220VAC Moochdocking Adapter

C

Chuck.N

Senior Member
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Jun 7, 2020
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We'll be moochdocking at a friend's house in Florida soon. He has a 220VAC dryer outlet available for our use, should we be able to use it.

Has anyone on here successfully fabricated an adapter that would allow connection of our 110VAC 50A RV system to a household 220VAC outlet? If so, can you kindly share the wiring diagram?

Any other tidbits of information you can offer up are appreciated. I don't know if he has two separate 15A circuits available, but if he does, that's a possible option. However, the preference is the 220VAC solution, if it can be done.

TIA!
 
You can not make 220V by combining two 110s. What you want to do is easy if you know what you are doing, dangerous to you and your rig if you do not.
 
BobLandry said:
You can not make 220V by combining two 110s. What you want to do is easy if you know what you are doing, dangerous to you and your rig if you do not.
Click to expand...

I don't want to make a 220V connection. I'll have a 220V dryer connection available that I'd like to split into a 110V 50A RV style connection.
 
Chuck.N said:
I don't want to make a 220V connection. I'll have a 220V dryer connection available that I'd like to split into a 110V 50A RV style connection.
Click to expand...

You probably can with some caution.

Dryer plugs are a little confusing because there are two options.

They used to be 3-wire 120/240 with ground and neutral connected together. This has led more than a few poorly informed folks to wire the outlet wrong, and you’ll also see some wired this way with the ground wire straight to a water pipe. You are kind of on your own determining if you have the right wiring on these.

Since about 2000, there has been a switch to 4-wire 120/240 outlets. These are much less likely to be mis-wired.

If he has two 15A (or 20A) circuits available, you can use each of those to power one leg of your rig, but in most cases you’ll be limited because most items in the RV are on one of the legs.
 
If he has a properly wired 4-wire 14-30R dryer outlet you can use this adaptor. https://acworks.com/products/ev-adapter-ev1430ms-018

The risk is the outlet MUST have a separate NEUTRAL and GROUND wired at the outlet. 4-wire dryer outlets were required on new construction starting around 1996. Before that 3-wire dryer outlets were the norm and they did not have a neutral. So if the house was built before 1996 you may be out of luck.

I use that adaptor at my house to connect my 50a Reflection and can run almost everything on the RV without exceeding 24 amps per leg. I just don’t r in the. Water heater on electric and run it on propane only.

If the dryer outlet is a 3-wire outlet or a 4-wire outlet without a neutral it will not have a Neutral and that will destroy the RV appliances.
 
Last edited:
Just to add on, my 1996 built house had a 3-wire dryer outlet. Fortunately they ran 10-3 w/ground Romex from the breaker box to the outlet. I had the wires reconnected to a 4-wire 14-30R receptacle reconnected using current code, connecting the white to neutral and bare to ground on both ends.
 
Jerryr said:
. . . 4-wire dryer outlets were required on new construction starting around 1996. Before that 3-wire dryer outlets were the norm and they did not have a neutral.
. . .
If the dryer outlet is a 3-wire outlet or a 4-wire outlet without a neutral it will not have a Neutral and that will destroy the RV appliances.
Click to expand...

Properly wired 3 wire dryer connections DO indeed have a neutral connection. They just don’t have a separate ground. The ground connection on the dryer was bonded to the neutral connection, so that the single wire served both functions—as the neutral current pathway and as the grounding pathway.


2020 2600RB,
2017 Silverado Crew Cab 1500, 6.2L
 
An RV does not use 240v internally but a 240v 50amp RV outlet is 240V. If the dryer outlet is 4 prong and it is wired correctly you should be good to go.
 
weekender01 said:
This will allow you to plug in your RV, but unless you do something to address the voltage from 240V down to a 110V you will fry appliances, motors, etc in your RV. YOU REALLY NEED AN ELECTRICIAN who knows about RV voltage.
Click to expand...

Huh?

A 50 amp RV plug is 240V with a neutral. Inside the breaker box on the trailer the phases are split and there's a neutral creating the 120V. If you measure across both main breakers you'll have 240V.
 
weekender01 said:
This will allow you to plug in your RV, but unless you do something to address the voltage from 240V down to a 110V you will fry appliances, motors, etc in your RV. YOU REALLY NEED AN ELECTRICIAN who knows about RV voltage.
Click to expand...

Your 50 amp RV panel is supplied with 240V (two 110V feeds lets call them 110A and 110:cool: there's nothing to reduce down; it is just distributed in a way that you cannot access the two different 110V feeds at the same time with a 2-pole circuit breaker (only the the main 50A breaker gets this). All the circuit breakers on one side are supplied by the same 110V feed, and all the circuit breakers on the other side of the panel are fed by the other 110V feed. In a house breaker panel the breakers are feed by alternating 110V feeds (110A-110B-110A-110B etc) to get 240V with a 2-pole breaker. The RV panel is designed so that both feeds are not available in a side by side way to get two different 110V feeds at the same time.

Back to the original question. If the mooch outlet is a 4 wire 30A/240 outlet, you can just use one of these.

