Don’t Let the Power Be Your Demise

Electricity is a wonderful servant, but let on the loose, it makes for a terrible time.

RVers meet with various challenges, and sad to say, sometimes those challenges are where we “pay good money” to stay: RV parks and campgrounds where ‘the electrics’ aren’t what they should be. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to correctly hook up three wires in a box, but at times, you think some park owners hired the Three Stooges to do the work. Mis-wired electrical boxes can leave you “in the dark,” and frustrated. A wrong connection at the pedestal can fry expensive electrical gear. Worse still, they can leave you shocked and literally deader than a doornail.

What can happen? Well, the original wiring was probably done correctly, and if not, hopefully spotted in an inspection. But over the years as electrical receptacles get “toasted” from loose connections, the park “pool guy” is often pressed into service to make a replacement. Wire it up wrong, bad things can happen.

Reversing the polarity, swapping a “hot” wire for a neutral can really create problems for sensitive gear. The toaster probably won’t pay it any mind, but that plasma TV may not look at it the same way. But reverse the ground wire and the hot wire–there’s a whole different story. Given the right circumstances, you could complete a circuit between your RV and the earth, and soon have a new home, six feet under.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take a lot of money, time, or effort to figure out whether or not the electricity at your next RV site is safe. A simple, inexpensive circuit analyzer from nearly any hardware store can indicate if RV park wiring is correct. They plug into a standard electric outlet, and a set of indicator lights shows if a problem exists, and what the problem is.

One approach is to plug your circuit analyzer into an appropriate adapter, since the analyzer will be “looking for” a 15 amp outlet, and you’ll generally be plugging into a 30 amp receptacle. A quick glance will tell you how the wiring stands. An alternative is to plug the analyzer into an outlet you can see from outside the rig. For the two of us, we roll into a “utility” site, and while one stays inside getting the “house” ready, the other takes care of hooking up utilities. Once the power is plugged in, the outside man calls for the insider to verify a safe reading. We DON’T touch the outside of the rig until the “all clear” is given.

If you find a problem, let the park manager or host know immediately. And if there’s a reversed hot and ground wire, don’t under any circumstances hook up in that site.