How to Wire RV Park Pedestal?

[monica0223]

I thought I might ask for some guidance. We are wanting to install 6 RV sites on a rural property in East Texas. They are just for our private use. We've had the Co-Op install a sub panel, and are now looking to buy the items needed for individual campsites. Does the wiring run need to come from the sub panel to each RV pedestal individually, our can they be daisy-chained in line?

[SailorSam20500]

Originally Posted by monica0223

I thought I might ask for some guidance. We are wanting to install 6 RV sites on a rural property in East Texas. They are just for our private use. We've had the Co-Op install a sub panel, and are now looking to buy the items needed for individual campsites. Does the wiring run need to come from the sub panel to each RV pedestal individually, our can they be daisy-chained in line?

I looked at a GE electric panel from HD. The specs say they have dual lugs, so I would expect they can be daisy chained if using appropriate wire. However, I suggest you get in contact with Mike Sokol, the RV electric guy. He seems to be an expert on this stuff.

[BandJCarm]

Not all your answer, but maybe it'll help to give electrician to wire each pedestal for 50 amp.

[Mike134]

If you have to ask how, you need to hire a licensed electrician. Unsafe work inside your house only effects your family, this could injure innocent folks.

[Flybob]

You need to plan the system for every possible abuse. As RV's are becoming larger and larger with more and more power demands, owners are finding creative ways to provide power. It is a real possibility that one or more occupants will draw power from both the 30A and 15/20A outlets. If the sites are all occupied and several occupants use over 30A your 300A circuit could be overloaded.

[Bama Rambler]

The pad pedestals I see have loop feed blocks so you can run from one to another. They also accept up to 350 Kcmil wire.

[monica0223]

I’m not doing any work. I wouldn’t consider installing something like this without a licensed electrician. I asked the question in an effort to gather the information needed to order supplies, and get an estimate of cost. The amount of wire needed to do individual runs from the sub-panel to each individual pedestal would be substantially more than if they were daisy-chained. I’m not looking to cut corners and will do whatever is going to complete project the right way, but was hoping to get some guidance from people who might have already done this.

[Ampdraw]

You’d end up having a lot of wire coming out of your panel if you ran a full individual circuit for each one. Just keep in mind you want to run them all in parallel, not series. In parallel you’ll just need to make sure your main feed panel has enough current capacity for all of them. If you were to run them in series you’d have an unusable voltage once all 6 spots started drawing from it due to voltage drops.

Local building codes (if you have any) are going to actually dictate what you can and can’t do and those codes can be different country to country, state to state, county to county and even city to city.

[CHICKDOE]

i am not an electrician so do not take this any anything other than an observation. but i like to look at things and see how they are put together. a couple of rv parks that we have stayed at were configured with what i would call the park panel with 200 amp circuit breakers. each of these fed 4 sites that had 50 amp pedestals (along with the 30 and 20 amp outlets). i'm sure these 4 sites were wired in the daisy chain fashion off that main 200 amp breaker using cabling rated for 200 amps. you could do 4 sites this way and the other 2 on a separate 100 amp main breaker using cabling rated for 100 amps. but just for the heck of it i would use 200 amp wiring to all six sites and 200 amp breakers just for consistency purposes. it would make adding 2 more sites much easier in the future.

what i do not know is how the 30 amp and 20 amp receptacles get wired. i doubt that they they have their own separate runs back to the main park panel. instead they are probably connected to the single 200 amp supply cable coming into the pedestal and are connected to it. remember, the 50, 30 and 20 amp outlets each have their own properly rated breaker at the panel.

this is just what i believe is happening but i may be wrong!

[Cabinfever97]

I am with FLYBOB, over build!!!

[B and B]

Originally Posted by monica0223

I’m not doing any work. I wouldn’t consider installing something like this without a licensed electrician. I asked the question in an effort to gather the information needed to order supplies, and get an estimate of cost. The amount of wire needed to do individual runs from the sub-panel to each individual pedestal would be substantially more than if they were daisy-chained. I’m not looking to cut corners and will do whatever is going to complete project the right way, but was hoping to get some guidance from people who might have already done this.

