RV Outlets Not Working: Troubleshooting Tips and Precautions
Dave SolbergDescription
If you’ve ever encountered a shorted series of electrical outlets on your RV and felt completely stumped for a solution, trust us, you’re not alone. But rest easy, the source of the problem is common, and the fix is simple. In this lesson, RV expert Dave Solberg teaches you what to do when you discover several RV outlets not working.
To help you figure out what’s going on with your faulty RV outlets, Dave walks you through a quick explanation of circuits and standard RV electrical wiring. He introduces an inexpensive tool you should use to detect which outlets are malfunctioning, and demonstrates the proper way to pinpoint the source. You’ll learn why the ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) on your rig might be giving you issues, and discover easy ways to avoid a sensitive GFCI. With Dave’s help, you’ll be up and running again in no time!
We get a lot of great questions at the RV Repair Club from the various social media sites. And I pulled one of those questions today, which is a pretty common one. I hear it a lot, I see it a lot when I go camping, talking with people. And the question was that, "We have several outlets that are not working, but they were working the last time we went camping." They've checked, they've gone through all the inside circuit breakers, fuses, various things like that. They would be tied to a circuit breaker in the distribution panel. All those look good. Certain outlets in the RV do work, but this string of light outlets seems not to. So the first thing I would do is I would recommend and we've done this video a few times before but this is a non-contact voltage tester, and this is something that you can pick up very easily at a home improvement store, hardware stores anybody that carries any kind of electrical stuff, pretty inexpensive. It's just gonna give you me a little beep when I have electricity so I don't have to actually touch the wires. So I'm gonna find out which outlets are hooked to the ground-fault circuit interrupter, the GFCI inside. Now, normally in a motor home or travel trailer, all of them will have one GFCI that's inside, usually in the kitchen or the bathroom. And then there's a series of other outlets that are ganged to that or connected in series. If that one outlet trips, all of them go dead. It's a little deceiving because you don't see that reset button on the other ones. Outside is a typical example here. So the first thing I would do is I'd come out here, and I look to see this outlet and I put that in, and we see that there is no voltage there. Now, the first time I actually ran into this, is when I worked at Winnebago Industries and we were doing shows and we would come out, normally the outlet's kind right out on the side here, and we'd wanna vacuum up before the show, and it wouldn't work. It took quite a few times before somebody said, "I bet that's hooked to the inside outlet." So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go inside, I'm gonna trip the outlet, I'm gonna check that outlet, and we'll come back out here, and we're gonna take a look at this outlet. So now we tripped the breaker inside. We're gonna check the outlet one more time. Put this back up in here, and we see that it does have power now. One other thing that can happen, and I've seen this happen quite a bit and the reason that trips, is a lot of times when you're camping and you go to break camp and you pull the cord out without unplugging the electricity, sometimes it get just a little bit of a surge in there, and all depends on how sensitive that GFCI is. This one happened to be in the bathroom area right down on underneath the sink. And usually you're gonna find that the outlets next to a water source are going to be hooked to that. So in the kitchen, by the sink there if you have a second bathroom, that will also have it. A lot of your toy haulers will have it back in the garage area because there's gonna be some moisture back there. There's gonna be some wet washing things up. Almost always the one on the outside, this one happens to be underneath here but again, you could get some rain moisture. Sometimes you have the refrigerator that's hooked to it as well. Now, one more thing to check, if you go in and we try to reset the GFCI, that could go bad. I've had several cases where they've kind of overloaded the circuit. You trip that GFCI too many times, putting in a ceramic heater or something that's gonna draw some high amps off that circuit. And you could actually ruin that GFCI then you're gonna have to replace it because all those outlets are gonna be dead in that circuit. So understand which outlets are hooked to that circuit, check that GFCI and make sure you know the amp draw that you're using in your rig.
Can you replace the RV GFCI outlet with a "standard" GFCI outlet from a home improvement store, if it will fit in the same space?
have a 2006 Starcraft 28 ft bumper pull . never had a issue . Now only the outlets on do not work but the GFI plug does . Any Suggestions ? Thank you
I had same problem there was a junction box behind wall in storage area wires came loose reason for j-box they were to cheap and lazy to put in a longer piece of wire
The outlet behind my couch, my fireplace's outlet, the outlet under my kitchen table and my hot water heater are all not working. All other outlets are working. Both GFCI outlets have been reset and are working. I have a 2021 Keystone Cougar 25RDSWE. I am plugged in and all other outlets have power (microwave works). I live 3 hours from a dealer, so I can’t easily take it in for a diagnosis, and I have currently been living in the RV for 2 months now. Any tips or help you could provide would be greatly appreciated!
If the GFCI is bad can it be replaced with a regular outlet
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Lights work in rv outlets do not work
Thank you, great advice - I had exactly that case, like you said - unplugging from live shore power tripped GFCI plug in the bathroom.
My rv has all these symptoms even with the gfci outlet working. Surge protector reads full power coming into rv. Im lost in this issue.
I have 4 Lower wall Outs not working .The 2 GFI are working. Also the outlet on the exterior next to the water tank isn't working