Our camping season hasn't started yet --- believe it or not but there is still the last traces of snow in the ditches near our home. Yesterday the weather forecast said there was the possibility of a snow flurry! Summer will arrive soon so I've been trying to get the trailer ready. It is a beautiful spring day here today on the island of sun & fun.
Our small-but-mighty CL11FDB has a sidewall A/C. With shore power to the trailer I tried turning on the A/C and it wouldn't start. I then ran the extension cord direct from the house to the A/C plug -- it still wouldn't start. The unit has a power cord and plug. The plug incorporates what seems to be a GFI system in that it has built-in 'reset' & 'test' buttons. The 'reset' button is supposed to be clicked into the depressed position for power to flow through the plug. If it is plugged in (to either the trailer or an extension cord direct to the house) the 'reset' trips immediately suggesting a ground fault is present. With it unplugged the button will stay depressed suggesting the problem may not be with the GFI plug itself.
I should note that the trailer was outside all winter without a cover. We had over 5m (16.4 feet) of snowfall this winter (It is okay to say "yikes" outloud!). I have no doubt some snow would have been blown into the enclosure through either the sidewall opening or the roof-top vent cover -- or both. As the Danby A/C unit is designed to hang out a window I wouldn't think that bit of snow would be a problem. I did notice however that the plug is the low point in the whole setup. If snow got inside the azdel housing then when it melted the route out of the housing would have been down the cord to the GFI plug and then dripped off the plug. There was a touch of residue on the plug that confirms to me that water did make its way to the cord's plug end. I wonder if this might have damaged the GFI plug?
It wouldn't be hard to replace the plug. I am concerned that if the problem isn't with the plug then it must be with the A/C unit itself. Livinlite went and enclosed the A/C in the azdel box with no apparent way to remove the A/C without disassembling that box --- a really dumb design if you ask me. (I have a pet peeve with that box. When I got the trailer home after picking it up at the factory I started to go through the wack of manuals Livinlite provided with the trailer. The A/C unit needed to be registered to start the warranty. To do so I would need the serial number off the side of the A/C unit and of course Livinlite didn't record that information before entombing the unit in an aluminum & azdel box! Does Livinlite really expect new owners to disassemble parts of the trailer just to get warranties on components? I didn't and so I never activated the warranty on the A/C).
Anyone have any ideas on what I should do?
First time we tried the exterior outlet on our Mighty 11, it tripped the ground fault. All of the other outlets worked fine. Replaced the GFI outlet and have not had issues since.
I feel your pain.
I would recheck your paperwork that LL provided, the product registration procedure especially. Have you tried to register the A/C? I wouldn't think
that a small A/C would have an individual S/N. I would think that all they would need is a date of purchase and possibly a copy of your original purchase
documents. Good Luck!
I have the Danby owner's registration card I never sent in right in front of me. It requires a serial number & the model number - both of which apparently can be found on a label or plate on a part of the unit I cannot access because of Livin' Lite's housing.
I think I will try and get a new male replacement plug that incorporates a GFI feature like the original. It shouldn't cost much and would confirm if the problem was just the GFI or if it is a fault somewhere in the unit. I'm assuming the unit has all dried out by now & water isn't somehow causing the fault.
GFCIs can be a pain in the butt in a wet environment but I wouldn't expect it to be a problem with a LL trailer. Can you get to the power supply cord to the A/C and plug it in independently of the shore power cord. If it runs then that will tell you that the problem is either a defective GGCI plug or something in the trailer causing neutral to ground leakage.
If the latter is the case I think I would do away with the shore power GFCI plug and use a non GFCI plug. Then to be legal you need to replace the outlets in the kitchen and bath with at least one GFCI outlet, maybe more. A GFCI outlet protects all of the outlets wired downstream of it. But you don't know which is the first in the series and it may take some experimentation or just bite the bullet and replace all outlets (three maybe?) with GFCI ones.
David
I did plug the A/C direct into a extension cord run from the house --- it still didn't work. I also plugged a pair of electric hedge shears into the outlet the A/C uses and it worked --- so the problem isn't with the trailer's 110v system. It appears it must be a problem with the either the A/C itself or the GFI male plug.
The outlet in the kitchen is a GFI outlet so from what David wrote about it possibly protecting the whole circuit I might be able to replace the A/C's GFI male plug with a regular plug -- but I'm not sure how I'd confirm that kitchen GFI is or is not protecting the entire circuit. A regular replacement plug would be easier to find & far less expensive. I looked on Amazon and was surprised to find no male GFI plugs for sale. They must not be very common.
My air conditioner problem corrected itself. --- If you are going to have a problem the self-correcting type are highly recommended!
It seems what happened is that over the winter snow blew into the roof-top vent associated with the side-wall A/C enclosure. The snow eventually melted and water drained out of the enclosure -- some of it trickling down the A/C's power cord that has a GFI male end. I think some water got inside that GFI unit and because it is an almost sealed device it took a long time to dry out. Eventually it appears to have dried out and now the A/C will operate. Not that I use it much -- I think it has run about 5-minutes in two years.
Earlier I had planned to replace what I thought was a faulty GFI male plug. I was having trouble sourcing a suitable replacement so I did what I always do --> I procrastinated. By procrastinating I effectively gave the problem time to fix itself. I'll now try that approach with other problems in my life and see how it works for me.
Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow I always say.
I'm a big fan of the procrastination approach. It seems to work particularly well on paperwork. I find if I ignore it long enough, at least half of the pile is no longer applicable and can straight to the recycle bin.