Installing an outlet to charge while closed

Hello All, This is my first post, I have found a ton of great information here, I bout an '03 2720SL about 3 weeks ago and am just trying to get everything figured out prior to camping season. I would like to charge it up and pre-cool the fridge while closed up in the garage, to avoid pulling it out into my driveway on Thursday evening to start for a friday trip. I have read a ton of threads about how to best charge the TM while closed and saw that several people just drilled a hole and pulled the main power cord into the back bumper storage so it is accessible while closed. I am still considering this but have come up with another potential solution. I bought an outlet that has a Male end on it so you can just plug the female end of an extension cord directly into the outlet, it is sealed and spring loaded. I am thinking of drilling a hole through and putting this on the bottom of the TM somewhere near in the battery box. I will then run a 12 ga wire up to wherever the regular plug is connected to the vehicle and wire it in at the same place. I would never plug both in at the same time. Would this work? Anything I'm missing or overlooking? Thanks in advance for your input.
Pat

Originally Posted by jpcoll01

Hello All, This is my first post, I have found a ton of great information here, I bout an '03 2720SL about 3 weeks ago and am just trying to get everything figured out prior to camping season. I would like to charge it up and pre-cool the fridge while closed up in the garage, to avoid pulling it out into my driveway on Thursday evening to start for a friday trip. I have read a ton of threads about how to best charge the TM while closed and saw that several people just drilled a hole and pulled the main power cord into the back bumper storage so it is accessible while closed. I am still considering this but have come up with another potential solution. I bought an outlet that has a Male end on it so you can just plug the female end of an extension cord directly into the outlet, it is sealed and spring loaded. I am thinking of drilling a hole through and putting this on the bottom of the TM somewhere near in the battery box. I will then run a 12 ga wire up to wherever the regular plug is connected to the vehicle and wire it in at the same place. I would never plug both in at the same time. Would this work? Anything I'm missing or overlooking? Thanks in advance for your input.
Pat

Hi Pat, and welcome to the forum.

Check out: http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...hread.php?t=53.

This thread has been going on for a while, but a lot of interesting ideas. I posted #27, which is a similar to your idea, and as I now read back through the thread, some ideas of other forum members also.

Chap

[Bill]

Oh, please don't do that, Pat! It is very hazardous, and is absolutely forbidden by all electrical codes. The problem occurs when you are not using the male outlet, but you are using normal shore power for the TM. At that time, the protruding prongs of the male outlet are live! I know, I know, it is in a little compartment with a spring-loaded cover. But are you willing to risk the life of the neighbor's curious little kid - or maybe your own kid, or a grandchild, or a mechanic who is working on the TM - when they wonder what's in there? Or when the TM drags a bit over a bump in the road and breaks the little housing, and you don't even know it is broken?

Every winter in Maine we have blizzards and the power fails, sometimes for days at a time. Every time it happens, people dig out their Home Depot generators. And some of those people make up male-to-male extension cords so they can plug the generator into a house outlet and backfeed the house. And every year, a certain number of those people die, and a certain number burn their houses down when the exposed male end comes into contact with something it shouldn't. After all, we all learn from our earliest days that it is safe to touch the prongs on a cord, right? What you are proposing to build is a male-to-male extension cord, and it is dangerous!

Off my soapbox now.

Bill

Oops, I missed the male plug thing that Pat posted. Glad Bill picked up on that.

Chap

Great point, it is recessed into the box, but yes it would be live prongs inside the box while hooked up to shore power. I wonder if I could get a sealed female end to cover the male prongs inside the box? This would be an added measure of safety. I read thread that mtnguy linked to above and I downloaded the image of your scematic. I don't really want a cord end loose in the bumper storage. I just haven't seen a better solution. In theory I could put the outlet (inlet) on a switch from the inside, this would allow me to turn it off when hooked to shore power, but that depends on human input which almost always fails...any other input/suggestions would definitely be appreciated.

[Bill]

Hi again, Pat -

This whole issue was discussed a number of times, and the threads are hard to find. Chap linked you to the biggest thread, and I haven't reviewed it all. But it seems to me that there were a couple remarkably simple approaches that other members came up with. First one - on some TMs, it was possble to pull out the big black cord before closing the shells, and the shell would still close over the cord. This depended on the closeness of the fit between the rear shell and the box body, which apparently varied a bit. On mine, it wouldn't work - but on some TMs, it did. You might check yours. The second approach, if I remember correctly, was to get a 6-foot flat air conditioner extension cord. Using an adapter, you could mate this with the end of the big black cord, leaving the end of the flat cord hanging down the side of the trailer.

Either of these approaches requires you to partially open the TM before you leave home, so you can shove the cord back where it belongs. But it doesn't have to be opened very far.

Of course, completely different approach is to buy a battery charger, and feed it into the TM through the Bargman (car) connector. For an overnight sort of operation, such as precooling the refrig, a cheap garage-type charger rated at 10 or 15 amps would do the job. This type of charger is BAD for long term operation. But for overnight, it would be fine - the refrig consumes the entire output of the charger, so overcharging the battery, especially in a few hours, would not happen.

And don't forget, as Mike Laupp and others pointed out, that it is important to leave the refrig vent fan on, to exhaust the heat from the rear of the refrig area.

Bill

Thanks for the response I like the flat extension cord idea, I might give it a try, my shell will not close with the 30 amp cord hanging out of the side. I have an 03 so I think I have the controller that isn't great at trickle charing so a charger may be a good investment for me at some point anyway.
Thanks again for the feedback,
Pat

[ShrimpBurrito]

Pat,

Instead of using a protruding live male plug, and you want to still use your approach, why not use a recessed male plug on the trailer like this:

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs...9&classNum=311

Dave