Wednesday, January 31, 2018

RV Dog Bones and Adapters

Many times as you travel around the country you will find that you are in need of some sort of thingy that changes what you have into something you need.  This happens most often on the electrical side of your Rig.  If you have a 50 amp rig you may find that the campground you have only has 30 amp plug-ins.  Or you may want to plug in your power pedestal power analyzer into the 30 amp or 50 amp plug-in to be sure that it is safe you plug into your rig.




Let's see what these things look like and what they are used for.  First the RV Dog Bone.
The typical RV Dog Bone is an electrical adapter that changes a 50 amp RV plug so that it can plug into the 30 amp socket of a power pedestal. The 30 Amp Male to 50 Amp Female Dog Bone  looks like this;

30 Amp Male to 50 Amp Female Dog Bone  
Of course, there may be a time when you need to plug your 30 amp Rig power cable into a 50 amp power pedestal socket  The 50 amp Male to 30 amp Female Dog Bone looks like this;

 50 amp Male to 30 amp Female Dog Bone 
Plugging in you 30 amp RV into this adapter will not harm your Rig and will give you no more power than what you should have. The reason to do this is often the power socket on the power pedestal is worn or broken and the only good one is the one your power cord will not plug into.  These RV Power Dog Bones let you mix and match to get some power.
So you have stopped by Grandma's house to spend a few days and you need a way to plug your RV into her outside power socket so you can get some lights and keep the fridge going.  What do you need well you need a 15 Amp Male plug to 30 amp Female plug . This little gadget is shown below.


                                                15 Amp Male plug to 30 amp Female plug











While these may not be all the ones you will ever need this group will get you started and cover most of the situations that you will find.  One last bit of information the industry does make Y connector so that you can get 15 amp sockets from both 50 amp and 30 amp outlets from the power pedestal.  I have shown one type below.  I do not use these myself because where I camp has always had 15 amp sockets to plug into if I need to have 15 amps at the power pedestal.  If you have a blow-up boat or kayak you might need this type of Y Adapter with 50 Amp Male Plug To RV 30 Amp and 15/20 Amp Female Connector  Shown below is what it looks like;

Y Adapter with 50 Amp Male Plug To RV 30 Amp and 15/20 Amp Female Connector

I would like to cover the pedestal power combiner.  These devices combine the power outlets of the power pedestal to give you more amps.  For example, if you combine the power output of the 30 amp socket with the power output of the 15 amp socket on the power pedestal you would get 45 amps of power to work with.  Or at least that is the theory.  Again I do not use this type of device as my Open Range 5th Wheel is 50 amps.  But to be fair I am showing you the device. The 45 amp Power Maximizer  The unit is shown below;

The 45 amp Power Maximizer  
Here is a power dog bone that I use all the time.  It is a 50 Amp right angle power adapter that takes the stress off of the power plug mounted to the trailer




Here is the 30 Amp version as well.





Click on the name of the item to learn more. 


Until next time,







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