Running Romex 14/3 with red wire as 12+

[Darwin Maring]

If you run AC wiring and DC wiring as you stated in your first post, you will introduce AC to your DC wire because they are up shielded and running parrellel together.

[Timber Wolf]

It is an interesting, but unwise, idea. I ran new 120v circuits in my old Scamp with 12-2 w/ground solid wire because that is what I had, and I felt good about using it. I bought 12-2 stranded (fancy speaker wire) for new 12V circuits. When I added more new LED lights on the existing lighting circuits (after replacing the existing lights with LED) I used stranded 16-2 wire (supposed to be speaker wire, looks a lot like good old Lamp cord). I also have all circuits/wires, be they 12 or 120V, protected with appropriate fuses or breakers. It ain't rocket surgery, be safe out there.

[Johnny M]

I don't have one handy or I would do it myself but someone should post an image of a schematic diagram of a typical 13' egg... When beginning our restoration I remember there was a copper ground wire secured to the frame coming from the 12vdc side of the converter but I believe the 120vac was grounded through the ground on the shore power cord as mentioned above... Also fwiw, as a firefighter I saw the results of what electricity can do to both material things as well as the human variety, it is not worth it

[Ironhinge]

Thanks to everyone who had constructive criticism and input. just wanted to add a few things, The progressive dynamics charge controller that came in my Trillium came with the 110v grounded to the trailer frame. The 110v is a heavily jacketed solid wire romex style cable with a reduced size ground wire (David might let me/us know if this is factory)

[redbarron55]

When I ran my 12 volt wiring I had a good bit of three conductor shielded cable. I used this for the ground shield drain wire and the ground and tow conductors for + 12 VDC.
So although the DC and AC might be run close together the 12 volt wiring is shielded.
Also the amount of hum pickup is determined by the impedance of the circuit and the 12 volt circuits are pretty low impedance what with the battery and capacitors to ground.
By the way I didn't decide to use the shielded wire for electrical noise, but rather $$$ since I already had it in the scrap bin.

[redbarron55]

As an aside there are a couple of items of confusion.
Ground and grounding.
Neutral
and
Bonding.

Neutral is where the ground and the neutral come together at the entrance. Neutral and ground are not connected anywhere else.
Bonding is where the conductive cabinets and boxes ate bonded together to prevent electrical shocks if there is a fault inside the box connecting the hot to the chassis of the equipment.
The three wires in 12-3 are hot, neutral and ground.
Now that I have confused everyone...........

[Ironhinge]

Those are definitely some of the things people seem to be confused about. I read a bit about this before I posted and there are almost as many opinions as questions

[Darwin Maring]

Red, Depends on where you live. In Household wiring neutral and ground are not bonded together based on local codes.

[Ironhinge]

So the idea came about because I was looking at plastic snap closed conduit. I liked the idea of keeping all the wires very neat. It was this "Huh" moment when I realized I could use pre-jacketed multi strand wire rather than buy individual spools of stranded in different colours. Should I take the responses so far to include any sort of conduit system that includes both voltages?

[Bob Miller]

There aren't a whole lot of places in an RV where multi-strand wire will be of much help and, as you will find out, it can get very expensive.


In RV wiring your best friends are quality connectors, a pressure crimper (Not the pliers kind) and a large bag of plastic wire-ties and matching wall fasteners for same.


Conduit systems and such just aren't needed in these small RV's.