cookie,
one of two things is wrong --- you have a bad breaker or you have a short circuit that is causing the breaker to trip as soon as you reset it... remember, circuit breakers are designed to trip at a very slight lower point with each reset. so breakers that are constantly being tripped by overloads will soon become usless or won't reset at all. your 120 volt panel has four circuit breakers in it. one is a 30 amp single pole breaker and is the main incoming breaker. this would turn all your power off or on. you have one for your a/c unit and it is a single pole 20 amp breaker and you said this was running. a second single pole 20 amp breaker feeds the receptacles in the gally and dinning area, and you said you had power above the sink, so this must be o.k.. the last and most troublesome breaker is a single pole 15 amp ground fault interupter circuit breaker. this breaker is designed to trip whenever there is enough ground fault current flowing to cause an electricution. it measures the current leaving the breaker on the hot wire and if it senses that the same amount isn't being returned on the white or neutral wire --- it trips and shuts off the power. now this amount of current is very small --- something like 6 milliamps. and many times we plug devices into the receptacles that have problems internally or even dampness inside can allow 6 milliamps of current to flow elsewhere and cause this breaker to trip. these breakers have a higher failure rate than the standard breakers and i have been told that about 40 per cent of all installed gfic breakers are faulty??? the way to check out your problem will be to remove all electrical devices from the unit's receptacles and attempt to reset the breaker. if it resets, then begin to plug in each device until it trips and this will tell you your problem. it could be something like an extention cord that has a pin sized hole in the insulation and is laying in a damp or wet area??? if the breaker trips with everything disconnected from the receptacles --- you are facing a larger problem..... it could be simple --- you might have a bad gfic breaker! but then, you might have a roof leak that is allowing water to enter a receptacle and will take some hunting around to find. some one could have accidently splashed some water or cleaning solvent into a receptacle and it is allowing a small amount of current to travel into the frame of the unit--causing the breaker to trip---when it drys out --- everything will reset and operate...... i think it's a good idea to carry a spare 15 amp gfic breaker in your unit's spare parts. and always disconnect your trailer's 120 volt shore power cable before working in your 120 volt panel box. tuna
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