Tips for connecting your RV to shore power - plus great gadgets for connecting
How can you avoid problems when your RV is hooked up to shore power at a power pedestal in an RV park? Is there a best practices when you have full hook ups? We have the answers in this article.
30 amp and 50 amp
RVs typically come in 30- and 50-amp configurations. In many cases smaller RVs, particularly those with one air conditioner, are 30 amp. Those with multiple AC units and larger RVs tend to have 50 amp power.
Since it seems that more RVs use the 30 amp connectors they tend to get more wear. Sometimes we will arrive at an RV park and the 30 amp connector is in such lousy shape that our Hughes Power Watchdog will not enable a power connection.
In this case what we do is go to the 50 amp connector, which is usually in better shape. By using a “dog bone” adaptor to step down the power we are able to take advantage of the better connection that exists in that 50 amp connector. The dog bone connector between 50 amp and 30 amp is one of those RV basics that should be in your tool box.
Here’s our guide to RV power basics
What is a dog bone adaptor?
We refer to dog bone adaptors but what are they? Essentially they let us plug our 30 amp RV into a 50 amp outlet safely. They are called this because they sort of look like a dog bone.
You can also get these to plug a 50 amp plug into a 30 amp outlet but know that you can’t still get 50 amps from a 30 amp outlet. There are also adaptors that let you plug your 30- or even 50-amp plug into a standard household outlet. Know that doing so will significantly reduce what you can operate inside your RV - typically a household plug is a poor choice if you want to use things like the air conditioner or other high-demand item.
Keeping things clean
Another thing we have learned from our friend Mike Sokol, the RV electricity expert, is that poor connections can be a big problem. If you find a power pedestal has a wiggly or dirty connection what happens is, when the connection is lousy, the connectors actually heat up.
This is how you can get melted plugs or even start fires. Many times you’ll see people sharing that they melted their power cord and the surge suppressor didn’t do anything about it. It won’t - you didn’t get a surge or low power, it was just a lousy connection that heated up and, ultimately, melted the connector.
This is why we keep contact cleaner in our RV. We fairly regularly will spritz some of this on our connectors so that they’re clean and look new giving them the best chance for a connection.
My favorite contact cleaner is Caig Laboratories Dioxit D5. This stuff is great - the container is small and it just works. I keep ours in a plastic baggy in our tool box because it’s also pretty greasy stuff, but boy does it work well.
You’ll notice an immediate difference in how easily you can plug and unplug your connectors after an application of this. I also often spritz some into the dirty connectors at RV parks to help them stay clean. I might be one of the few doing this and those 30 amp plugs get quite a lot of use.
Our power cord
Another thing we did was to upgrade the cheap power cord that came with our RV to a Marinco Eel power cord. The quality of this cord is much better than what came with our RV.
The standard cord we got had a really cheap plastic collar around the plug which was very fiddly to get connected properly.
The Eel power cord has a clamp-style connector. You simply open the jaws of the clamp, twist the plug on as you would normally and let the jaws go. As an additional benefit there’s a locking mechanism to make sure this stays firmly attached.
Another bonus is that there’s an LED light at the end of the cord so if you’re connecting in the dark, this can be helpful. Do know that I typically don’t connect a “hot” cord - I usually don’t enable the breakers at the pedestal until all the connections are made.
Our Marinco Eel power cord offers a high quality experience without having to rewire our trailer
Connecting your RV to shore power
That brings up my steps to connect power to the pedestal. Here’s the order I do things:
Turn off the power at the pedestal
Plug in the Hughes Power Watchdog
Turn on the power - if I get a white dog (indicating that the power is good) I then
Turn the power back off
If I get a red dog, indicating an issue, I go back to the RV park and ask for a different site
At this point I pull into or back into the site
With the power off, I then connect the power cable and the RV
The last step is to turn the power on
These steps insure that I don’t create an arc in the cables and connectors while hooking up the RV.
