I am connecting my Paradigm 382RK to a household outlet. I am using a Kohree 50 amp to 110 V RV adapter with surge protection. I plug the 12 gauge extension cord into the surge protector, and everything is good. As soon as I connect the power adapter to the RV, the household GFI trips. (Not one inside the RV, the one I am connecting to). Has anyone else had this issue? What is the fix?
Household GFI outlet tripping
- Thread starter joeh64
- Start date
BryanValRox
Elite Member
I would suggest that you access all of your 120 v Ac connections on the rig and check them for the proper torque.
Be sure to start at the wall connection and follow them until they end.
You maybe able to narrow down your cause by shutting off your main RV breakers and see if you get a different result, if you do start adding a breaker one at a time until you reproduce your issue. Then trace out that circuit to ensure connections are tight.
Be sure to start at the wall connection and follow them until they end.
You maybe able to narrow down your cause by shutting off your main RV breakers and see if you get a different result, if you do start adding a breaker one at a time until you reproduce your issue. Then trace out that circuit to ensure connections are tight.
I’m not sure I can explain it briefly, but google neutral to ground bonds. You can only have one. In this case your home’s panel is bonded. Forget everything about the RV other than the electrical panel and the inverter…on shore power it becomes a sub-panel to the house. If the sub panel doesn’t lift it’s neutral to ground you have two and the house will trip. If you have an inverter it complicates it a little more.
Any chance you have a Victron inverter? They do NOT work in you're using a GFI outlet to power the RV from home
Inverter is where my mind goes. But I did not know the Victron specifically had that restriction. Surprising it does not have a relay to hand off to the panel's ground. That may be a problem for a lot of owners at campgrounds soon as it is my understanding that all American campgrounds must move to GFCI pedestals in the near future (it was on some RV website where I read that so confirmation is needed). Without GFCI it will tolerate the neutral ground duplication.
I'm not sure what inverter I have. I can check tonight.
Would I be just as well off to use a battery charger/maintainer (like the NOCO Genius 5)? I have been storing the RV outside, and the solar panel has kept the battery charged. I am now storing it in a covered facility, so no using solar. All I really need to do is keep the battery charged enough to operate lights, slides, etc. between trips.
Would I be just as well off to use a battery charger/maintainer (like the NOCO Genius 5)? I have been storing the RV outside, and the solar panel has kept the battery charged. I am now storing it in a covered facility, so no using solar. All I really need to do is keep the battery charged enough to operate lights, slides, etc. between trips.
Chaseweston
Well-known member
as a short term work around, you could shut off all breakers in the RV except your converter so it still charges the battery via 110V
An update on this. I turned off the breakers for the washer, dryer, and dishwasher. Plugged in and everything is fine. The GFI did not trip. So must be something on those circuits. But we never use those outlets anyway, so I can just leave them off, unless there is something else on them that I do not yet realize. Does anyone know if there is anything else on these circuits?
I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think I remember someone installing a dishwasher and saying that circuit is shared with the ice maker. If you're not using the ice maker in frig, I'd say you're fine leaveing those breakers off.
BryanValRox
Elite Member
Jim, that is correct on many rigs (not all) the dishwasher circuit breaker feed the ice maker outlet as well.
I validate this on our 2024 310 RL.
I validate this on our 2024 310 RL.
See...my brain isn't all mush afterall...I can remember a few things. Now...someone please inform my wife
I’m glad this is sorted out for you at the moment. But if you go to a park with a GFI protected pedestal, and need those circuits, you might have the same problem present. You might have some leakage to ground.
The breaker does say dishwasher/icemaker. But I thought that was odd. I figured if the refrigerator was on, then the icemaker would be also. We do use the icemaker when we go, so I will find out in a few weeks.
M and E, what would be the best way to find this leakage. Someone earlier said to check the connections to make sure they are tight. I have not done that yet. But the washer and dryer outlets look different than most. There are no screws in the faceplate. I am certainly not an electrician, (I have been shocked numerous times doing small things at my house) so I'm not sure how to isolate the leakage.
Thanks to everyone that has commented.
M and E, what would be the best way to find this leakage. Someone earlier said to check the connections to make sure they are tight. I have not done that yet. But the washer and dryer outlets look different than most. There are no screws in the faceplate. I am certainly not an electrician, (I have been shocked numerous times doing small things at my house) so I'm not sure how to isolate the leakage.
Thanks to everyone that has commented.
I’m not an electrician either but when we were first married, we had no money so I had to learn everything (plus the basics with my dad).
