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View Full Version : An Open Letter To Keystone


Bob Landry
04-10-2014, 09:39 AM
I also sent this to their customer no-service department via the link on their website:

I recently completed the addition of a second 30A service to my 277RL, the purpose being to better balance the loads and get an even distribution of power utilizing a splitter on a 50A outlet. Since I'm a marine electrician and air conditioner service center, this was quite an easy project, only made difficult by two factors. One, the unorthodox method of randomly ganging appliances on a circuit breaker that shows no indication of everything that is attached to it. I found wall outlets serviced by circuit breakers that I would have never suspected or thought to look for.The other is the almost impossibility of separating the circuits that needed to be re-routed to the appropriate circuit breaker due to all of the connections and terminations being done in the ceiling.

I can certainly understand why one would not want all of the wall outlets to be fed by one common circuit breaker marked."Outlets" That practice would certainly reduce confusion for the knowledgeable DIYer as well as providing a margin of safety in the event of the need to kill power in a critical situation and in general, just make too much sense.
I do find it interesting that you refuse to release any electrical information or diagrams, citing a concern for customer safety, but you seem to be perfectly at ease in the doing electrical installations in a manner that is confusing to owners and creates possible hazardous conditions, however remote, by increasing the time it may take to shut off power to a device or outlet in an emergency situation.
As an enhancement to customer safety, you might consider labeling these "rogue" outlets as to which breaker actually controls them.
If your policy is in fact based on customer safety and not just as a CYA against product liability lawsuits, then perhaps those polices and the reasoning behind them warrant revisiting.

SAABDOCTOR
04-10-2014, 11:26 AM
Well Bob Maybe they think or that you should just shut off the main breaker. but that maybe pushing it. i do agree with you that the wire routing is at best insane they had both a/c units and my hot water heater on one breaker:eek: They must put some funny sugar in the company coffee pot!

Bob Landry
04-10-2014, 12:02 PM
Well Bob Maybe they think or that you should just shut off the main breaker. but that maybe pushing it. i do agree with you that the wire routing is at best insane they had both a/c units and my hot water heater on one breaker:eek: They must put some funny sugar in the company coffee pot!

That's nuts. Even discounting the safety aspect of it, what happens when an owner stars getting nuisance trips at the breaker panel because the breaker is overloaded and he has no idea what to turn off to get it to stop tripping. It's hard for me to believe that in a tightly controlled(we hope) manufacturing environment, that the workers on the floor would just take it upon themselves to do stuff like this, so you can only hope that someday you will run across something as good as what they are smoking.

In my trailer, they ran #12 wire to the microwave outlet and put it on a 15A breaker, which is OK as far as wire rating goes, it just makes you think they use what ever happens to be in the parts box that day.

Jeff_S
04-16-2014, 07:59 AM
Bob,
All the outlets in the living area of our 2014 Montana HC 318RE are on the same breaker! That is crazy to me. With regard to using #12 wire on a 15A breaker...they probably buy #12 in bulk so their install techs don't have to know anything about electricity. BTW, I'm told but can't yet confirm that the second optional A/C unit in the bedroom area is wired to the same leg of the 220 as the living room unit. If that is true, when and if I install the second unit they will be separated forthwith.

Jeff_S

canesfan
04-16-2014, 08:07 AM
Bob,
All the outlets in the living area of our 2014 Montana HC 318RE are on the same breaker! That is crazy to me. With regard to using #12 wire on a 15A breaker...they probably buy #12 in bulk so their install techs don't have to know anything about electricity. BTW, I'm told but can't yet confirm that the second optional A/C unit in the bedroom area is wired to the same leg of the 220 as the living room unit. If that is true, when and if I install the second unit they will be separated forthwith.

Jeff_S
Is there an easy way for me to check this? I haven't had the chance to determine the need for the second AC, but I'd like to know beforehand what I may have to change.

PARAPTOR
04-16-2014, 09:36 AM
Is there an easy way for me to check this? I haven't had the chance to determine the need for the second AC, but I'd like to know beforehand what I may have to change.

:D Well lets see, can imagine you smiling already, you can look at our power distribution panel labeling I assume AC1 and AC2. I think we share the same wf-8930/50 power distribution panel with a separate converter. As far as I can tell by the diagram the bus is just split and not alternating therefore breakers left of the 50 AMP main breaker are on one 120VAC side and breakers to the right side of the main on the other side. Ideally you want to try and balance the loads on each side of the 50 AMP service, meaning AC1 on one side and AC2 on the other. As far as checking if they are labeled correctly, well just have to start throwing breakers and checking what goes off for each one :banghead: For our second pre-wired AC in Bedroom will have to check power in that box next to the opening.

40 degrees and not snowing so good sign :eek:

canesfan
04-16-2014, 09:58 AM
As far as I can tell by the diagram the bus is just split and not alternating therefore breakers left of the 50 AMP main breaker are on one 120VAC side and breakers to the right side of the main on the other side. Ideally you want to try and balance the loads on each side of the 50 AMP service, meaning AC1 on one side and AC2 on the other.
Ok that makes sense, so it's probably not wired that way. :D I'll check it out later. It's 54 and sunny here. :)

Bob Landry
04-16-2014, 12:59 PM
Bob,
All the outlets in the living area of our 2014 Montana HC 318RE are on the same breaker! That is crazy to me. With regard to using #12 wire on a 15A breaker...they probably buy #12 in bulk so their install techs don't have to know anything about electricity. BTW, I'm told but can't yet confirm that the second optional A/C unit in the bedroom area is wired to the same leg of the 220 as the living room unit. If that is true, when and if I install the second unit they will be separated forthwith.

Jeff_S

That's not unusual and it's quite common in stick houses. The idea is that you are not going to have something in every outlet running at the same time. Even having the second AC on the same leg is OK as long as they are not on the same breaker, especially with 50A service. Two 15KBTU air conditioners are going to draw around 14A each running, and one of those is likely to be a smaller one. That leaves 22A of available power on that leg, which allows you to run quite a bit along with the two Acs. The idea is to split the loads as evenly as possible across the two legs, so it doesn't matter what is connected to what as long as it's reasonably balanced. That's with 50A. 30A is a different matter and it would be almost impossible to run two ACs on one leg unless everything else is shut off, and that's still iffy. Dual 30A gets a little better. I did that to my trailer, but I don't know of but a couple of other people who have done that. I chose to do it that way because of cost and the fact that my trailer is not set up for a 2nd AC unit
If I were able to add a second AC, then I would have done a 50A conversion.

Bill & Deb
04-20-2014, 03:58 AM
Bob,
All the outlets in the living area of our 2014 Montana HC 318RE are on the same breaker! That is crazy to me. With regard to using #12 wire on a 15A breaker...they probably buy #12 in bulk so their install techs don't have to know anything about electricity. BTW, I'm told but can't yet confirm that the second optional A/C unit in the bedroom area is wired to the same leg of the 220 as the living room unit. If that is true, when and if I install the second unit they will be separated forthwith.

Jeff_S

Jeff

I think it's all about the cost of copper ! If they run a large number of the outlets on one breaker then they don't have to run another new feed from the panel therefore using more copper.

Bill