I have an old trailer that I decided to rent out. For some reson the electricla on the west wall seems to be intermitantly cutting out, about a month between. Haven't had any luck chasing it down.

The elec, flickers when the fridge is running and the rentor is trying to watch tv/movie, can you help with this delema?

There is a short somewhere in the home. You need to have a professional track this down as the situation could prove to be dangerous. Older mobile homes are wired differently than the newer models. The older ones have wiring problems. You may have to rewire a section of the home. This is a serious matter as it could result in a fire inside one of the walls and the entire home going up in flames. It does not take long for a trailer to be engulfed totally in flames. This should be addressed as soon as possible since the fridge and watch TV do not draw a whole heck of a lot of juice combined together.

Short is the wromg word. Short generally implies fuses or breakers popping.

More so, it's likely an intermittant connection. It can be anywhere including where the overhead wire meets the masthead.

Sometimes easy to track down. Sometimes not.

The initial recommendation is to determine if it is a single circuit ot a group of circuits. This will provide valuable information and reduce the time to find the problem, so it's in your best interest to do so.

Many Older Trailers used Aluminum wiring, and were also backstabbed(stuck in hole, not tight around screw), If you own this, I would do or have done is Install new(decora style?), then instead of 2 wires in and 2 wires out of receptacle, twist together and add a pigtail for new receptacle.
You DON'T have to change recepticles if they have screws, The price of recepticles is cheap compared to the Labor and Time, they add value.
Under panel cover will tell type of wire used.

Many old trailers used "boxless" devices. The wires got squeezed in between the halves of the switches and receptacles and they were pinched by grooves in the metal guts. Similar to those Amp splices from that other recent thread.

They were NOTORIOUS for failing!

I hope I scare you when I say old trailers are death traps as far as wiring goes!
PLEASE have it checked out by a professional.

Speaking of Death Traps, I was almost killed working on a mobile home site:rolleyes:

Washington1- I think I will take a bet that the circuit you were working on, you thought the breaker or fuse had killed that circuit I had this happen to me a long long time ago, I thought I had the juice cut off and I was in a big hury and didn't take time to make sure, But That was the last time. My hair stood stright up :: Be safe and carfull :: Old house trailors are very dangers because like Stratmando said ,you don't know how many circuits are tied in togreather, Have a good and safe day & GOD BLESS :: F.B.E.

PS - Youal gave some very good information,::

I was replacing the main services for each unit on the site...

While removing a grounding clamp and EGC from a ground rod, I was hit hard by current traveling on the EGC!! Lets just say I got lucky, and so did the people living there for so many years!:rolleyes:

I bought a house tralor. The guy cut the aluminun wires and put about 2 feet of copper wire to the box.Should I drop the box and put the aluminum back the way it was.Or should I re wire the hole thing.Thanks Leroy

Copper wiring is the Safe way.

The issue is splicing copper wire to aluminum.

Any mechanical connector must be rated CU-AL. Split bolts, for example, will always have a wedge in between the conductors.

Aluminum is safe too.
I would be worried if he incorrectly spliced the AL to the CU. That would be unsafe.

Leroy, can you give us a little more detail about what exactly he did?


**Edit - Sorry TK. I didn't notice you post on page 2.

I have an old house trailer which had the same problem, half the trailer's power went out intermittently. I had a professional trouble-shoot the problem with a volt meter and he found one of the power lines from the meter to the trailer had less than 110 volts on it. Before it was fixed the power went out completely on half of the trailer.

So what did he do then??

Checking things with just a volt meter is not telling us much. Nor the fact that he got less than 110v.

I'm not sure what to tell you since you had someone there. Could be a problem with just one circuit and it just seems like it's half the trailer. Could be a problem with the service.

My suggestion is if the first guy couldn't fix this get someone else who can. It is highly unlikely this is something you can troubleshoot and fix.