Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Gee
Because all I’m looking for is to make sure that there’s nothing wrong with the pedestal hook up. Having it in the power supply been allows me to establish that immediately. Once you’re plugged in and have confirmed that everything is fine, there is rarely going to be a change in the output from the pedestal. So, I didn’t feel the need to have it in the coach. What do you do? Do you open the one place cabinet door every 10 minutes and check your voltage?
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I camp where there are constant brown outs where voltage levels that will damage your coach for hours on end can and will hit well after initial hook up which is usually late at night while its raining and this basically describes the majority of campgrounds in the US. Having the ability to respond to those many events and hit the bypass judiciously from inside the coach without going outside in the dark or rain can be a wonderful thing.
There realistically is no check once as power system output changes constantly with some power systems accepting up to a 15% variance as acceptable which gets further compounded by very poorly designed/maintained campground power distribution systems that have trouble carrying the load as their sites get filled and people throughout the campground turn on their electric cooling, cooking and entertainment devices, breakers in power poles start to heat up, etc.
If you've so far only hooked up at camps with relatively stable and consistent power count yourself truly blessed as this is not the norm across the US.
I at times run a mobile office providing 24/7 support and the power conditioning Uninterruptible Power Supplies for the computers can be sounding alerts a few times an hour to almost constantly when conditions are really bad. Having the UPS devices sounding warnings as voltage levels rise and fall throughout the day was a real eye opener as was being able to see a voltage monitor show real time how close voltage levels dropped to damaging near automatic shutdown levels constantly throughout the day and night.
After a while you begin to see a pattern develop where a few days of the alarms going off as power fluctuates is usually followed by a number of campers mentioning that their Air Conditioners start capacitors failed, they lost a compressor, fried the contacts in their transfer switch so forth and so on. After I installed a voltage correction transformer we have not had such failures in over 10 years and the readout of incoming voltage is just informational warning you if levels are getting dangerously close to where voltage correction will no longer be able to keep up.
My One Place thankfully is not hidden behind a door and is centrally located at eye level so when problems arise its visible. Having a door covering the One Place to me is like having one that hides the instrument panel in the cockpit. I would be one of those who would remove any door hiding the One Place panel and its readouts.