Hot neutral

Or was it a short nuetral? At any rate it was a burnt neutral. Jamie and I spent the entire day chasing down what turned out to be a neutral problem with the 110 (AC) side of the trailer. We spent yesterday afternoon at Yal-Ku, a local lagoon with an amazing array of tropical fish. The kind you see in the fancy fish tanks but MUCH larger and absolutely EVERYWHERE. We stayed to see many come back into the lagoon from the sea and feed and feed and were able to snorkel through massive schools of blue, purple, bright blue with black, yellow, pink, blue, green; you name a color, we saw it on a fish. When we got home we noticed that the power was out. This is pretty normal in Mexico, so we thought nothing of it, but soon found it had nothing to do with the Mexican power. We had to wait for morning, however, as it was dark and late. As I’m generally cold at night with the A/C on (I’ve noticed that I start bundling up when the thermometer goes below 80; truly, with long pants and a sweatshirt – Jamie thinks I’m insane) that it was actually quite nice not to have power last night. We started working first thing this morning – WITHOUT even getting coffee started, well, Jamie did; I sent the boys off to boil my water while I found an electrician. Jamie soon brightened up and inhaled a cup of stovetop espresso.
We could get the 12volt side to work, but chased our tails on the AC side. I had recently removed all the food items and dishes from the cupboards to scour them clean after finding a COCKROACH in the trailer !!!! so it was easier to trace some wires. Unfortunately, we had to remove two complete wood panels, the main breaker panel (from the wall) and tore Jesse’s bed down twice getting to the junction box under his bed. I wonder if it might have been easier if he kept his room clean…

At any rate, the trailer was a DISASTER. Chasing and chasing what the local electrician advised us must be a broken wire between the breaker panel and one outlet that the converter (which only deals with the DC, 12volt side of the house) sent me scurrying to RV.NET where I was given amazing advice and the direction which allowed us to find the bad neutral. I was astounded that people dedicated their Sunday afternoon to helping us find our problem and honestly, even though we had NO IDEA what we were doing, we not only found it, but FIXED it.

So, while we didn’t get our walking exercise today, we are absolutely ROACHED after a LONG day of AC troubleshooting. The kids outdid themselves today; fed and entertained themselves until all was fixed. We are so very proud of them.