"NEMA 14-30P to 14-50R 120V/240V 30 Amp 4 Prong Male to 50 Amp 4 Prong Female adapter"
 
weekender01 said:
This will allow you to plug in your RV, but unless you do something to address the voltage from 240V down to a 110V you will fry appliances, motors, etc in your RV. YOU REALLY NEED AN ELECTRICIAN who knows about RV voltage.
Click to expand...

This is not correct. A 50A RV uses standard North American 240V split phase power just like a home. The neutral provides the 120V tap.
 
As usual, I'm late to the conversation but I feel I should add my two cents.

As a few here have suggested, it is possible to make this work. I actually carry with me several different plugs that I can wire up as needed.. I even have a pigtail that I can connect directly to a breaker. But I never to anything before I put my meter on it and am sure that I understand how that receptacle or panel is wired. In my experience, outlets are often miswired and the consequences of connecting to the wrong voltage can be disastrous. Both in terms of equipment and life. Please fully understand what you are doing before you start making up adapters.
 
BobLandry said:
You can not make 220V by combining two 110s. What you want to do is easy if you know what you are doing, dangerous to you and your rig if you do not.
Click to expand...

I concur. Most 220 volt dryer outlets DO NOT have a NEUTRAL (white wire) connection! Do not, under any circumstances, try to use the bare ground wire as a neutral. That is very dangerous.
 
fez111 said:
I concur. Most 220 volt dryer outlets DO NOT have a NEUTRAL (white wire) connection! Do not, under any circumstances, try to use the bare ground wire as a neutral. That is very dangerous.
Click to expand...

4 wire has been code for something like 20 years, so the old style are becoming less common.
 
Roll With The Changes said:
As usual, I'm late to the conversation but I feel I should add my two cents.

As a few here have suggested, it is possible to make this work. I actually carry with me several different plugs that I can wire up as needed.. I even have a pigtail that I can connect directly to a breaker. But I never to anything before I put my meter on it and am sure that I understand how that receptacle or panel is wired. In my experience, outlets are often miswired and the consequences of connecting to the wrong voltage can be disastrous. Both in terms of equipment and life. Please fully understand what you are doing before you start making up adapters.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much my plan. We're in a park now, and I'll be metering the 50A connection here; basically what reads what across any 2 terminals. This tells me what I should see at my friend's.

When we get to my friend's place, I'll be metering the exact same connections on the adapter he made. If they're the same as the park, then I plug in my EMS, and see how it reacts, and measure again on its output.

If anything doesn't jibe, we don't connect, and it's back to the drawing board.

The point of my original question was to find out if anyone had done it successfully, and how they did it.
 
Chuck.N said:
That's pretty much my plan. We're in a park now, and I'll be metering the 50A connection here; basically what reads what across any 2 terminals. This tells me what I should see at my friend's.

When we get to my friend's place, I'll be metering the exact same connections on the adapter he made. If they're the same as the park, then I plug in my EMS, and see how it reacts, and measure again on its output.

If anything doesn't jibe, we don't connect, and it's back to the drawing board.

The point of my original question was to find out if anyone had done it successfully, and how they did it.
Click to expand...

Just as a suggestion here, when you get to your friends house, if there are only THREE terminals on his recept....don't even think about it. If there are FOUR terminals, it is possible, but it still behooves you to check voltages on the recept. before you even try to plug anything into it, to make 100% sure that it is wired correctly.

Hot terminal to neutral should equal ~120VAC
The same hot neutral to ground should equal ~120VAC
Second hot terminal to neutral should equal ~120VAC
Second hot terminal to neutral should equal ~120VAC
First hot terminal to second hot terminal should equal ~240VAC

ANYTHING OTHER than those numbers above will equal TROUBLE for you. And if you do not know exactly how to identify and check those terminals/voltage.....walk away until you are 100% sure.
 
xrated said:
Just as a suggestion here, when you get to your friends house, if there are only THREE terminals on his recept....don't even think about it. If there are FOUR terminals, it is possible, but it still behooves you to check voltages on the recept. before you even try to plug anything into it, to make 100% sure that it is wired correctly.

Hot terminal to neutral should equal ~120VAC
The same hot neutral to ground should equal ~120VAC
Second hot terminal to neutral should equal ~120VAC
Second hot terminal to neutral should equal ~120VAC
First hot terminal to second hot terminal should equal ~240VAC

ANYTHING OTHER than those numbers above will equal TROUBLE for you. And if you do not know exactly how to identify and check those terminals/voltage.....walk away until you are 100% sure.
Click to expand...

Neutral to ground should be ZERO volts. Am I missing something?
 
hughj555 said:
Neutral to ground should be ZERO volts. Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

No, you're not missing anything. Neutral and ground are at the same exact voltage potential.....ZERO. That is because the neutral and the ground are bonded together in the breaker panel. If the recept. only has three terminals at it, it will not have a neutral and the result will be the two hot terminals will have 240VAC across them.....and NO, it's not OK to use the ground as a neutral connection. Hope this helps.
 
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