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Storage Bay GFI

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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

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