Power

[Hoffmac]

I have a couple of questions

Will the water pump work off a car battery that has jumper cables to the RV?

I have a 30 amp 32 ft cougar. I'm parked at a residence and am about 120ft from a power source. I bought a 30 amp to 15 converter hooked that up to my 30 amp cord on the RV and then ran a general orange extension cord to an outlet in the side of the house. We did not get any power when we did this. My question is do we need to use a different extension cord and plug it some where else or is there something wrong with the RV power?

[dwall]

In theory it should work but not advised. The 30-15 amp adapter is not for operating the rv. Maybe a light or two but definitely not the ac or anything major and definitely not with a 100 foot extention cord. As far as the water pump, if there is 12v getting to the pump it should run.


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[Pull Toy]

Welcome to the club, from Southeastern Connecticut!

Part 1:
In my humble opinion,(IMHO) the set-up that you describe is barely marginal, at best, even to just charge the batteries. The voltage drop over that distance is not good for your inverter/converter, and could cook your 120v appliances. If that is the length that you need to go, don't even plug in to the camper, just put a battery charger on the extension cord, and go straight to battery, and settle for 12v.

Part 2:
As already stated, any reliable 12v power source will run your 12v lights, pumps, furnace, etc... and yes... a car with jumper cables will do the job, but would not be my first choice.

My advice, if this is an ongoing situation, would be to trench out to your site, and run a dedicated permanent (code compliant / GFI) power source. If you're not comfortable with 120v, hire an electrician. or trust a friend. The money you'll spend, is cheaper than the damage you'll do with undervoltage.

Good Luck,

[sourdough]

You say you "didn't get any power". Do you mean that things didn't work in the RV or AC power from the cord?

Assuming you have AC, #1; 120' is too far to try to run much in the trailer off a regular 120vac outlet; #2; if you try, do not use anything less than a 12 ga. extension cord. The loss is just too much over that distance. A normal 120v outlet is marginal at best for the RV. All that said, I use a 50', 12 ga. extension cord from my external 120vac outlet for the trailer....which is usually parked (when at the house) about 20' from the house. I can run lights, heater or AC without issues. Voltage drop when checked is minimal.

If you have NO power in the trailer what power exactly are you talking about? You have both AC and DC "things" in the trailer that work off "power".

Are your batteries good or discharged/bad?

A few more specifics might help identify exactly what you're up against.

[notanlines]

Hoffmac, all good info above. I particularly like the idea that you only run a battery charger off your current setup, and Sourdough's information hunt. In your case you might be best served to buy a 125 foot (single piece) of 12AWG Romex from Lowe's, put GOOD quality male and female ends on it to make a quality extension cord and use it instead of your orange cord. The drop over your Romex all the way to the trailer will be less than .5 volts, making sure your charger/inverter is doing okay.