Electrical system has gone haywire!!!!

Over the July 4th weekend, we took our '07 3023 out for our first camping trip of '08. Even though we were at beautiful Bryce Canyon, Utah, we had very stange electrical system problems.

1. We hooked up to the RV park's shore power, 30 amp plug in.
2. The A/C and the electrical outlets inside the TM worked just fine and properly drew power from the park's shore power (thank god we could still use the coffee maker).
3. For some reason the TM batteries would not accept a charge from the shore power.
4. Also, the shore power was not able to power the 12 volt accessories (i.e. the interior lights, the roof fan, the radio, the toilet pump, the refrigerator, etc.). Any use of these accessories drew power directly from the batteries which were draining, and not being recharged by the shore power. The refrigerator also would not draw power from the RV park. It would only draw power from the batteries. Thankfully were able to get it to work using propane.
5. We do have a factory mounted solar panel, which was charging the batteries during the day (when it wasn't raining, and it rained alot).
6. I checked all of the fuses and breakers in the panel. All of the fuses were ok, including the two reverse polarity fuses. One of the 20 amp breakers was tripped, but after I reset the 20 amp breaker, the problems continued.
7. I also checked the 30 amp fuse inside the battery box. The fuse was fine.
8. The batteries will still not accept a charge from my house. And the refrigerator still wont run on the power from my house.

So we were left in the dark during the two nights of our trip because the batteries had run down. But we had outlets and A/C that worked perfectly.

Has anyone ever had this problem? Does anyone know how to fix it? The dealer is over 200 miles away, I'd musch rather fix this myself. The dealer couldn't tell me what else to check other than the fuses and breakers as described above. Please help. Thanks.

[Bill]

Open the hatches outside the refrig and find the 120-volt house-power cord for the refrig. Pull it out of the outlet and plug in a lamp or some other house power device. Does the lamp work? If not, then the refrig outlet is dead, which means a circuit breaker has gone bad or has popped. (By the way, are you aware that to reset a popped circuit breaker, you don't simply push the lever to ON? You must first push the lever all the way to OFF, then back to ON.) If yes, then the refrig has a problem. To confirm, plug the refrig into an extension cord and run it from a dfifferent source of power. Be sure the refrig is set to house power, and let it operate for a while - at least a couple hours. Then check a) does the floor of the freezer begin to feel cool? and b) does the insulated stack/tower in the back get warm (it should).

Re the battery-charging problem. If all the fuses are good, then the only problem left (other than a cut or disconnected wire) is a problem in the converter. What model do you have? Is it American Enterprises or WFCO?

It is not clear to me that these two problems are related.

Bill

The converter is a WFCO.

[Joe]

I'll expand a little on Bill's reply. We have a 2007 3124 with a Norcold ref. In the hatch area behind the ref there is no 120VAC socket. The ref AC connection is via a 4 position terminal strip at the left of the ref. There is a label above the terminal strip showing that the 2 leftmost terminals are 120VAC and the right 2 are 12VDC. The power feed for the 120VAC line goes thru a 3amp inline fuse.
Our converter/distribution panel is from WFCO. The top breaker is a 30amp Main breaker. Your supply 120VAC comes thru it. If you switch it OFF, all AC in the TM is gone. The other breakers are 20amp. On our unit the next breaker down is labeled A/C for the air conditioner. If you have the optional microwave oven, that breaker is probably here and the A/C breaker is below it.
The next breaker is labeled Ref, W/H, Converter. The last breaker we have is labeled GFI for the inside and outside AC receptacles.
I suspect that your problem is with the Ref, W/H, Converter breaker. Because it is all hard-wired from this point, you will have to remove the face-plate from the converter so you can get to the breaker terminals. On our unit there were 2 or 4 phillips head screws to remove. Check your voltmeter by checking the voltage at the Main breaker. That will likely be OK. Then check the voltage at the Ref, W/H, Converter breaker. If that isn't OK the breaker is tripped or defective. If it is OK the converter should be working. You can verify that by going to the monitor panel under the kitchen sink and pushing the Check status switch. The battery charge lights should all be lit. If not, the converter is not working or the there is a blown fuse in the converter. If all this checks OK, then follow Bill's advice and go outside to the lower ref panel. Check the voltage across the 120VAC terminals. If that is OK then the heater on the right side of the ref should be warm and getting hot as Bill said.
By now you should have a pretty good idea of where the trouble is. I don't know the route of the wiring from the converter to the ref; whether it goes to the W/H and then the ref or vice versa. Keep in mind that a lot of people have reported burning out the W/H element be turning it ON without water in the tank. The reports I see indicate that causes a short that will re-trip the breaker every time you switch it OFF and back ON.

Let us know what you find.

[Bill]

Joe -

Thanks for a really good update. I didn't realize that there was no more AC outlet behind the refrig - and I missed the fact that the refrig and the converter (both of the problem items) are on the same breaker. Good catch in both cases.

Bill

You may wish to check that the reset button on the GFi outlet by the stove is not popped.

[Joe]

That's always a good thing to check but it won't cause the problem he is having. The GFI outlets are on a separate breaker.

I think I solved the problem. The problem was that I'm an idiot and apparently don't know how to reset a tripped breaker. As suggested by Bill, I checked the refrigerator-etc. breaker at the converter again and even though it looked like it wasn't tripped, I could feel that it was by the amount of play in the breaker. Once I reset it, the 12 volt system will now run on shore power and the battery appears to be accepting a charge from the shore power.

However, now I have a new problem. In the past, I was always able to plug the trailer into the 120 volt outlet in my garage and keep the trailer charged or even run the AC while cleaning the trailer. This 120 volt outlet is a GFI.

Now, evertime I plug in the trailer to the garage outlet, it trips the GFI. If I plug the trailer into a non-GFI outlet inside my house, everything works fine.

Is the reason the garage GFI is tripping because the trailer batteries are so low on charge?

Thanks to everyone who responded to my original post. Each response was extremely helpful in explaining the workings of the electrical system. This board is worth every cent for the $12 fee.

I don't think it is the low batteries.

Does it reset immediately, or does it take time?

If you plug in just the 15 to 30 amp power cord adaptor (not the trailer though, just the adaptor) to the GFI, does it trip the GFI by itself?

If you flip ALL the breakers off in the converter, except the main "30 amp" breaker, does it trip your home's GFI? If it doesn't, keep turning breakers on, one at a time, until it does. That's probably the circuit with a problem. You can then turn off each appliance/device/etc on that leg and see if it still causes problems. That will let you narrow the problem.

The GFI may be tripping because power is showing up on the ground wire at the GFI. That could be a potentially life-threatening problem (if that power showed up while NOT having a GFI to trip, it could be an electricution risk)and it's worth finding the cause. It also could be faulty wiring at your home (a broken neutral wire somewhere, for instance). That's also worth finding.

If you don't feel comfortable doing this, I think it's worth taking the camper somewhere - but maybe someone else has ideas about what could be doing this.

[cali camping]

Is there a chance you have an additional load on the house circuit that wasn't there last time you used it to power the TM? If you added something else to the house circuit, then plugged in the TM you could be exceeding the capacity of the circuit.