Wake up!

Friz · November 22, 2023

Our 28' 2004 Keystone Cougar has been sitting since the Fall of 2019, unused and for the most part shut down. Our son and family are visiting for the holidays. The 5th wheel would be perfect for them and pets for 2 weeks. So, time to wake up 5th Wheel! The AC works fine. Water pump/plumbing is leaking. I will look at that today. There are 3 110vac outlets in the kitchen. 1 is a GFI outlet. So the GFI may have gone bad as it does not TEST/RESET. Would the GFI outlet also control the other 2 outlets? There are other 110vac outlets throughout the 5th wheel which have power.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Friz

D&J · November 22, 2023

Yes the other outlets are feed off the GFCI that has gone bad, make sure that the breaker feeding the GFCI is on because they won't reset without power.

Denny

lappir · November 22, 2023

Replaced a couple in a Sticks and Bricks recently. Visited the local Hardware Store and found buying a pack of 3 was about the same price as a single one. Lucky I chose to spend a few extra at the time. Turned out I would have had to go back to the store for another one since the one on the back patio was also not working in addition to the one I knew about in the garage.

The "Home inspector" they used before the purchase sure didn't do a very good job.

Thankfully the homeowner was there during the repair. She and a friend now have the skills to replace one on their own. She knows how to safely remove it for testing, turn off the power at the breaker panel. Retest both on and off again and how not to do a tactile test for something that's "HOT".

I'll bet I will still get a call when something breaks or doesn't work, but someday they will have to do it themselves either with their skill and sweat equity or the checkbook.

Rod

Kirk W · November 22, 2023

Before you do anything else, make sure that all of your 120V circuit breakers are closed. The only way to know that for sure is to open each one and then close it again as a tripped circuit breaker is very difficult to detect visually. Do you own a multimeter that you can test for 120V to the outlet with? A GFI outlet that does not have 120V will not reset so check that first. Pull it out and measure between the wires connected to it before you replace it. If there is 120V at the connections and it doesn't reset, then open the circuit breaker and replace it. Be very careful to make all of the connections exactly as they are now.

lappir · November 23, 2023

22 hours ago, Kirk W said:

Before you do anything else, make sure that all of your 120V circuit breakers are closed. The only way to know that for sure is to open each one and then close it again as a tripped circuit breaker is very difficult to detect visually. Do you own a multimeter that you can test for 120V to the outlet with? A GFI outlet that does not have 120V will not reset so check that first. Pull it out and measure between the wires connected to it before you replace it. If there is 120V at the connections and it doesn't reset, then open the circuit breaker and replace it. Be very careful to make all of the connections exactly as they are now.

Just an added warning. You can test the outlet and it will not have any power, but the wires connected to the device can have power, especially if it's not a "Ground Fault Circuit Breaker" on that supply line.

Carefully remove or gain access to the wire connections to check for power before attempting to remove the wires from the faulty outlet.

It's best to have two people when doing this.

Check for power, if there is power have the second person shut off the breaker marked for that location. If you don't lose power, then it's the task of finding the right breaker, by turning them off until finding the one that cuts power where you are working. I do a double check. Off, back on and then off before working on it.

In one of my recent repairs that outlet was wired incorrectly according to the directions on the non working outlet and the new one I was replacing it with. I did not do "Exactly what I found" because it was wrong. (IMHO)

Rod

Ray,IN · November 25, 2023

Just one GFCI as the closest receptacle to the circuit breaker, protects all receptacles downstream.

Kirk W · November 25, 2023

12 hours ago, Ray,IN said:

Just one GFCI as the closest receptacle to the circuit breaker, protects all receptacles downstream.

While this is typically the case, it doesn't have to be wired that way and occasionally is not.

bigjim · November 28, 2023

Has anyone mentioned that gfi likely has an outside outlet on it. On recommendation of an electrician friend I just helped a neighbor that had a gfi issue by killing all power to the trailer then hitting the reset. When we turned the power back on it reset at that point.