Daily Archives: July 25, 2015
Code? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Code!
A little before 3pm we lost power to the rig, so after waiting a minute or so to see if it would come back on, I when outside to check the pedestal. I expected to find a popped breaker like we had earlier in the week. But both breakers were fine.
So next I double-checked our Progressive EMS to see if it had a problem, but it was dead with no power coming in. Looking at our neighbors 3 sites over, I could see they had an oscillating fan going, so they had power.
I then took my test plug and found that the sites on either side of us also had power. So it was just me. Then after I called the park ranger, I ran my AC breakout extension cord over to the empty site next door so we’d have at least one AC running while we waited.
Jason, the ranger, showed up about 10 minutes later and I saw him doing something at a large tree two sites over.
So that explains it. Our electrical system here at the park is run by Keebler Elves. But it turns out it’s even worse than that.
I walked over to see what he was doing and found a main breaker box on a pole right beside the tree. So, no Elves, I guess.
Looking over Jason’s shoulder as he reset our breaker, our 30 amp breaker, I asked him about these ‘fake’ 50 amp sites. He laughed and said they, ‘the park’, didn’t want to spend the money to upgrade panels for 50 amp service, so they just put 50 amp receptacles in the pedestals, but kept the 30 amp breakers. So we have this ‘50 amp pedestal’.
But wait, it gets worse.
It turns out that this ‘50 amp’ pedestal is actually being fed by the 30 amp one behind it on the same post.
And by ‘fed’ I mean it goes through the same 30 amp breaker that also feeds the 30 amp receptacle in the box.
So what we have is a 30 amp breaker in the main breaker box feeding through another 30 amp breaker in the 30 amp box and then through another 30 amp breaker into the 50 amp receptacle.
Note the cable looping between the two boxes, even though both boxes are also being fed via conduits from underground.
So even using my AC breakout, everything was still running off the same 30 amp breaker, or breakers, actually.
Whoever decided to wire things up this way wouldn’t know the Electrical Code if it bit him.
“Code? We don’t need no stinkin’ code!”
I’m really surprised the whole thing doesn’t just burst into flames.
So I told Jason I was going to keep my AC breakout hooked up to the pedestal next door, and he said he’d tell the office to take the site out of service until we leave next Sunday.
Hopefully it’ll all hold together for the next 7 days.
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Thought for the Day:
Resistance Isn’t Futile. It’s Voltage divided by Current.
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