Electrical fire question

[Ruffus]

Been fulltiming since August and have been plugged into both 50 and 30 amp service at different times. Since late September we have been using an adapter plugged into a 30 amp pedistal. Last night my 120 volt lights flickered a couple times. Early this AM my microwave woke me up beeping as if there was a power loss then it came right back on. This happened a couple times so I went to investigate. When I checked the outside I seen smoke coming from the pedistal so I tripped the breaker and pulled the RV plug from it. The adapter plug was burning and there was a fanolic smell at the plug on the pedistal. Has anyone ever experianced this type of problem? I will further investigate as soon as it warms up today.

[Terrydactile]

Been there done that. Sounds like its generating heat at the plug most usually from a poor connection due to the outlet being worn out. The outlet has probably been getting hot and finally got hot enough to start smoking. If this is the case the solution is to have the outlet replaced and you will probably need a new adapter too. Sometimes you can clean the adapter prongs with steel wool as long as its not melted. What you need to do is remove any corrosion from the prong, shine them up if you will. You want to make sure that you have a good tight corrosion free connection.

This is why those of us with 30A rigs sometime use a 30 - 50 adapter and plug into the 50A outlet. They are less used and I have found to be in better shape.

Hope I've explained this well.

[Ruffus]

Thanks Terrydactile, you hit it right on the head. Went down and bought a new adapter since the other was fried and broke out the generators to test out the systems and thankfully they all worked. Since there's not Rangers on duty this weekend on our side of the lake I'll have to wait until Monday to have them replace the recepticle on the pedistal. Thanks again, a good lesson learned.
Jim

[Terrydactile]

Glad you found the problem. Hope the rangers can install a new recepticle for you today.

Some of the recepticles are in really bad shape. I've seen a few that would not hardly hold the plug in to it. The problem is every time someone plugs in and there is any resistance in the connection due to corrosion or by plugging in/out with high load devices turned on in the RV, which causes arcing and carbon, heat is generated. Over time the heat weakens the recepticle and it just gets worse and worse until it burns up such as it did with you.

We can all help prevent/prolong this problem by:

1) Be sure that the breaker on the pedistal is in the off postion when connecting/dis-connecting the power cord. This prevents arcing which over time will cause a high resistance connection which will generate heat.

2) Make sure that the prongs on your plug are brite & shiny, not a dull color such as an old penny. Briten them up with some steel wool or a scotch brite pad.

Recepticles will still wear out but the better the connection the longer they will last.