Storage Bay GFI

[Edward Buker]

I started having my GFI in the storage bay trip. It would reset fine and last for awhile. I thought this problem would be fixed by replacing the GFI outlet, thinking that I had one that had become defective with age. The new one that I installed is also tripping, perhaps more often in the same random manner. Before I start the witch hunt I was wondering what the experience base has been with this problem.

I had pulled my transfer switch to modify it and quiet the hum. While it was out I verified that the contacts were in good shape, lightly burnished them, and that all the wiring was tight and correct. That was several months before this problem started. I also have been through the AC panel tightening all the grounds, neutrals, and hot wires as part of my own coach scrutinity after the purchase.

My coach is connected at home here to the same source that it has been connected to with no past problems. I know the AC source wiring is correct that the coach plugs into.

[Bill Sprague]

My storage bay GFCI was giving me fits a couple years ago.  It seemed it would trip occasionally and randomly when I changed power sources.  (shore to inverter or generator to inverter, etc)

I would usually not catch it until it was cold, dark, rainy or windy.  Then I would have to go outside.  I cussed Beaver for putting it in the storage bay when most of the stuff on that circuit was inside and necessary.  

I chased it for awhile and couldn't find a cause.  I finally decided that GFCIs might be made for places like stick houses where the power source is more steady.  When I remembered I spent the first half of my life without them I decided I would eliminate the frustration by replacing the GFCI with a standard heavy duty outlet.  

I've had no problem since.  I get to stay where it is warm.  I do think I see my dear wife "spark" a little more when she is holding here hair dryer.  But, that might be from other causes.

[Edward Buker]

Bill,
That is something I am considering also if all else fails. I have no recording device to determine when the hot and neutral lines do not get the same current flow and trip the GFI. It only takes 5 milliamps and a couple of hundreths of a second difference between the neutral and the hot line current flow to trip them. Not a lot of tolerence for an RV environment.

I'm wondering how many others have had this issue and have also eliminated that GFI? My coach is just sitting without any varying loads except for the charger, microwave clock, and minor electronic component memory loads. Trips while the coach is seeing stable electrical conditions....hate these transient problems.

Later Ed

[LarryNCarolynShirk]

Today I just located the source of a problem ground fault circuit in my home.  I traced it to a loose ground wire on one of the receptacles in that circuit.  The screw was loose about 3 turns.  After tightening the screw, the problem disappeared.  The house does not move going down the road, so it was either earthquakes or the guy who installed it when the house was built.  We have had several electrical issues, and 10 years later another developed.  After I called the electrical contractor out to show him some of thel problems, he fired the installer.

This is just to offer another possible source of the problem.  Try tightening all connections in all receptacles in the ground fault circuit.  You just never know what will work.

Larry

[Gerald Farris]

I was having the GFI in the basement trip for no apparent reason last year. After a lot of looking, I made the connection that it usually tripped on laundry day even though the washer was not on that circuit. I finally found that the pump on the washer was leaking, and getting the wiring wet in the holding tank area below the washer and causing the GFI to trip.

Gerald    

[Jim Shaw]

I also have the problem of the storage bay GFI tripping at times. It has not been a major problem so I have not done anything, but am thinking why not change it with one that is on the same circut inside the coach. Then I would not need to go outside to reset it. Wouls it still give me the same protection?
JIm Shaw
2003 Monterey

[Edward Buker]

Jim,

The GFCI protects its own outlet and any outlets/switches that are wired beyond it on the same circuit. That means that the basement storage bay outlet is most likely the first outlet beyond the breaker and then it proceeds wherever Monaco chose to go next. I did not get a chance today to isolate that circuit and see which outlets and loads are involved. I do know that my main salon 120v ceiling light and wall sconces are involved which is a pain. If you found the next outlet in the circuit beyond the initial outlet and installed the GFCI there, that would give you protection from that point on but not the bay outlet.

I believe there is a better way to wire this troublesome circuit layout. GFCI outlets can be wired as individual protection devices where the following outlets are not in series with the first GFCI outlet. The line feed to the next outlet would be tied to the line in to the first outlet. If the next inline outlet location was determined then that could be individually protected also and so on until one made the decision to wire the rest in line as protected or not. The advantage of wiring as individual protected outlets is that the problem source outlet would trip and not affect the others helping isolate the source of the problem. This also would likely move the tripped outlet up into the living area or if the basement outlet tripped it would not cut voltage and current to others beyond it. I will have to do a little checking to see how to wire this way. I do not know if GFCI only breaks the hot line to the next outlet or the neutral also. I think just the hot line.

Geralds problem and solution makes sense to me if the circuit that was getting wet was the GFCI outlet that was tripped or involved wiring or an outlet that was beyond it in the same circuit. Gerald did you have a situation where another circuit was tripping a GFCI on another breaker? I'm still trying to sort out if we have a stray current from elsewhere causing these issues or if the GFCI is operating properly and the fault lies within the GFCI circuit.

