I'm not advocating using a breaker as a switch.
But if you camp say 30 days a year, and your stay is 3 days each time, most people probably would turn their breakers on/off about 10 times a year. And given that your water is most likely already hot when you turn it off, I'd guess most opening cycles are not under load; every closing cycle is probably under load, though, unless you've heated your water already with propane.
The last line of page 359 here implies that UL requires that breakers must withstand 6000 cycles:
https://books.google.com/books?id=gZ...eakers&f=false
Some breakers are designed for switching. The ones in our RVs probably aren't (probably the cheapest FR can find), but I suspect turning them on/off 10 times a year for what, 10 years maybe, isn't going to be a major deal. The breakers in the pedestals MAY be designed to be turned on/off, but I'd be really surprised if they were, given the usually crappy circumstances I've seen in many campgrounds.
But I'll get out my popcorn now.
https://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarc...s~20030621.htm
Circuit Breakers As Switches
Both the ANSI and the NEC definitions acknowledge the potential for the legitimate use of circuit breakers as switches. Switches (devices that pass but do not consume electrical energy) are considered as being control devices; thus one may also say that a breaker is a control device, or a controller. A circuit breaker can control and protect an electrical circuit and people operating the utilization equipment. An electrical relay is an example of an operating control; it opens and closes the circuit. Circuit breakers are not designed as replacements for operating controls such as relays, contactors, or motor starters.
There is, as you may have intuitively anticipated, an exception. Some circuit breakers are manufactured for use in a specific type of application. When a circuit breaker is designed to also be routinely used as an on-off switch to control 120 or 277volt florescent luminaires they are marked SWD, for switch duty. This does not mean that a switch duty breaker can be used to manually control a traffic signal light where it will be cycled on and off 1,000 or more times per day. The point is the listing for switch duty (SWD) does not mean a circuit breaker can be used as a high frequency cycling operating control, such as a relay that has a life span rated in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of duty cycles.
While circuit breakers can be legitimately and safely used as switches, the frequency and duration of such use is limited. Routinely circuit breakers are manually operated for service-maintenance and repair type activities. With the preceding enhancing our understanding, we can say that circuit breakers can legitimately be used as switches; generally they are not intended for prolonged repetitive manual breaking and making type control of electrical energy utilization equipment.
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