Ok, my travel trailer uses 120v/30amp in order to use the heat and a/c along with everything else. I'm looking at installing a 120v/30amp rv outlet in the garage, probably under the breaker panel. I was thinking the outlet would be single pole as it's 120v, but all I've seen at lowes and home depot are 2 pole outlets. That requires use of a 2 pole breaker, correct? In which case, won't that be running 220v?

 

It is 120 volt and not 240 volt. In the receptacle you have three holes. the two slotted are one hot and one ground. The round hole is another ground.

I know of one that got wired 240 volt and fried some of the trailer electronics. No, I did not do it.

Wire it with a #10-3 cable. It can be a 10-2 with ground as long as all three wires are #10.

Also, you only need a single 30 amp breaker.

Daniel

 

Drives me crazy, too.
In this case 2 pole means 2 conductor wires or a hot and neutral for 120v supply.

 

Dan is correct , 30A single pole breaker ,3c/10 wire to your recpt. and for your ext.cord and your good.

 

2 pole breaker means two hots for 240v coming from 2 different phases in the panel. Single pole is one hot and a neutral must be used. I can start talking 3 phase if yas wana get really confused LOL.

 

Your outlet you can get at your RV store. They come with the box so you can close it with it plugged in.

I am with the others with the single pole 30A

 

This may help.
http://www.dasplace.net/RVWiring/wiring.html

 

My electrician Grandfather added an RV box to the side of my house next to the exist load center. What we did was buy a ready made 50-amp load center from Home Depot. It has (1) 50-amp receptacle and (2) 20-amp standard GFCI receptacles and comes with the required breakers. Cost was somewhere around $65 for all parts. Made installation a breeze and makes for a clean install. It's also nice to have the additional house type receptacles outside. I use them all the time while working in the driveway.

One thing I recommend you do is go ahead and install a 50-amp system. That way if you ever move from your current travel trailer to a larger 5th wheel or motorcoach you won't have to redo the whole thing. Cost will only be a few dollars more. I connect my 30-amp service travel trailer using a 50-amp male to 30-amp female pigtail.

 

Well, I did, an I'll admit it if I can save someone elses hide! I tried to use a 240 outlet for my welder to power the 50 amp 120/240 labeled outlet on the trailer and fried the converter, DVD, TV and convection microwave. I wired it as kampnnut's link indicates so don't listen to it. I didn't even get to use the new trailer before frying it. The trailer is strictly 120. You can wire two circuits together, but take both breakers off the same leg. By using a double pole breaker, you'll get 240 out of the outlets in the trailer as I did. In the Montana, both circuits go the the same bus in the trailer's breaker panel. It's not 240 and can't be wired as 240, it is actually two 120 circuits that has to be phased the same. I have since made an adapter that pulls one leg from the welder receptical and splits it to the two connectors on the trailer and it works great.

 

Thanks guys!
I don't understand why the package for the recepticle states 2 pole, it's a normal 3 hole rv outlet requiring hot, neutral and ground..I couldn't figure out why I'd have a wire left over.. When I hear or see 2 pole, I think 4 wires, red and black are hot, white is neutral and then there's the ground..and you need a breaker to match. I kept picking up the single pole breaker, and kept putting everything back when I picked up the recepticle.
It was just too much, I couldn't handle thinking that hard!!

 

Kampnnut's link (RV Wiring) is correct, although its terminology could be better. A 125/250V 50 amp RV circuit has four (4) conductors - L1, L2, N and ground. L1 and L2 must be 180* out of phase relative to each other; otherwise, the N leg can be overloaded - it is sized for 50 amps (the same as each hot leg) and could see up to 100 amps return current if both hot legs are in phase with each other.

A correctly wired 125/250V 50 amp outlet (14-50R) will read:

L1 to L2 - 250VAC
L1 to N - 125VAC
L2 to N - 125VAC

If you managed to put 250VAC across a 125VAC bus in the RV's power distribution panel, then the receptacle wiring is suspect.

Rusty

 

I must disagree with you on your wiring suggestions. I will agree that if you wire both sides of a 50 amp RV service to the same leg in the breaker panel it should work without any problems providing you have two 50 amp breakers. Any RV I have checked does not use the 240 volts available, but operates as two different 120 volt circuits. Therefore it does not matter if they are on one leg or two. If you fried things in your trailer, you must have wired the receptacle wrong which is very easy to do. I have done that but caught it with a meter before plugging anything in.

I have my RV pad wired for both 30 amp and 50 amp service and have had an RV plugged in using the 50 amp receptacle with no problem.

If you are using one leg of your welder circuit and it is 50 amp, you do not have 50 amps available on both circuits of the RV.

RV 50 amp service is actually a total of 100 amps available. The 50 amp RV receptacle is a standard 240 volt 50 amp which is used in many other applications.

Daniel

 

The 30 amp 120V plug on a RV is VERY close in design to that of a 30 amp 240V 3 prong slanted pin dryer/oven plug that some will actually accept the 30 amp 120V RV plug. I have seen that happen many times. The normal 50 amp 240V RV plug is a 4 pin plug and hard to mix up. Using the 50 amp 240V 4 pin service plug and a 50 amp 240V to 30 amp 120V adapter (which should have come with all new 30 amp RVs) is an easy and more universel way to go.

IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBTS ON WHAT YOUR DOING, HIRE AN ELECTRICAN!!!

Home fires, RV fires, fatal shocks are not worth saving pennies.

 

We'll I'm here to tell you. I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again. I probably did cause the problem but I just don't know how. In the diagram located on the link, my 50 Amp hookup is like 14-50R. I wired Y and X as hot, W as neutral and G as mechanical ground. Using the 50 amp cord that came with the trailer, somehow I got 240 out of the outlets. I haven't torn the trailer apart to see where the legs go, but it certainly appears that both legs come into the same bus, not that I can imagine why as that is wrong, but I have only one row of breakers and it appears to only have one bus bar. I would assume the other leg goes somewhere else but that would explain the 240 out of the outlets.
I've wire many 240 outlets before and am pretty confident that I wired the cable adapter, from the welder receptacle to the cable plug correctly, but as I said, I've been wrong before. After the incident, I checked the adapter and again all looked correct. After talking to the dealer as to what went wrong, I was told that I couldn't use a 240 receptacle to power the trailer, but that I had to use two 110 circuits (same phase). So, with all that said, I'm now totally confused. Everytime I go camping I wire 30 amp and to date have never use the 50 amp service, mostly because I don't need it and also that I'm afraid to. Since then, as stated, I am just pulling one leg from the welder receptical and using the 30 amp cable, and all works fine. I don't think I explained this wiring method correctly in the previous thread. Forgive me.

 

It matters very much in terms of neutral leg current. Hot leg currents are additive on the neutral leg if both hot legs are in phase, but they are subtractive if the hot legs are 180* out of phase (i.e., wired correctly). If both hot legs were loaded to the maximum 50 amps, then the neutral leg current would be 100 amps if both hot legs are in phase, but 0 amps if the hot legs are 180* out of phase. This is significant as the neutral leg is sized for 50 amps, just like each of the hot legs.

Rusty