What service is brought to the park outlets?
Is the 20a, simply connected to the 30a?
Back at the main panel is the 30a - hooked to a 20a breaker?
Are maybe you pull up "boy" here is a service with 50a, 30a, & 20a. man thats great, but you may only have a total to the site of 50a. The 30a and the 20a connected to the 50a in the box.
Now guys do not attack me RE_NEC / I am aware of it. I also know what people do.
enblethen wrote: A cheater box is a method to attempt to get 50 ampere service for rig from a thirty ampere and a 20 ampere circuit.
Much chatter on these. I spoke with one of the engineers at The Rally. New cheaters now have a caution notice on it's use.
For the average RVer, these should not be used.
Well, sort of. You get 50 amps to your rig (50 amps X 120 = 6000 watts) but it's NOT the same as a real 50 amp service (100 amps X 120 = 12,000 watts)
Deen - Vancouver, WA
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wa8yxm wrote: The greatest danger is that many parks have a "One to a customer" rule and in those parks if you use a cheater box you may be asked to leave, NO REFUND
That's the time to refuse to move. Pack up, hold fast and wait right outside with your receipt.
When the officer shows up, you say to him "I'm happy to move on when I'm refunded my money for tonight."
Don't argue with the officer, and if he tells you to get out, get out. But if the officer is reasonable at all, they'll bend the ear of the park owner about "resolving it in a honorable way."
I wrote extensively about my experience with the Cheater Box in another post. I will add a few more comments here.
I was interested to read in this thread about the concerns of overloading the neutral. I am pretty ignorant on the electrical analysis of this thing, so I found that information surprising, if not alarming. If I understand the issue correctly, it is mostly of concern where the two legs are on the same phase, is that correct? In that case, the Cheater Box is of no value, so I wouldn’t be using it anyhow.
When I first learned about using a Cheater Box, I knew about the restriction from use with GFICs. In my mind, I reviewed my observations at RV parks where I might have been able to use the box. I concluded that many of the parks that did not offer 50 amp service, were older and also did not have GFI protection on their 20 amp outlets.
Since I bought the Cheater Box, I have only visited one RV park where I needed it and, alas, it would not work there. In that case, I sought permission from the park owner to connect to two different pedestals but the outlets were on the same phase so I was out of luck.
Another idiosyncrasy of using the Cheater Box with my coach’s Intellitec Energy Management System is when one of the two shore power circuit breakers trips. This idiosyncrasy is not just a result of using the Cheater Box as I recall that it also happened to me in an RV park where one of the park pedestal’s two 50 amp circuit breakers failed. My EMS did not make it obvious to me that partial power had been lost. My coach’s transfer switch did not change, but my inverter’s internal transfer switch did switch. So, I ran on inverter until my battery level depleted and the inverter stopped. Only then did I realize that I had lost power.
To resolve this problem, I added another product to my shore power connection: a Surge Protector with Voltage Protection. Now whenever there is a drop in voltage on either leg (which is what happened to me in the RV park when the circuit breaker began to fail) or the circuit breaker trips (which is of course, a drop in voltage), this device interrupts ALL service to the coach. This causes my transfer switches to behave as expected.
This may have not been the least expensive solution, but there are other benefits to having this product. I chose the portable version of the product, instead of the hard-wired version, because I imagined testing RV site pedestals without having to move the coach from site to site. I know that I could do the same thing with a multi-tester and probes, but I’ve already admitted that I am electrically ignorant.
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Thanks for the feedbacks. I built one over the weekend. Plugged it in to 2 different 115v outlets at my home and ran some checks. Appears to do just what its supposed to do. Worked fine.
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It says that it's for a 30- and a 20-amp connection, but in fact it has two 30-amp plugs. They supply a 30-to-20-amp adapter with it. I speculate(TM) that they advertise it as utilizing a 30- and a 20-amp connection rather than two 30-amp connections because you could theoretically overload the neutral on your 50-amp cable by running 60 amps through it.
As many have pointed out, most 20-amp plugs on campground pedestals are GFI protected these days, so the Cheater Box really isn't any good for use with a 30 and a 20.
Dave from AK
2004 Beaver Monterey 40'
2000 Ford Explorer
I didn't build a "box" per se, my electrician buddy simply made a female/male electrical plug where the cord comes out of the generator junction box. It's an extension of the Gen. 20A circuit that runs the rear air--with a plug in the middle.
30A runs the entire coach still, but if you need the rear air, you unplug the cord that's wired to the rear AC and plug it into the 20A service on the pole. When you're done and want to switch back to "normal" or run on the generator (which will run both ACs) you just plug it back together and your back to stock configuration.
Still goes through the breakers on the generator and panel breakers for safety, but keeps Mom cool on the hot Texas days. Cost, less than $5.
"If I understand the issue correctly, it is mostly of concern where the two legs are on the same phase, is that correct? In that case, the Cheater Box is of no value, so I wouldn’t be using it anyhow."
Why would the cheater box be of no value if they are the same phase? You'll have one feed leg going thru a 30 amp breaker, and the other thru a separate 20 or 30 amp breaker.
The "hots" are kept separate. The neutral MIGHT be additive on those amps, so should be adequately sized for the load (10 gauge?). But it also MIGHT be offsetting, no?
Either way, you get up to 50 or 60 amps thru those breakers.
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Quote: Why would the cheater box be of no value if they are the same phase? You'll have one feed leg going thru a 30 amp breaker, and the other thru a separate 20 or 30 amp breaker.
The "hots" are kept separate. The neutral MIGHT be additive on those amps, so should be adequately sized for the load (10 gauge?). But it also MIGHT be offsetting, no?
Check some of the earlier discussion in this thread for some of the problems created by paralleling neutrals. The problem is there is no way to determine how much current will flow in either neutral; you may end up overloading one of them.
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