Shocking!

Well on any given day there are a number of problems that pop up in a park of about two hundred sites, and we only have three empty sites that we pick up an occasional transient camper on their way through the area. So today I had a site that the 30 amp plug had had a wee bit of a melt down so not a difficult job…famous last words.

It is Saturday and the park is not real busy this weekend, last week end we were packed to capacity because of our Canada Day weekend but this weekend not so much.

So today started with opening of the pool, not difficult but it starts my day at 8:30 to uncover, adjust chemicals, and empty the skimmer baskets so all done by 8:55 and back to the coach for coffee and a little breakfast and enjoy a little down time. Because it is the weekend we try not to start any noisy tasks before 10 in the morning. So shortly after ten I fired up the weed wacker to clean up the ditch area at the park entrance a noisy, dusty little job but needed to be done and because of it being a short work week it ended up on Saturdays to list…so about 11:30 back to test the pool chemicals again.

Next task helping with the transfer of ownership of a trailer and site to a new owner, this is a very neat process where the old owner, walks the new owner through the trailer to explain how everything works and that indeed everything is operational. In most cases this all happens without any involvement of the park, but today the new owner is also new to trailers so asked for me to be there in case she needed assistance after the sale was closed, so I spent an hour and a half just being there to be able to help if necessary, all in the name of customer relations, pretty easy work it’s just after 1 o’clock a quick check of the pool and head to the coach for some lunch.

After lunch and off to change that 30 amp plug, thinking it will be about twenty minutes, kill the circuit a few screws and all is good…wrong the circuit is in a breaker box with three other breakers. The one labeled site 213 shut the breaker off and start to work. The 30 amp plug has a spring loaded cover with two screws to hold it to the actual plug and four screws holding it to the plastic box and of course three connector screws for the wires coming into the box so for you that were keeping track that was only nine screws beginning to end.

Well the first two are no problem and the annoying spring mounted cover is off exposing the four that attach the plug to the box top two come out easy the bottom two not so much, both turn the threads out of the box, oh well I can make this work just a couple of bigger screws right into the plastic box. Undo the ground clamp with a little difficulty but the power and neutral are seized in place. I will overcome, I grab a pair of pliers to tear the plastic cover off the back of the plug to give me access to the the screw head so I can clamp a pair of vies-grips on it to undo the screw. This is the come to prayer moment that I realized that there was still power on the plug, to say it was shocking is speaking literally, off to the breaker box to kill some more circuits…all four to be exact.

It’s not all bad, not only was I able to finish the install of the new plug, I was also able to rearrange the breaker box, the park has a power issue, this issue is not of the parks creation but because we are on the end of a power line so we have a voltage issue on hot days in the summer and the lines coming off the power grid are unable to maintain voltage, so as voltage goes down amperage or load goes up causing the breakers to pop. We can do nothing about the power coming in but we can separate the breakers to allow more cooling and hopefully prevent as many breakers popping.

So that was how I finished off the afternoon with a couple more pool checks and now I’m barbecuing some chops for dinner as Amy has covered the store this afternoon for Miss Laurie so we are able to have dinner and sit for a while before closing the pool, doing final washroom checks and me doing security checks till sometime after 11 when quiet time is in effect, not suspecting any issues tonight as the park is reasonably quiet but time will tell for sure.