What's This For - Kodiak 201QB

[kjlarson]

I have asked the dealer and Dutchmen sales/support the following two questions, neither have been able to answer them.
1. To the left of the entry door is a panel with switches to turn the water pump and heater on/off plus power the outside awning in/out, turn a ceiling light on, etc. Above the heater/pump switches is a switch labeled "electrical". Does anyone have an idea as to what it might be for? Does not seem to affect anything regardless as to whether it is on or off.
2. In the power center there is a 15 amp circuit breaker labeled "General" with two wires coming off it. One powered the converter and the other circuit is unknown. The lead to the converter has been removed and spliced into the 120Vac shore power input on the inverter to prevent the converter from coming on when powering the TT from the battery bank. As with the "electrical" switch I have not noticed any affect when this breaker is on or off. Anybody have an idea what this breaker is powering?

Wish Keystone would publish a manual for their individual products rather than the general manual that covers everything Keystone builds. It's frustrating when there is no manual and no support.

[drogers]

Could you post a picture of the switch and panel so we might be able to better identify the switch and its purpose, however from your description I think it might be the electrical heat for your water heater. But without a picture it's hard to visualize what you are referring to.

[kjlarson]

I was asked to submit a picture of the Panel I addressed in this post. On the left side of the panel are three switches: pump, gas, and electrical. From a reply I think all three pertain to the water heater and whether it runs on gas or electrical. Comments?

[persistent]

The picture is too small and too low resolution to see the panel.

[kjlarson]

Here is a larger image. Was having trouble getting the image down to the max size limit. Hope this one comes through. Also, to the left of the little indicator light is a lite labeled FTL, any idea as to what that is for - never seen it come on.

[persistent]

"2. In the power center there is a 15 amp circuit breaker labeled "General" with two wires coming off it. One powered the converter and the other circuit is unknown."

Generally the converter/charger has it's own circuit breaker. The "General" breaker in my Kodiak Cub is for the outlets around the trailer. Owners adding devices like inverters often do very creative things.

"The lead to the converter has been removed and spliced into the 120Vac shore power input on the inverter to prevent the converter from coming on when powering the TT from the battery bank. As with the "electrical" switch I have not noticed any affect when this breaker is on or off. Anybody have an idea what this breaker is powering?"

Converters come in many different flavors. Mine is a simple arrangement. It is a converter/charger. Others may have transfer switches, inverters, and other energy management features. Make and model of the "converter" would be a good start. Make and model of inverter and any other energy management devices would be helpful.

[ewarnerusa]

1. ELECTRIC toggle switch: this is to turn on the electric heat element in your water heater. I hope you had water in the hot water tank when experimenting, it can damage itself if it is on without water in the tank. I have been fortunate to have never done this myself, but I hear about it on online forums a lot.

2. General circuit breaker: my converter was tied into the GEN circuit breaker as well, I removed it from that circuit and put it on it's own breaker so I could turn it off when using an inverter. I don't quite understand your description of "splicing into shore power input on inverter" as the inverter has a 12V DC input, but I concur that the converter needs to be disabled when using an inverter in place of shore power. Maybe you are using an inverter/charger? IF that's the case, you could remove the OEM converter entirely because the inverter/charger would be doing the battery charging. The GEN breaker supplies power to most of the non-GFCI outlets in my camper.

[kjlarson]

Thanks for the reply. Lucky the water heater had water in it when I turned the switch on. I don't have an inverter/charger so need to keep the mfg installed converter/charger. As to the splicing; the inverter is a pass through which requires that the shore power wiring is rerouted from the power center to the inverter 120Vac inputs, then the inverter 120Vac output is routed to the power center. To isolate the converter/charger when on battery power I removed the converter/charger power lead from the circuit breaker with dual wires installed (labeled general) in the power center and rewired it to the inverter 120Vac input. Now the converter/charger receives power only when shore power is connected. As to the "general" circuit breaker which is still wired to something I still do not know what it supplies power to; the 120Vac outlets are on their own circuit breaker. Again, thanks for clarifying what the electrical switch is for.

[ewarnerusa]

If you're certain that none of the interior or exterior camper AC outlets are controlled by the "general" breaker, the last one I would check is the refrigerator on AC power. The outlet for mine is only accessible from the outside by removing the refrigerator exhaust panel. I think that outlet is controlled by the general breaker in my camper, but it has been a while since I looked into it. Not that you would need to access the outlet to test if it is on the breaker, just that it is a hidden one that you might not consider without knowing it was there. Just see if the fridge will operate on AC power while plugged into shore power but with general breaker off.

[kjlarson]

OK, I'm thinking you do not understand what a pass-through inverter is. A pass-through inverter has two inputs, one for 120Vac and one for 12Vdc and one output for 120Vac. When connected to shore power the inverter just passes the 120Vac to the power center via the 120Vac output, ignoring the 12Vdc input. When the shore power is disconnected an internal transfer switch in the inverter switches to the 12Vdc inputs, converts the 12Vdc to 120Vac and sends that 120Vac to the power center via the inverter 120Vac output terminals. There are inverter/chargers which do the same thing with the additional ability to charge the batteries. An internal switch charges the batteries when connected to shore power and prevents the charging of the batteries when there is no shore power. Shore power can come from a pedestal as in a full hookup campground or from solar panels; although, a solar system is more complicated and requires additional equipment. There are inverters that only convert 12Vdc to 120Vac, which do not have 120Vac inputs-only 120Vac output, in which case there would have to be some way to turn the converter charger function off such as turning the circuit breaker powering the converter charger off. However, if you turn the converter charger off when on shore power there will not be any 12Vdc supplied to the power center as the 12Vdc comes from the converter function of the converter. It is the converter that is changing the 120Vac supplied to the power center into 12Vdc for the dc circuits in the trailer. When running on the batteries the inverter supplies the 120Vac to the ac circuits only and the batteries supply power to the dc circuits. All this is handled in the power center. Hope this clears up why an inverter would have 120Vac inputs. I just connected the converter power source to the 120Vac input of the inverter to turn the converter on when on shore power because I do not want the converter to come on when the batteries->inverter is supplying 120Vac to the power center.

[leisuresolar@gmail.com]

"The lead to the converter has been removed and spliced into the 120Vac shore power input on the inverter to prevent the converter from coming on when powering the TT from the battery bank."

This is a bad idea. Your converter is no longer circuit breaker protected. Any fault in converter or wires, and it will see the full 30 or 50A input from shore power. It is a fire waiting to happen.

[kjlarson]

Please give me some credit. Needless to say the power to the inverter is fused with a 15 amp fuse, same as when attached to the circuit breaker.

[ewarnerusa]

I confirmed that the refrigerator in my camper runs off the general circuit breaker when operating on 120 AC electric shore power. So I would say that is worth checking on in your case.