clamps and used a spare battery.

Just a word of caution if hooking directly to your RV electrical system. The electric motor on your pump can cause a significant inductive spike when powering it on or off which could possibly cause damage to the electronics in your RV or your car. A separate battery is best. There are ways to mitigate the "spike" but nothing to worry about if using a separate battery. Good luck!

[Pete::51]

I used this quick connect https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 to connect my macerator pump to the DC side of my electrical control panel. I used 10 AWG wiring and was fortunate to have an unused space on the panel. I can empty all four holding tanks through a 50 ft 3/4” hose and 5’ rise without either the wiring or the pump overheating. You just need to find an open path from the panel to the exterior wall.