Important - check this every time you set up

Originally posted by Bulldogpod jmsokol, that was you in the video? What a great segment. I subscribed after watching it on youtube. Thanks techntrek for posting, I ordered the Fluke 1AC today that you recommended. I am still a little shy about testing it on the outlet itself, even though I know it is plastic and won't conduct. I'll have to work my courage up once it gets here. Sticking anything in an outlet except a plug goes against everything my mother told me as a child!

Yes, that's me in the video. I'm also supposed to be doing some newspaper interviews this week and perhaps a national news piece.

As far as poking a NCVT into an outlet to check for polarity, those tester are rated for up to 1,000 volts, so not to worry. I've done it many thousands of times and have complete confidence in using a NCVT that way. Also, I'll be posting an article about selecting NCVTs for this usage in next week's RVtravel newsletter. It's basically an excerpt from my new eBook No~Shock~Zone RV Electrical Safety. Please pass the book ink and article info onto everyone you know with an RV. We certainly don't want to see another preventable tragedy occur. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L2DWBD8

Originally posted by techntrek I pulled out my testers tonight while setting up camp (near Great Sand Dunes in CO) and discovered that there is no ground.  Same for a dozen other sites (all empty so it was easy to check).  I made it down to the site next to the next camper a half-dozen sites away and was still getting a missing ground reading, so I asked them if I could check their site.  Happily they were ok, probably on a different panel.  I showed them the outlet tester and VoltAlert and why they are necessary.  They are considering a pod so they may show up here at some point. Anyway, this is only the 2nd campground with hookups on this trip and already I've found an issue...

Great work. And that's why I tell everyone to test every hookup every time. You just don't know if something has gone wrong with campsite power either through lack of maintenance or incompetent wiring.

It's important to realize that an open ground on a power outlet is likely what caused the death of the 3-year-old boy in Amboy, IL last week. I've talked to the sheriff that investigated the accident, and their electrician confirmed the open ground. I'm trying to nail down more information and have a call into the electrician himself. Remember, you don't need a secondary fault to electrify the skin of an RV if your EGC/Ground has opened up. There's sufficient normal leakage from your RV's appliances and electrical system to generally bias the skin of your RV to around 60 volts and several mA of current, perhaps even 10 mA or more. That's enough to kill a small child or old adult with a weak heart. And if there's an additional line-to-chassis fault current from something like a pin-hole leak in a hot water heater element or water in a junction box, then your hot-skin voltage source and be a few amperes. That's enough to kill anybody.

And this allows me to introduce yet another concept to you all, something I call a "Reflected Hot Skin". There's a high probability that this particular group of campsites have their EGC Grounds connected together via daisy chaining, but that the final run of the ground wire back to the main service panel has failed for some reason. So now you have perhaps a dozen campsites with their "grounds" connected together, but there's no connection back to the service panel's neutral-ground-earth bonding point. This allows a line-to-chassis fault in one RV to not only hot-skin energize its own chassis, it WILL cause hot-skin voltage on ALL other RV's connected to the same loop. And while a voltage monitoring system  should alert you of the fact that your ground is compromised, it can't disconnect you from a now energized safety ground wire feeding your RV skin with voltage. This explains why some of my readers claim they had no hot-skin voltage when they initially plugged into a campsite, but the next day they were feeling a shock. But, of course, a NCVT will find the now electrified RV skin and chassis. It's cheap insurance that can save your life.

Of course, if you campsite pedestal is properly "grounded" then there's zero possibility of some of RV electrifying your own RV chassis/skin. That's why it's important to test every time before plugging into shore power.

As always, contact me if you've found anything suspicious and I'll help you figure it out.

I agree with Bulldogpod. Is there a safe method for non-electricians?

Originally posted by techntrek I pulled out my testers tonight while setting up camp (near Great Sand Dunes in CO) and discovered that there is no ground.  Same for a dozen other sites (all empty so it was easy to check).  I made it down to the site next to the next camper a half-dozen sites away and was still getting a missing ground reading, so I asked them if I could check their site.  Happily they were ok, probably on a different panel.  I showed them the outlet tester and VoltAlert and why they are necessary.  They are considering a pod so they may show up here at some point. Anyway, this is only the 2nd campground with hookups on this trip and already I've found an issue...

Thanks, guys! I really appreciate the help.