Strange 50 amp panel

[Montana_657]

Tried to do some load balanceing before hitting the road.

In a normal household panel, installing a dual breaker give you 120 volts to ground and 220 volts between breakers. Not so in the Montana.

In the Montana panel, one half of the dual 50 amp input breaker supplies all the breakers below it, the other half supplies all the breakers above it.

So, one half the main breaker has air, washer dryer, hot water, vacum and the converter. The other side has lights, fridge, microwave and entertainment center.

Makes for sort of an unbalanced load, but it does enable you to separate essential circuits from the nice to have stuff when running on inverter.

[sreigle]

Gruffy, our dual main breaker says 30 amp on one and 20 on the other. So I don't think we actually have a true 50 amp main. Do yours both say 50 amp? Ours is the older panel. I think the newer ones are better. Keystone never answered my email about how to get the newer panel and/or wiring in ours.

[NJ Hillbilly]

Gruffy, they do it this way since our trailers do not have any 220v appliances. Some larger busses use 220v for hydronic heat and have panels that are similar to normal household ones. The panels that we have are probably cheaper and it is probably easier for the rocket scientist that does the electrical work to keep essential items on one side and the extra's like front a/c and w/d on the other 110v leg incase the power supply is not available, even though the adapters jump out both sides of the panel.

John

[Montana_657]

Both are 50 Steve. We have the Magnatek 7400 series. Turns out panel, converter, and DC fuse block are all produced by Magnatek (now Parallax) and sold as a unit. I guess it makes sense, they just buy the panel preassembled and stick it in the hole.

[Flastro]

On this subject of panels and breakers, the last two outings we took, the ac breaker tripped a coule times , ac would of course shut down, would notice it after the temp would rise during the day after many people in and out the door. Resetting it took a couple times to get it to stay reset. It would then do ok the rest of the weekend. No excessive loads added. actually nothing else was on. Im sure this has been discussed before on here. But, I have heard from other than MOC sources if the ac freon charge is too high, it can cause a higher than normal amp draw, anyone run into this before I go thru the hoops of checking amp draw and blowing off some of the freon charge?

[sreigle]

Gruffy, ours is a Magnatek 7300, must be the older version of yours. It has a Main with a 30amp and a 20amp but the labeling says Main under the 30 and AC under the 20. There's also a separate box under separate cover with the real "main". That is a double with a 30 and a 20. I understand the newer units have a better setup. We supposedly have 50amp service and have the heavy unwieldy 50amp service cord.