30A Just Isn't Enough

[Bob Landry]

The C/B enclosure is finished and ready to be installed and wired. There's a light place in the upper right corner where I didn't clean all the glue off, my bad, but you'll have to open the pantry and kneel down to see it, so, I'll live with it.
I lucked out on the labels. A Brother P-Touch label maker, white on black tape, Helvetica 12 pt font makes an identical label to the originals.

[Festus2]

Bob -
Go to the front of the class! You're making the rest of us look very, very bad. Please, no more photos of your professional handywork......

[Bob Landry]

Thanks, Festus.. I wish I were a professional. The sign of a good craftsman is how well he hides his mistakes. Some I can hide well, others not so much.

[PARAPTOR]

BOB

Nice ...

Think KS may need a few good craftsman Then again all the trailers of the same year and model may look the same

for sharing pictures of your mods

[Bob Landry]

The best laid plans of mice and men.. Well, we all know the rest. , I While I was enlarging the opening in the back of the trailer to install the double inlet mount I severed the wiring to the tail light on the curb side. Not a disaster, just another job to add to the list. At least that back wall is hollow with no studs, so I can probably get to the wires by pulling the two wall outlets and splicing in some wire for the repair. What a PITA.

[Festus2]

Originally Posted by Bob Landry

Thanks, Festus.. I wish I were a professional. The sign of a good craftsman is how well he hides his mistakes. Some I can hide well, others not so much.

Good morning, Bob -
Just when you think things are going well. I guess we'll see just how good a craftsman you really are .........

[Bob Landry]

Originally Posted by Festus2

Good morning, Bob -
Just when you think things are going well. I guess we'll see just how good a craftsman you really are .........

This isn't a crisis, just a minor setback. A crisis is when you cut through an entire console wiring harness on some guy's boat. I've never done it, but I have seen someone else do it. Ever see a grown man cry? LOL

[Bob Landry]

Fixed my screw-up today. I had to remove the table that sits between the chairs and cut away some of the paneling to get to the wire ends, spliced in a piece of wire for some strain relief and put it all back together. I just have to go back with my brad nailer and put a piece of trim back. It was a PITA, but that's about a $200 job that the dealer won't get to do. Now I can get back to my shore power job. I'll pull all the wire for that and put the panel in tomorrow.

[Bob Landry]

The new panel is installed in the pantry. Wiring is complete between the 2nd power inlet and the new C/B panel. A flip of the switch combines both power legs in the event I only have a single 30A power source. The neutrals from both legs are tied together, as are the safety grounds. Since both legs are sharing a common neutral from the 50A outlet, it's OK to tie them together, otherwise, no. All that is left is to start moving circuits over to the new panel.



One thing that I think is worthy of passing on. In the course of sorting out circuits and wires, I found that wall outlets are not always powered from where you think they would be. For example: The two outlets on the rear wall are fed off the microwave breaker. It ties in at the outlet the microwave plugs into. The outlet across from the triangular pantry by the door is on the GFI circuit and the bedroom outlets are connected to the breaker that feeds the 12V converter. Functionally, none of this makes any difference, and under normal use would not present a safety issue, the average owner probably would never know it. However, the danger comes from people doing their own electrical work, and many of us do that, and intending to work on an outlet that they think is turned off. I would encourage everyone, even if you are not a DIYer, to take one of the 3 light outlet testers(about $8 at Home Depot) and go around checking outlets and shutting off breakers so you know exactly what is running off. A hand drawn diagram of what does what, may come in handy at some point.

What I really find astonishing about all of this is that Keystone will not release any electrical information about their product under the guise of concern for customer safety(AKA liability lawsuits), but seem to find it perfectly acceptable to do throw-together 110V wiring and not include any of that in the owner information that a new buyer gets with the trailer.

[Bob Landry]

Finished the wiring today and got everything put back together. I wasn't able to break out the circuits that the all the outlets were on. Keystone really did some "creative" wiring in this (and others) trailer and while I could have probably sorted it out, I decided that it just wasn't a big enough deal to run a lot of new wiring just to put all the outlets on a single breaker, so I left well enough alone. The important thing is that I got the loads balanced between the two power legs, everything is protected, and that was the original intention. I left the Air conditioner, the refrigerator, and the converter on the original leg because those contain the components that are the most expensive to replace in the event of an electrical catastrophe. The water heater, microwave, and the GFCI went on the new panel as well as my air compressor. I still retained my extra 20A input for use during the colder weather to run space heaters and that little mini-panel only feeds two outlets in the living area. At any rate, I spent enough time on this project and it was just time to move on to the next one. I think the next one is going to be to replace the suspension components with the Dexter EZ-Flex and wet bolts, I'm just not sure when I'm going to do it. A man has to take a break every now and then and fish.