Connection Fire and Fridge help

[Mitchsnider]

Soooo.

I happened to be in "that" room sitting down when I look out the window and see smoke coming from the surge connection! I ran out and tripped the breaker and you can see the picture speaks a thousand words.

Our trailer is a new (Dec) Flying Cloud 23' FB that we have been living in full time while repairs are still on going on our sticks and bricks from Hurricane Irma nearly two years ago. We had a new 50AMP box put in by the electrician attached to my house while doing the repairs and use a dog bone step down to 30 amp. I got the 50AMP service before the trailer as I was not sure at the time what trailer i would get. The trailer has been running full time on this for 6 months, other than a one week stint at Disney's Fort Wilderness. Fortunately I had a 'travel set' of surge protector and cord and after research from here from my first purchase at the dealer to just get something where I selected the Surge Guard with a digital display. After plugging it in just after the incident everything seems fine. So what the heck? The connection seemed tight on the burnt one even while it was burning. We did have a light rain several hours ago but have had much worse over the last few months. I did notice that the air conditioner has been running nearly constantly in the summer and did seem to oddly struggle a couple of times today as the compressor kicked in but I installed an EasyStart and thought maybe it was just being slow. I pass by the outside connector box this all the time and never saw an issue.

The second thing is the small Dometic fridge, now that temperatures are up for summer, can't keep up. The coldest it gets down to at night is 54 degrees with an average of 64 during the day and a peak at 70 degrees (on electric). You can see the picture of the digital readout that I keep on the range hood next to it.

Any advice? It would be nice for food to last more than a couple of days not to mention that I don't want to die in a fire a month now from moving back into my house and using the Airstream as a getaway instead of residence.

Cheers,
Mitch

[SteveSueMac]

Does the surge protector in your picture also check for (and disengage in) low voltage situations? I have a Progressive EMS that will shut power off to the trailer if the voltage is too high or too low (I think something like 113, not really sure). If yours doesn’t do that, I understand that can create the overheating of the cable and fire as you’ve seen.

As for the fridge - are you also running that on shore power and not propane? Wondering if low voltage isn’t helping you in that situation....

In tough summer nights, I run the AC on shore power and the fridge on Propane. Sometimes I have to shut the fridge completely off and turn it back on again for some reason. Mine was rising to 40* and I shut it off and restarted it (on propane) and within 45 minutes it’s down to 38 and likely on its way to its usual 33.

Glad you weren’t hurt. Good luck!!

[pcskier]

I vote also for getting a surge protector like a Progressive Industries model that runs a test of the power source before allowing power to the trailer, and continually monitors for over/under voltage, reverse polarity, grounding problems. If this was a voltage supply problem, a PI model will shut down and show an error code to tell you why. Anyway, better that connection then the one at the trailer.


For the fridge, you might know this, but inside on the fins there is a white thermistor that you can slide up and down. Sliding it up is for colder, down for warmer. See if it's slid all the way up. Also, any shading of the fridge compartment from behind would help. And as mentioned, propane often will get it colder than electric.