Consulting, Etc. - (Pogosa Springs, CO)

Karen requested that I be present for a meeting today.  It's a personal family matter, so I won't get into it here.

I spent about three hours from about 10:00 to 1:00 which included a tour of some areas of the Ranch I had not yet seen.  Didn't know that was part of the deal or I would have grabbed the camera.  :)

While I was doing that, Linda was at the Ranch House continuing to organize.  She stayed with that all afternoon.

The afternoon was cloudy and rainy, so I just spent some alone time in the rig.  I napped, watched TV, and generally did nothing.  :)

The electrician came and cut off power so he could connect the new wire we buried yesterday.  But we just switched over to the inverter and batteries and had no interruption.  And, even though we are tucked back in the trees, the solar panels were charging the batteries at a faster rate than we were drawing them down.

When he reconnected everything, we definitely could see improvement in our electrical service.  We might actually have 30-amp service now.  We'll be testing it over the next few days.

The plan is to put 50-amp service in for our two RV sites.  But the wire that runs to the RV electrical pedestal is #10 wire.  Even for our current service, it should be #8 wire, but it needs to be at least #6 wire for 50 amps based on the length of the wire run.

Here is something I wrote previously about wire sizes.

I've finally learned what all those wire "numbers" mean.  The numbers correspond to the American Wire Gauge scale standards.

The larger the number of the wire, the smaller the diameter.  The smaller the diameter, the less electrical capacity.  And the smaller the diameter, the more voltage "drop" over long runs of wire.

In other words, the voltage the wire carries at the electrical source dissipates as it gets to an appliance down the line.  If the wire is not capable of holding the voltage and the wire run is too long, it can damage the appliance at the end.  There are even "voltage drop calculators" online to help select wire gauges for projects.

So #10 wire (or 10-gauge wire) is smaller than #4 wire and it has less capacity and more voltage drop.  Easy, huh?  Well, except I kept hearing about 2 aught wire and 4 aught wire (or "ought" if you prefer).  And I would see 2/0 or 4/0 in describing wire.  What the heck is that?  :)

Oh, now I get it.  #1 wire is larger than #2 wire.  So what is larger than #1 wire?  Well, #0 wire of course.  But there is no negative number wire, so then it goes #00, #000, #0000 which equals 2 aught (2/0), 3 aught (3/0), and 4 aught (4/0) respectively.  The more zeroes, the bigger the wire.  :)

Anyway, if we want 50-amp service while we are here, we will have to move our RVs, dig another trench (though much shorter), bury, and hook-up the larger wire.

It's just not worth the disruption.  And it's not like we need our air conditioners up here.  :)  So maybe it can be done after we are gone or early next spring.  Then the subsequent workampers can benefit.

JoAnn made another wonderful dinner for all of us - a shrimp and scallop pasta dish with homemade bread.  She also made two desserts, but for once, I had just had enough sweets.  :)

I snuck off and went fishing after dinner.  I left the dessert/social hour up to the others.  The river was high and quite murky, so I didn't have any luck, but it was nice being out there.

Tomorrow, I think we are going to take the Foldcat over to Williams Reservoir and try our luck fishing.  I've got the boat battery charging.  We've heard mixed reports, so we will see how it goes.  :)

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Comments

[Chaney]

Are you saying after all the work digging the ditch too small a wire was installed?

[Ken Wiseman]

Howard - although your information about wire sizes is correct, for 50 amp service you essentially need 2 30amp 120 volt circuits. This yields the 220 3 wire necessary for 50 amp service. Thus each of the circuits needs to be sized for 30 amp service, thus 3 8 gauge wires will be what's required.

The 220 is split in your RV into two separate 30 amp circuits for running the appliances. Ours splits the 2 circuits between front and back of the RV.

[Road Warriors Live]

How did fishing in the Foldcat go?

Mine came today 10 boxes total. I got the 440fc so the extra seats and extra stuff we ordered took more to pack.

I can't wait to get it on the water this weekend.

[Howard]

Chaney,

No, the ditch we dug was 230 feet from the main electrical junction to a cabin near our RV sites. There is a junction box at that cabin and then another wire is buried between the cabin junction and our RV pedestals.

We had to replace that long run of wire to the cabin (which was too small) first which improved our service. But, if we want to complete the job and have 50 amp service, we will have to replace that last run of wire from the cabin to our sites.

It's just not worth moving our rigs and having the disruption while we are here to get the 50 amp service which would be nice, but is not really necessary.

[Howard]

Ken,

I'm no electrical expert, but it's my understanding that 50 amp service is actually 2 120-volt circuits (total of 240) coming in on a 4-wire line, not a 3-wire line. Thus the four prongs on a 50-amp outlet - ground, neutral, and two hot 120-volt wires.

http://www.myrv.us/electric/

As the website states, most RVs do use each 120-volt hot leg of the service separately. But it is two 50-amp circuits, not two 30-amp circuits. So there is actually 100 amps available.

Using the watts = amps X volts equation, 50-amp service delivers two hot lines capable of 6,000 watts each or a total of 12,000 watts. 30-amp service has only one hot line and delivers only 3,600 watts. So even two 30-amp lines would only deliver 7,200 watts.

So, it is my understanding that 50-amp service is NOT just two 30-amp circuits. It's actually much better than that. And, therefore, 50-amp service requires larger wires to carry its larger capacity. :)