Motorhome Grounding

[Solarfun4jim]

Up till now, i had thought that my motorhome earthing/grounding setup was safest, but an electrician friend insists i need a ground rod, hammered into the dirt every time i park up my motorhome.
I have a very rough drawing of my setup, showing primarily, the green earthing paths. Could someone qualified please take a look at the setup and make recommendations or ask me questions as necessary.
Thought i was good up till this point, but now i'm worried.

Thanks for any help offered.

 

[tom baker]

Your electrician friend is wrong, you are good, not to worry. Am I qualified, sure, master electrician and instructed over 500 electrical classes, many on grounding.
Your drawing is OK but I am not sure what some of the equipment is. Do you have a shore power cord and where does it connect?
Grounding and bonding is confusing to most electricians, most seem to attribute some magical property to a ground rod. I have RVs for 25 years, camping 199 nights in my last RV, and not once, ever have I seen a ground rod at motor home. My new Class B has onboard generator, its a Cummins, and their excellent instructions don't reference a ground rod.
Since you are not asking for help or DIY info, I'll leave this post open, but you need to ask your electrician friend why he "insists" you need a ground rod. Ask him, is it for grounding or bonding? Is it to open the shore power circuit breaker if there is a short circuit to to RV chassis?
And before you drive a ground rod, you would need to call locates and wait two days....otherwise you would have to go to the RV park owner and explain why you drove a ground rod through his water line.

 

[ptonsparky]

No one I know drives a rod each time they park their motor home. Ever even. It would take several days just to get permission to drive one, or two.

 

[Solarfun4jim]

Your electrician friend is wrong, you are good, not to worry. Am I qualified, sure, master electrician and instructed over 500 electrical classes, many on grounding.
Your drawing is OK but I am not sure what some of the equipment is. Do you have a shore power cord and where does it connect?
Grounding and bonding is confusing to most electricians, most seem to attribute some magical property to a ground rod. I have RVs for 25 years, camping 199 nights in my last RV, and not once, ever have I seen a ground rod at motor home. My new Class B has onboard generator, its a Cummins, and their excellent instructions don't reference a ground rod.
Since you are not asking for help or DIY info, I'll leave this post open, but you need to ask your electrician friend why he "insists" you need a ground rod. Ask him, is it for grounding or bonding? Is it to open the shore power circuit breaker if there is a short circuit to to RV chassis?
Plus then you drive a ground rod, you would need to call locates and wait two days....otherwise you would have to go to the RV park owner and explain why you drove a ground rod through his water line. View attachment 2556898

Thanks for the reply. The equipment used is victron gear. A 24/3000/70-16 multiplus inverter. It does have a seperate connection to shore power/campsite(not shown on drawing), but it's internal relays handle whether the earthing is done through that connection, or else through the vehicle bonding when not connected to the campsite etc. The other item is a solar charge controller, which simply regulated the PV panel power going into the 24v battery pack.
Appreciate any help offered. Thanks.

 

[Solarfun4jim]

No one I know drives a rod each time they park their motor home. Ever even. It would take several days just to get permission to drive one, or two.

Yes, thats what i told him and he agreed...he did qualify his statement, that he has never worked on a mobile installation, only commercial premises etc. He said he would need to check into it further.
Ive had several discussions with him, but he always comes back to the RCD needing a leak to 'dirt' earth to fault trip.

 

[tom baker]

Ahh you are in Scotland. Our grounding/bonding is a bit different from yours in that we use a device that fault trips between 4-6 mA. It looks for current flow from a hot to chassis short and back to the shore power via the green wire and that device trips and does not depend on dirt earth.
Do you see any other RV users driving ground rods in your area. I am not sure what an RCD is or does.
By the way my new RV has solar panels and I am looking at getting some Victron equipment, its very nice and affordable

 

[tom baker]

There was a post recently from an RV owner that wanted to ground his RV by getting a large sheet of copper plate and parking on it.

 

[Solarfun4jim]

Ahh you are in Scotland. Our grounding/bonding is a bit different from yours in that we use a device that fault trips between 4-6 mA. It looks for current flow from a hot to chassis short and back to the shore power via the green wire and that device trips and does not depend on dirt earth.
Do you see any other RV users driving ground rods in your area. I am not sure what an RCD is or does.
By the way my new RV has solar panels and I am looking at getting some Victron equipment, its very nice and affordable

He agreed he had never seen anyone drive rods into the ground on campsites etc. An RCD is a Residual Current Device (30mA) = GFID

 

[GoldDigger]

The US GFCI is a 6ma threshold leakage current detector, which like your RCDs looks for a difference between the current on the two wires supplying the equipment.
It happens in both cases that there will not be any residual (missing) current unless there is an alternate current path, such As to earth or your PE (protective earth) conductor.
But if there is no alternate current path there will also generally be no hazard.

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