Later Ed

[Edward Buker]

This is a follow up to my GFCI tripping in the bay problem. I replaced the original Pass and Seymour GFCI with the exact replacement which I found at Lowes. The tripping continued only it seemed to be more frequent. I started the witch hunt for bad connections, or a device that was plugged in that had a ground connection that some of the current could be leaking to. The issue is we are looking for 5 milliamps of difference betwen the hot and neutral lines as the tripping point on an intermittent basis. This is not an easy problem to sort out without some kind of continuous current recording device which I do not own. There are two ways to implement GFCI protection, one is to wire one GFCI outlet in place and use it as a device to protect all the follow on outlets. This is the way our bay GFCI is installed. The alternative is to use multiple GFCI outlets and protect just a single outlet at a time. That was going to be my next step, to install multiple outlets and let the offending GFCI outlet location trip as a diagnostic method and save going to the bay to reset. Before I went to that expense and trouble I was still suspicious of the GFCI outlet itself given the original and replacement units acted differently, as to how often they would trip. I found a Leviton wet environment GFCI at Home Depot, purchased it and installed it and I have not had a trip event in days. My suspicion is that the contacts that are used as the breakaway device in the wet environment version are lower resistance and not prone to oxidation. That may explain with some contact heating the intermittent tripping of the other brand. Perhaps the circuits are more stable in the wet environment version when the humidity is at 90% as it has been here lately. I recommend this GFCI product to anyone that has had the problem. Hope this helps...Later Ed
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xiu/R-202026829/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

[Joel Ashley]

One would expect all GFCI outlets to be relatively weatherproof, given they are basically designed with potentially wet environments in mind, like kitchens, bathrooms, and even garages, where I've experienced GFCI failures myself.  Though ground faults can occur from things other than moisture-related events, and GFCIs protect against extended shock in any case, thanks, Ed, for alerting us to the fact that not all GFCIs are created equal.  Perhaps RV manufacturers should also take note of this regarding outside bays.

-Joel

[Edward Buker]

Joel,

What appears to be the better GFCI is labelled as made for outdoor environment where the others are not so I believe there is a real difference in the design plus a 30% price premium.

As I look at the RV AC schematic the bedroom, bathroom, and living room lights, most outlets, and all electronics (radios, tvs, sat, dvd, etc) are all connected through that one bay GFCI while only allowing 5MA of mismatch from hot to neutral. I count 11 outlets, all the 120V lighting plus the awning.  It is a wonder that this arrangement works at all. One could have easily wired this with three or so legs each with its own GFCIs for protection. That would have divided up the load per GFCI and allowed 5MA per leg before tripping with a possible 15MA of tolerance total. This would have probably been a much more "false trip" tolerant design than we have now. When it comes to the bay GFCI tripping in the middle of a rainy night life really isn't fair...

One might mount a remote switched 12V solenoid inline with the GFCI reset button and patent the Beaver auto reset option :-)

later Ed

[Joel Ashley]

Ed-

Our coach has the one GFCI outlet in the bay.  Associated with it is only one other "downstream" outlet, the one under the dash.  The other six 30 amp Main (Inverter) AC circuits use GFCI circuit breakers instead.  The 50 amp Mains are not GFCI circuit breakers.  The coach is closed up for storage, and it's pouring down cats and dogs with 30 mph winds at the moment, so I can't check easily if the 4 outlets off the big main are GFCIs - vacuum, washer/dryer, refer, block heater - but one would assume so since they are exterior or potentially-wet location units.  The air conditioners and HydroHot are hard-wired with no outlet hazard involved.

Hard to imagine all the lights and outlets you refer to going through the one bay GFCI.  Surely there are circuit breakers involved where you might opt to replace them with GFCI breakers protecting individual circuits?

-Joel

[Edward Buker]

Joel,

Attached is the 2000 Marquis schematic I got from Loren at the service center. Mine is a 2002 and he thought it was wired the same and I believe he is correct. The bay GFCI is fed from one of the bay breakers and it has two output wires that branch through several J boxes that branch again. If you follow the wiring diagram you will see that it has extensive outlets, lighting, and electronics on it as I described. I think the AC wiring and GFCI protection in the coach in general is just fine. I think this one circuit could have been much better designed for convenience and fault tolerance. I have not had this circuit trip in days now....very happy about that. Schematic is attached.

The only other wiring issue that I find annoying is the use of AC coil relays in the transfer switch. I hate the annoying hum. There are many manufactured transfer switches in the same price range that use quiet DC relays.....that would have been much nicer.
later Ed

[Joel Ashley]

Wow, I see what you mean, Ed.  There's a lot of circuitry protected by that bay outlet.  Your wiring is much different than mine - where you have many GFCI outlet-protected circuits, I have 6 easily-accessed GFCI breakers out of my inverter panel in the bathroom.  We have in common that bay outlet, but mine controls only one other outlet, so is likely to be less troublesome.

I believe you've probably taken the right step in upgrading the bay outlet.  But you may also have been able to use a standard outlet there and replace breaker #3 in your inverter circuit breaker panel with a GFCI version, so resetting a trip wouldn't entail going out to the bay on a rainy night.

Whoops, scratch that.  Upon review, I see that panel is probably in a storage bay with the inverter, anyway.  A guy can't win  :-/.

-Joel

[Edward Buker]

I think the best fix for this GFCI bay issue, if someone has a significant problem, would be to wire the GFCI in the bay as a single isolated GFCI, no follow on outlet protection. You would replace the existing GFCI outlet box with a double one and take the two load lines that come out of the current GFCI and wire nut a seperate loop on each that travels to a convenient location in the living area, like in a bathroom cabinet and then returns. You would mount two GFCI outlets in a double surface mount box wired to protect follow on outlets. Basically inserting a GFCI protect outlet in series with each of the two load lines in the diagram. The double box in the bay GFCI location is just to have space and access to do the wiring. If a GFCI kicked in this case there would be no crawling into the bay and at least you would have the branch identified that had caused the problem. Not sure what the easiest wire path is upstairs but my guess is it would be maybe near the washer/dryer plumbing. I would have to get pretty mad at this problem to break out the tools... I was getting there until I found a GFCI that worked.

later Ed