Electricty & Water Pump questions

[Tammy]

First time in Outback 298RE. Plugged in at campsite, AC was running and plugged in a fan in bathroom outlet after about 10 minutes the power went off. The next morning power was on??? Any thoughts from anyone on this? Also, is the water pump suppose to be loud??

[Johnnyfry]

Water pumps always make some noise when running because they are usually rigidly mounted.

On the power issue, did a breaker trip out or did the power just mysteriously disappear?

Did you have to do anything to get it on again, or did it just come back?

Also, was it the ACPower (microwave, A/C unit) only or the DC power ( lights, water pump).

If it was the DC power it is possible that you discharged your trailer battery.

If it was the AC power it is possible that you overloaded the campground outlet, especially if you were running AC, microwave and coffee maker.

Need some more information to sort it out.

John

[The Sod Father]

RE: water pump - yes it is usually pretty noisy. The easiest way to reduce the noise is to mount the pump onto a piece of closed cell foam or soft rubber.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5574934_silence-rv-water-pump.html

[Tammy]

This is my husbands answers to your questions as he was the one that had the experience. What do you think regarding his comments?

AC power only went out. Lights worked, didn't try to use the water pump. We only had the AC fan running and a separate fan running plugged into the outlet in bathroom. After we were in bed for ten minutes, the power went out. No breakers were thrown inside or at the electrical box outside. I couldn't get the GFI to reset on the bathroom outlet. didn't do anything until this morning when it would let me reset it?

[Bob Landry]

This is my husbands answers to your questions as he was the one that had the experience. What do you think regarding his comments?

AC power only went out. Lights worked, didn't try to use the water pump. We only had the AC fan running and a separate fan running plugged into the outlet in bathroom. After we were in bed for ten minutes, the power went out. No breakers were thrown inside or at the electrical box outside. I couldn't get the GFI to reset on the bathroom outlet. didn't do anything until this morning when it would let me reset it?

Lights are DC and will work either on converter or battery alone. No relation to AC except for the converter.
Sounds like you had a CG blackout. THE GFI would not have let you reset it because it wasn't tripped. if it had tripped, you would not have been able to reset it without power to it.

[The Sod Father]

I had the same exact problem with my pop-up back in 2003. The 12V worked but 110 didn't. It was not a power failure at the campground because AC was running on all of the other units. And boy was it hot!

I took the camper to the dealer and they said the problem was caused by a loose BUS bar inside the power converter. Whatever that means. Anyway, they fixed it and the problem was solved.

[campingcpl]

This is my husbands answers to your questions as he was the one that had the experience. What do you think regarding his comments?

AC power only went out. Lights worked, didn't try to use the water pump. We only had the AC fan running and a separate fan running plugged into the outlet in bathroom. After we were in bed for ten minutes, the power went out. No breakers were thrown inside or at the electrical box outside. I couldn't get the GFI to reset on the bathroom outlet. didn't do anything until this morning when it would let me reset it?

We have had this happen a couple of times to us and here are the reasons that caused our outages.

1) The campground had a black out for a short time do to an over loaded system (campground was full and very hot so everyone was using their air).
2) Like Sodfather had said, we had a loose wire in the power center which caused the power to basically turn on and off.
3) We had a faulty power plug that wasn't making good contact when pluged into the park power. Was able to figure that out when I wiggled the plug and the power went on and off in the trailer.

With all of these we never had any breakers trip. I hope these will help you troubleshot your particular problem.