contest trailers with ground problems

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beam boys bbq

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plow boy and me and jeff brinker when we plug in to an genorator at an contest our ground falts pop all the time

then this weekend brewmaster nate telles me to get ride of the ground and it will stop (it worked i had full power)

didn't know if any others had this problem :rolleyes:

york
 
I don't know that I'd want to get rid of my ground with my electronics on board.
 
This happens because the grounds and the neutrals are tied together (paralleled). If you have an electrical panet in your trailer then they are probably all tied under the same ground bar. Because your trailer panel will always be subfed off of whatever you plug into these should be isolated.
 
By the way, getting rid of the ground is never a good idea, it's in there for a reason.
 
have an electriction look at it :icon_blush: and see what the problen is

york
 
I'm an electrician, come and cook the contest in Huron, SD in early June and I'll fix it for free!
 
Nate is right....We had the same problem in October at Bass Pro in Columbia. I think Nate's dad was having the same issue too.
 
I had the same problem on a trailer we used to have. The problem that I found was that a neutral and ground wire were connected together in a junction box.

Due to the way the GFCI's work the ground and neutral wires have to be separated.
 
Big Tom said:
I had the same problem on a trailer we used to have. The problem that I found was that a neutral and ground wire were connected together in a junction box.

Due to the way the GFCI's work the ground and neutral wires have to be separated.
Click to expand...
It drove me crazy and I finally paid an electrician to fix it. Started with the input to the panel, then the panel, and finally each outlet. Found one where wires were to close together and when plugged into a GFI it would cause a fault. Minor adjustment and no problems since.

For the original poster, don't play with safety. The cost may be higher than you want to pay in the long run.
 
First off, I am not an electrician, nor do I claim to know a lot about the subject. But this thread got me thinking about something. Everyone is worried about plugging into an outlet without a ground and they probably do it all the time without realizing it. I have even done it myself without thinking about it. The people who run generators at contests, unless they have a copper rod planted in the ground, are running ungrounded power. I was reading on a couple websites that they recommend 8' of copper rod to ground a generator. I have seen a lot of rigs doing this and wanted to give everyone a heads up.

Cheers,
Nate
 
Brewmaster said:
First off, I am not an electrician, nor do I claim to know a lot about the subject. But this thread got me thinking about something. Everyone is worried about plugging into an outlet without a ground and they probably do it all the time without realizing it. I have even done it myself without thinking about it. The people who run generators at contests, unless they have a copper rod planted in the ground, are running ungrounded power. I was reading on a couple websites that they recommend 8' of copper rod to ground a generator. I have seen a lot of rigs doing this and wanted to give everyone a heads up.

Cheers,
Nate
Click to expand...


Actually you are totaly correct - if you are running ot a generator - there is no true ground. Plain in simple. Home generators that are a backup for your house power, will ahve a ground, because the ground is already installed.
 
Nate, I am not an electrician either but I do now that what you said is not entirely accurate. When running a generator you do not have a "ground" connected, that is true. However the purpose of a "ground wire" running from your equipment is to protect you in case something shorts, or you have a faulty neutral wire. In a generator you still have this protection it just goes to the generator instead of the ground rod. That is why people have problems with GFCI's and generators. As stated above GFCI's do not like to have the neutral and grounds connected.

Big Mike's BBQ
 
I am sort of an electrician, No license but i work with electricity on the job all the time. A GFCI will not work correctly on an ungrounded system and a portable generator is an ungrounded system. So if you are relying on a GFCI in a trailer to save your butt in case something gets wet than you are not completely protected. It may work it may not. You would have to have an external ground rod in the ground and have the ground wires in the panal completely seperate from the neutral wires in order for it to work. If you don't have the ground rod in the ground than nothing is grounded.
 
So if understand this, and my trailer does trip GCFI outlets, all I have to do is seperate the grounds and nuetrels?
 
I was reading on a couple websites that they recommend 8' of copper rod to ground a generator. I have seen a lot of rigs doing this and wanted to give everyone a heads up.

does the copper rod actually need to be 8'?
The power boxes at the contests ground wires. Can you hook your generator ground to this ground wire?



 
When you are wiring your trailer's you should never put a ground wire and a neutral wire under the same lug. You could put 2-grounds or 2-neutrals under the same lug in your panels but never one of each. When talking about grounding your generators you should be able to check with a RV shop and pick up some grounding stakes. When we ground a house service we pound 2-8FT ground rods (not copper ground rods)(copper is not necessarry for anything you would need) 8-ft apart and connect them to the house service using a #4 bare ground wire. Now obviously this would not work for a contest. I am 95% positive that the RV centers would sell a grounding kit for your generators or even Northern Tool or Grainger may have Pre-made kits available. If anyone has any questions feel free to pm me and I will do my best to answer. And yes I am an electrician.
 
I don't do much electrical work anymore, but I do remember that inside a breaker panel there is a bonding strap that runs between the neutral bar and the ground bar that make them essentially the same. Here is a post from another site that is referring to this bonding strap.

http://www.diychatroom.com/f18/12v-diff-between-ground-neutral-panel-5756/

"am, it sounds like your first test (of voltage) is showing that the bonding strap or bar between the neutral and ground buss in the main panel is loose or corroded. there should be a wire, or buss bar here which electrically makes the two bars one in the same.

Be sure that while testing you are using the bar and not the panel can as your ground. this can throw off the test results, as you will not get a good connection at the can (panel enclosure)

from the ground to neutral at the main panel should read in the mili ohm range, with a good meter. zero with a cheeper. reality is that zero ohms does not exist. neither does open load OL. those are just indicators that the measurement is out of the range of the instrement that you are using."



When I was still involved in electrical work this strap was just starting to be used. Some of the panels came with it and some did not. The inspectors were checking for the strap and if it wasn't there we had to run a piece of #4 bare wire fromt he neutral bar to the ground bar. We still were required to hook neutrals to one bar and grounds to the other though. I never could get a good answer as to why the strap was needed or why we had to seperate the neutrals and grounds since they essentially were connected anyway through the strap:confused:
 
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