Differential clamp at the panel is the best way to figure it out.
That said, I would still check the dual grounds. I don’t know enough about how the bonds park when the inverter is de-energized. @Oregon_Camper might be able to help.
We’re headed out in a bit. I’ll look up the test and post it. It’s pretty simple with a meter.
I know the very first steps are to inspect your adapter for any bent ends. Then get a $2.00 ground tester from the hardware store and make sure the problem is not on the GFCI circuit you are plugging into is not the issue.
Power off the rig entirely.
Put your meter on ohms.
One probe on the ground at the adapter. The other on neutral.
Open or many ohms, no bond….this is what you want.
A low number of ohms, you have a dual bond and this will send some energy to ground and trip a GFCI.
This is quick and dirty…fact check it or maybe someone else can chime in with more knowledge than me.
The leakage is more challenging. It could be that you’ve already identified the source on those breakers you flipped. It could also be cumulative. That’s when it gets more challenging. I’ll find a step by step or you can google it.
Last edited:
BryanValRox
Elite Member
Remember that our Refrigerators are 12VDC and the ice maker runs off of 120vAC.
I just went to Claude AI and got this. Quicker but check it as it is AI. It all sounds right to me.
Before you start
- You need a true leakage clamp, not a standard clamp meter. Look for µA or mA resolution and a spec like "0.01 mA resolution" — Fluke 360, Klein CL800, Extech MA200-class. A regular clamp reads to 0.1A and will show 0.00 all day while you're chasing 4mA.
- Working in an energized panel is real 120/240V exposure. If you're not comfortable there, stop and hire an RV tech — the breaker bisection method in Step 3 gets you 80% of the answer with zero exposure.
- Plug the coach into a non-GFCI outlet — you need it to stay energized while you measure. Measuring on a GFCI just trips before you get a reading.
- Turn every RV branch breaker off. Leave the main on.
- Open the panel cover. Identify the ground bus (bare/green conductors, bonded to the frame) and the neutral bus (white conductors, separate bar).
- Zero the meter with the jaws closed and clamped around nothing. Most leakage clamps have a REL or ZERO button — use it. Ambient fields matter at this resolution.
- Clamp around the main ground conductor where it enters the panel, or around the whole ground bus feed. Jaws fully closed, conductor centered, nothing else inside the jaws.
- Record the number. With all branch breakers off, expect near zero — maybe 0.1–0.5mA.
- If you already read 2mA+ with everything off, stop. That's not leakage, that's a bond or fault. Go back to the N-G resistance test.
- Turn on one branch breaker. Wait 10–15 seconds for anything on that circuit to actually energize and stabilize.
- Record the reading.
- Turn it back off, confirm you return to baseline, then move to the next circuit. One at a time, isolated, is cleaner than stacking.
- Then do a second pass stacking them — add each circuit and leave it on — so you can watch the running total climb toward 5mA. That's the number the GFCI sees.
- Subtract baseline from each circuit's reading; that's that circuit's contribution.
- Under 0.5mA per circuit: normal EMI filter leakage.
- 1–2mA from one circuit: that's your dominant contributor. Usually converter/charger, residential fridge, or electric water heater.
- 3mA+ from one circuit alone: that's a fault, not leakage. Trace it.
- Stacked total 4–6mA: confirmed cumulative — you're at the trip threshold and nothing is broken.
- Instead of clamping ground, clamp L1 + L2 + neutral together, excluding ground. That sum is exactly what the GFCI computes internally. A healthy system reads zero.
- This is more accurate than clamping ground because it catches current leaving by paths other than the ground wire.
- Only workable where the conductors are individually accessible — at the panel, not on a molded 50A cord.
- Clamp the entire cord including ground. Should read essentially zero.
- If it doesn't, current is exiting the coach by some path outside the cord — chassis touching a metal structure, a bootleg ground, a second ground path through a generator. Different problem, worth chasing.
- Readings drift a little; take the settled value, not the first flash.
- Keep the jaws clean and fully closed — a gap or debris in the mating surfaces throws off readings badly at this resolution.
- Don't clamp two conductors when you mean one. Clamping hot and neutral together gives you leakage; clamping just one gives you load current. Easy to mix up and get a confusing number.
- Motor loads (A/C, fridge compressor) spike leakage briefly at startup. Let them run a bit before recording.
George
Prominent Member
As Jim says below… I can personally 100% verify that my ice maker is on the dishwasher circuit breaker and nothing else. You ain’t likely to be making ice in storage so good-to-go.