In order to figure this put local licensed electrician. I could see daisy chained being a disaster waiting to happen. Up here in True North Strong and Free even dating back to the 70's each pedestal is separate.

[Ampdraw]

Originally Posted by CHICKDOE

what i do not know is how the 30 amp and 20 amp receptacles get wired. i doubt that they they have their own separate runs back to the main park panel. instead they are probably connected to the single 200 amp supply cable coming into the pedestal and are connected to it. remember, the 50, 30 and 20 amp outlets each have their own properly rated breaker at the panel.

this is just what i believe is happening but i may be wrong!

It’s a split phase, which requires separate wires. If you poke a voltage meter in one you can verify it by ending up with 240 volts on your meter reading when 1 probe is stuck in the hot leg of the 120V 30A outlet and your other other probe is on the hot leg of your 120V 20A outlet. I’m not going to argue with what ever the local code is, I’d just say you wouldn’t necessarily have to do it that way, but I appreciate that they do, it lets me run my welder on 240 instead of 120 by tapping into both.

If the OP is still thinking there’s a problem of just branching over at each one just think of each one as a pull box, which you have to have on long runs anyhow. You also might not be saving as much $ as you think, just saving on feet of wire you have to buy. What is going to cost you more, many feet of lower gauge wire or less feet of heavy gauge wire?

[Cherokee39]

This is a typical 50 amp. RV pedestal.


As you can plainly see the lugs in the base. They are not separate runs back to the source. A larger size cable 350 mcm or 500mcm is connecting the pedestals back to the source. They are set up to feed in and feed out.

[formerFR]

If you are buying something like mentioned above, a 'campground RV pedestal', then you'll see that it is already designed to 'thru LUG' power from each site to the next. The left two lines would be the original POWER wires coming in from the utility Main Panel, the middle two are the NEUTRALS, and the right two would be the two HOT wires continuing out to the next RV panel...

BUT, I would highly doubt that you would want to go this expensive route, and I doubt that each of your site needs a full 'campground rv power pedestal', either. If you just want each site to have 50amp 240v power, then use a MAIN PANEL that is capable of handling up to 300amps of power, otherwise known as a 300amp Main Breaker Panel, or HIGHER, if all 6 sites were to be occupied at the same time, and all are using almost ALL of their available amps.
Remember that a Main Panel is 240v of power, which is what 50amp RVs make use of. The 50amp RV outlet that you would install at each site has 4 prongs, needing 4 wires: Hot(black), Hot(Red), Neutral(white), and a Green/bare Ground. Each 'hot leg' carries up to 50amps of 120v power, combined as 50amps of 240v between the two. The RVs own interior main panel uses both of these, generally separately, for up to 100amp of 120v power for each RV, although a very few very large RVs have a 240v clothes dryer or similar appliance onboard, but their main panel can use 240v power also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would do the following, though, to minimize cost, and make it actually 'easier' all the way around:

Install a Outdoor 300amp or larger Main Breaker Panel(probably more often available at an 'electrical supply' warehouse), with at least 12 spaces, for the 6 double-pole 50amp breakers needed to serve each site, since you are requiring 6x50amps equalling 300amps maximum.

Run 4-wire 6/3 UF cable from the main panel to each site, underground, where it then connects within a 50amp Outdoor RV outlet BOX, which can be easily mounted on a short post.
Each site will then have it's own 50amp outlet, but the individual site Breakers for each will be within the Main Panel.

If, though, you might only want to have several of the sites with full 50amp service, and the others with more typical 30amp RV service, you might could get away with a single 200amp Main Breaker panel(easily found at the big box hardware stores), for all 6, as the 30amp breakers are only single-space 120v types, and their wiring is also much smaller, only 3 wires, and easier and cheaper to run, with 10/2 UF wiring.
You could have two full 50amp 240v sites, and four 30amp 120v sites, all within the same Main Panel. You could always upgrade later.

