firepiper

Hello all, I recently installed an Onan Rv genset in my fifth wheel camper. It has two breakers, I'm hooked up to only one. When we use two thing in the camper at the same time, we pop the breaker. I have it wired to a rv receptical, and plug the regular cord into that, (just like at the campground). Anyway, can I wire both the lines from the genset together? There are breakers and a main breaker in the camper, so it would be protected?
I guess I'm comfused betwwen series and paralell circuits.
thanks

welder27

You can connect the main from the generator directly to the main on your camper...just make sure you use wire that's big enough to carry the amps.

To figure out how many amps you can produce take the continuous watt output (not the peak output) and divide it by the output voltage (120 V most likely) which will tell you the continuous amp output.

5000 W divided by 120 V = 41.6 amps or roughly the capacity of two 20 amp breakers.

Just make sure you connect a receptacle box onto the main that runs into the generator's distribution panel and then make a plug that connects onto the wire going to your camper's RV park plug. That way you don't have to worry about exposed wire nuts coming loose and starting a fire.

Series circuit is like a twin turbo set-up...the second turbo feeds off of the first turbo and increases the boost pressure, but not necessarily the volume. Or Christmas light strings...they all feed off of 1 plug and each other.

Parallel circuit is like 2 turbos on an engine that aren't hooked one into the other. The boost pressure is the same as a single turbo, but the volume of air moved is doubled. The 2 batteries in your truck are hooked up in parallel to produce the amperage necessary to turn the starter. If they were hooked in series they would produce 24 volts but have the same amperage as 1 battery alone.

Right now you're trying to run everything off of a series circuit. The voltage is 120 but you need more amperage. In a way, you could get more amperage by running 4 wires from the distribution panel on the generator instead of 2 wires off of 1 breaker. Run 4 wires, 1 from both breakers and 2 from the ground. But you don't need to go through the generator's breakers if you already have breakers inside the camper...so you bypass them and take the power from wherever it goes into the generator's distribution panel.

firepiper

Thanks for the info.
So, if I have this straight, I can take one line, (black), from each of the two breakers and connect them together, then run them to the box that I plug the camper into. The neutral, (white) and the ground can remain as they are. This should keep the volts at 120, but, give me the amperage of both breakers together. I think I've got it. Thanks again.

welder27

Yup...that's one way!

Mopar1973man

Hey, I curious if it worked out for you... I'm wanting to do the same thing with my solar / gas generator system here. I need 120 VAC out of the generator ONLY...

So let me know how it worked out for you!

firepiper

All set. Basically took the two black (line) leads and put them together. I was too lazy to try to remove the factory breakers! Now I can run the a/c, coffee pot, microwave all at the same time. And they are all protected through the campers own breaker panel. Thanks again to Welder27.

welder27

Yay!!!!

Haulin_in_Dixie

If I read this right, you are taking L1 and L2 of a 220 circuit and connecting them together I would say, better check with the generator mfg. on that, could make a bunch of sparks. They may have it set up to do this, I have seen some setups that I just did not understand but I would check.

firepiper

Seems to be fine. I'm still only feeding the outlet with 120 volts, I just have the combined amperage of the two circuits. There is a 30 amp breaker (main) on the camper panel, so we have protection, too.

welder27

No, the main feed is 120 V from the way it sounds...he currently has 2 breakers feeding 120 V @ 20 amps each. You can combine the 2 breakers in parallel into 1 output line to produce 120 V @ 40 amps. It's not up to any electrical code standards, but it'll work. That's why I was saying it might be better to hook into the generator's main feed to the generator's circuit breakers...less wires to deal with.