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Roget · 03-30-2022, 05:32 PM

Have any of you fine gentlemen (or gentle ladies) ever lost power to some of your 110 receptacles?
Today, while hooked up to shore power, I plugged in to the receptacle in the basement & found it was dead. I tried other receptacles & found that all of the receptacles on the driver's side of the coach were live while all the receptacles on the other side were dead.
Wifey insists she used one of the "dead" receptacles just last week. The coach has not been moved since.
I have tried it with shore power & with the generator with no luck. I checked all the breakers & found no problem. I just don't know where else to look.
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I am at a loss where to go from here.

twinboat · 03-30-2022, 05:37 PM

If equipped with an inverter, look at it for breakers.

If not, look for a GFCI tripped. It would be on the circuit for outside outlets.

HarryStone · 03-30-2022, 06:14 PM

GFCI's and tripped breakers, as mentioned above. Are all your outlets, dead and live, on the same breaker?

Xmcdog · 03-30-2022, 06:24 PM

Sounds like you have lost one leg of power.
Transfer switch, breakers or GFI. Not necessarily in that order. Hope this helps
Good luck.

Roget · 03-30-2022, 06:29 PM

Duh!!!
Now I just feel stupid.
GFCI in bathroom.
Should have been my first thought.
As things go for me, I was expecting it to be some thing serious, & the most obvious never even occurred to me.

Thanks for getting my brain started fellas.

D Gardiner · 03-30-2022, 10:15 PM

Glad you found the GFCI at fault.

For others reading; GFCI outlet have a life span. As GFCI outlets age, are loaded with high amps (example: hair dryer) and get tripped, they wear out and eventually die.

We had a GFCI give up the ghost this last Christmas, that was powering our yard decorations.

AnotherMike · 03-30-2022, 10:31 PM

An idea for you...

You've discovered that RV manufacturers are CHEAP and use as few GFCI outlets as possible. If you are good with a screwdriver, and would like to minimize future hassles, then read on...

If you look at the back of a GFCI outlet you will see that one set of screws is labeled "Line" (the input side) and the other set of screws is labeled "Load".

All GFI outlets can have additional protected outlets downstream just by wiring them to the "Load" side. These are sometime called "slave" outlets. You have a situation where the outlets on one side of your RV are slaved to that one GFI because that one string of outlets is wired to the "Load" side.

I first encountered a GFCI "slave" outlet with a friends brand new house in the early 1980s... back when GFCI outlets were brand new and very expensive... The kitchen had a GFCI outlet on one side of the kitchen sink, and the construction electrician had wired the "Load" side of that one GFI outlet to the rest of the kitchen counter outlets and then daisy-chained the bathroom outlets on the other side of the kitchen wall to that "master" GFI outlet. My friend's wife was very annoyed every time her hair dryer (in the bathroom) tripped the GFI and she'd have to walk to the kitchen to reset it.

I helped him pull the GFCI outlet and move the slave kitchen outlet wiring from the "load" side to the "line" side, and we replaced every downstream outlet with a new GFCI outlet, with the power going into the "line" side of each one, and nothing connected to the "load" side. So now when any one of them trips you just reset the one and the trip doesn't shut down any other outlets with it.

In closing, GFCIs can trip off with an circuit unbalance of as little as four
to five one-thousandths of an amp, and any slightly defective electrical item can trigger them. Also, they have a limited life, and as they age they trip randomly. Sometimes the final failure mode is that it trips off and can't be reset.

Mike

Roget · 03-31-2022, 07:27 AM

My coach has three GFCI outlets. One each in the kitchen, bathroom, & basement cargo bay.
Actually this one had just been tripped, and it did reset. Wifey said she may have inadvertently tripped it while deep cleaning the vanity area.
The one on my swimming pool went south after only about two years. First time it tripped it would not reset.
Yes, they can get expensive to replace.