Now, you don't say 'how' you are laying out these sites, whether side-by-side in a single row, in a arching circular area, or two rows of three side-by-side, but how you lay out the sites will impact where the main panels is in relation to each, and ultimately how much 'wire' needs to get to them.

You also didn't mention water and septic, but that may be another subject for another time : )

[Ampdraw]

Originally Posted by Papa Roo

This is a typical 50 amp.Attachment 226855 RV pedestal.


As you can plainly see the lugs in the base. They are not separate runs back to the source. A larger size cable 350 mcm or 500mcm is connecting the pedestals back to the source. They are set up to feed in and feed out.

It looks like you do nice work Papa Roo, good job.

[marinerjoe]

Originally Posted by formerFR

If you are buying something like mentioned above, a 'campground RV pedestal', then you'll see that it is already designed to 'thru LUG' power from each site to the next. The left two lines would be the original POWER wires coming in from the utility Main Panel, the middle two are the NEUTRALS, and the right two would be the two HOT wires continuing out to the next RV panel...

Looking at the pedestal pictures, it appears that the two outside lugs are each phase, with the red tape likely indicating in from the source, and no tape to mark out to the next post. But in rereading the quoted post, he may be saying the same thing with the left lead on each outside lug (with the tape) being the incoming hots, and the two right leads going out down the line.

Personally I would have thought the neutral should be closer in size to the two hots, but that’s just me.

[Joe_GA]

Although not as big a problem with a small park, the 30 and 20 amp receptacles should be balanced between L1 and L2. I stayed in one park during cold weather where my EMS kept shutting me down. I found the voltages on L1 dipping down to upper 90's and low 100's while L2 stayed up near 120 volts. They had wired most of the 30 amp hookups to L1. Of course, many in the park were running portable electric heaters. This really loaded down L1. During the heat of the day, L1 and L2 balanced out.

[CHICKDOE]

the post from formerRV made me think. if this is on private land for private use it probably doesn't have to provide the same functionality as the traditional pedestal we are all familiar with in commercial sites. just supply a proper 50 amp outlet to each site. of course use the proper gauge cable. but you don't have to also have a 30 and 20 amp receptacle at each site. get a few 50 to 30 amp adapters and use them if required. no need for meters at each site. do it well but keep it as simple as possible. you could probably use off the shelf components mounted on a post as opposed to a 'pedestal'.

[Mike134]

Originally Posted by monica0223

I’m not doing any work. I wouldn’t consider installing something like this without a licensed electrician. I asked the question in an effort to gather the information needed to order supplies, and get an estimate of cost. The amount of wire needed to do individual runs from the sub-panel to each individual pedestal would be substantially more than if they were daisy-chained. I’m not looking to cut corners and will do whatever is going to complete project the right way, but was hoping to get some guidance from people who might have already done this.

Glad to hear you're not doing this yourself. You can look up the code requirements online if you want some basic knowledge. It's in Chapter 5 special occupancy's sec 551.71. of NFPA 70. There's also a table 551.73 for demand factors when you size the feeders for the pedestals. Just because you have 6 pedestals with 50a outlets doesn't mean you size the feeder breaker at 300A. You apply a demand factor, because all 6 won't be drawing 50A at the same time. You do need to account for heavy AC loads or heating loads depending on location. As you saw with Papa Roo's pics run one set of large aluminum cables, it will serve you better than multiple runs of smaller wiring, which would need to be up-sized anyways to prevent excessive voltage drop. As noted previously your electrician will also need to flip flop some of the factory pedestal wiring to prevent all the 30A 120V outlets from being on the same line.


Good luck be careful of well intended but not always correct forum advise.



https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-stand...detail?code=70

[BMullins46]

As a former designer for a major electric utility let me suggest that you install all your under ground wires in a 2 inch poly conduit. I would suggest you contact your electric utility to see about purchasing the wire from them as it can be had already in the conduit. This will protect the wires from physical damage by rocks etc. and also protect it from burrowing varmits which will chew on unprotected wires.