Scary (electrical) moment this morning

[jimandsue60]

We are in a 1000 trails park (we are members) water and electric, no sewer at this particular park. It had been raining all night while we slept. I woke up this morning, knowing I had to drain some gray water into our blue boy. I grabed the blue boy and drug it over to the left side of the coach and stopped dumbfouned.

I looked over at our electrical hookup and saw our Hughs Autoformer 50 amp voltage controller submerged into the water about half way up!! The middle amber light still glowing.

I asked my wife to put the inverter on standby and proceded carefully with rubber boots on into the 6 inch deep water and turned off the circut breaker, disconnected the autoformer and reconnected a 30 amp line into the electrical outlet without the wires sitting in the water.

It was pretty scary to see this, I am considering contacting hughs autoformer and asking their opinion on what I should do. I am pretty sure of what there response will be.

Jim

[jimandsue60]

We are in a 1000 trails park (we are members) water and electric, no sewer at this particular park. It had been raining all night while we slept. I woke up this morning, knowing I had to drain some gray water into our blue boy. I grabed the blue boy and drug it over to the left side of the coach and stopped dumbfouned.

I looked over at our electrical hookup and saw our Hughs Autoformer 50 amp voltage controller submerged into the water about half way up!! The middle amber light still glowing.

I asked my wife to put the inverter on standby and proceded carefully with rubber boots on into the 6 inch deep water and turned off the circut breaker, disconnected the autoformer and reconnected a 30 amp line into the electrical outlet without the wires sitting in the water.

It was pretty scary to see this, I am considering contacting hughs autoformer and asking their opinion on what I should do. I am pretty sure of what there response will be.

Jim

[Darryl]

Jim, that is pretty scary. Assuming the water was not salt, let it dry out for about a week. It may not have any problems. You might also give the Hughs folks a call (like you mentioned) and see what they say. I'll bet they want you to let it dry out good and nothing more.

DH

[jimandsue60]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Darryl:
Jim, that is pretty scary. Assuming the water was not salt, let it dry out for about a week. It may not have any problems. You might also give the Hughs folks a call (like you mentioned) and see what they say. I'll bet they want you to let it dry out good and nothing more.

DH </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

It was fresh rainwater and what ever else is in the run off here (maybe some wine). I will call them in the morning.

Thanks
Jim

[Duner]

Hi Jim!
I suggest taking the cover off and blowing out as much moisture as you can with an air compressor. There's going to be plenty of impurities in the water that will be deposited on all the surfaces. Ask the factory if there are any sensitive components that could be damaged by air pressure. You could use one of those cans of dry air they sell to blow off dust in computers. I would pull the plastic dust cover off the relays & blow them out, since they could trap the water (unless they are sealed relays, then no problem).

Glad to hear that nobody got hurt. Seems like you probably had a good ground connection to keep the coach from getting "hot" from any leakage.

By the way, I thought you'd be up in the high country by now with snow up to your armpits.

Good luck!
Duner

[John_Canfield]

Plain tap water is a very poor electrical conductor (fortunately for you!) I suspect the Hughes autoformer is a fairly 'dumb' device with no sensitive electronics - at least a plain old autoformer is. I think your biggest risk of problems would be from parts rusting or as Duner suggests from deposits.

A few years ago I had my cell phone in my shirt pocket and when I leaned over to pull my pump strainer basket (koi pond), the phone did a beautiful target acquisition of the fairly small opening and plop right into the water .

Took a hair dryer to it and stuck it the oven on a very low heat for a few hours. It actually worked after that, but it was never the same.

[jimandsue60]

I spoke to hughs autoformer this morning. Their tech guy said if it was still working probably no damage was done. He also said that the transformer went about 2/3rds of the way up and was potted and sealed. I am gonna let it sit for a few days and plug it in and see what happens.

Duner, it is rivited closed, If I drill the rivits, any warranty will be lost.

Jim