GFI Gremlin?

[Air Drew]

Hello...

The GFI in my 2017 Flying Cloud 23D work fine for the past 7 days and then stops working for 10 hours or so.

This morning the propane tanks were both empty. They were filled the same morning. Shortly thereafter the GFI stopped working. The bathroom, bedroom, kitchen plugs and one plug in the dinette area stopped working. Each time I reset the GFI, the GFI plug clicked off. I reset the GFI circuit after waiting up to 30 minutes and the GFI circuit clicks off.

About 10 hours later the GFI started working and all plugs are operational!

Can someone please explain to me why this is happening? Should I change out the GFI plug and/or the GFI circuit breaker?
Is there a connection between running out of propane and interrupting the circuit. Or is this a gremlin?

[ITSNO60]

Originally Posted by Air Drew

Hello...

The GFI in my 2017 Flying Cloud 23D work fine for the past 7 days and then stops working for 10 hours or so.

This morning the propane tanks were both empty. They were filled the same morning. Shortly thereafter the GFI stopped working. The bathroom, bedroom, kitchen plugs and one plug in the dinette area stopped working. Each time I reset the GFI, the GFI plug clicked off. I reset the GFI circuit after waiting up to 30 minutes and the GFI circuit clicks off.

About 10 hours later the GFI started working and all plugs are operational!

Can someone please explain to me why this is happening? Should I change out the GFI plug and/or the GFI circuit breaker?
Is there a connection between running out of propane and interrupting the circuit. Or is this a gremlin?

Apparently sometimes they do go bad but in my career as an electrician we rarely saw one go bad in a way that would make it trip for no reason, but we saw plenty that went bad and failed to trip when they should.

Is it raining where you are? The GFCI circuit also protects the outside receptacle and if any water gets in it will trip the GFCI till things dry out.

[Air Drew]

Thanks for your comments.

We're at the Oregon coast today and the weather has been sunny in the 60's. No rain.

Nevertheless, I'll check the outside plugs for moisture and seal around the housing with silicone.

[ITSNO60]

The self contained receptacles can be difficult to work with but if you can separate the circuit somewhere it may point to the problem. There are people on the forum who replaced the GFCI breaker and coincidence or not had no more issues, so I'm not trying to tell you to rule that out, it's just that I haven't ever seen that.

With the difficulty in working with the RV devices it's probably easier for the average person to swap parts first in hopes to fix it. As an electrician it goes against basic troubleshooting procedures but I understand not everyone has the skills or desire to do that and even the cost of a GFCI breaker is cheaper than a service call.

[Air Drew]

No gremlins afterall!

About three days after installing a new 15-amp circuit breaker, the GFI started tripping repeatedly. Interestingly, the GFI works fine when connected to 30-amp power.

I contacted Airstream Technical Support directly, and they confirmed that the issue is specific to the 23D model. According to them, the inverter in this model prevents the GFI from functioning properly on 15-amp power—it requires a full 30 amps to operate GFI correctly.

This is critical information that would have been helpful to know from the beginning. That said, it’s significant that Airstream acknowledged there is a known issue with the electrical system.

[AstroBruce]

Makes perfect sense. I'll be back.

Bruce