2016 4200 Cyclone 3 AC question

Have a 2016 Cyclone 4200 HD addition. 3 AC’s. While we are new to RV’ing I video taped the walkthrough and have reviewed it to be sure I did not misunderstand my 3 AC setup. There is a switch just below the main panel, in the up position the technician explains that the Garage AC and the bedroom AC are active and working. In the down position, the garage and beedroon AC are active. This means that the garage AC is always one of the two working AC’s when hooked up to a 50 amp power.

In Arizona, it is still very hot, up to 108 yesterday, under what logic does it makes sense that when my garage is open I am forced to try to cool off the state of Arizona? What happens when I am connected to 30amp power? Does this mean the garage AC is the only one working? I will say that the garage AC seems to be the better cooling of the three AC units, but still there must be a way to run my AC's without trying to cool off the very hot state of Arizona

There is a switch just below the main panel, in the up position the technician explains that the Garage AC and the bedroom AC are active and working. In the down position, the garage and beedroon AC are active.

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I'm sure you meant that in one of these positions the living room A/C is active.

The purpose of the switch is to ensure that only 2 of the 3 A/C units receive power at the same time. The power limitation is related to generator power, which is not enough to run all 3 A/C units. Similarly, when you're connected to 30 amp service, there's not enough power to run more than 1 unit at a time.

If you want to run a particular A/C unit, it has to have power (from the switch setting), and the thermostat has to be set to COOL with the set point at an appropriate temp.

If you want to run the Living Room A/C unit only, set the switch appropriately to provide power to that unit. Then go to the individual thermostats and set them so that the living room cools and the garage does not.

Why did they get wired that way? Some people prefer to have A/C units cooling the bedroom and the garage bunk area at night, and may not use the bedroom during the day.

Some owners have added a circuit breaker and wired around the switch so that all 3 units have power available all the time. Then you just have to make sure you don't draw more power than is available or you'll trip breakers in the coach or on the pedestal.

Is there a "Factory Standard" wiring for these AC's. From what I can gather by reading it is the living room AC that is the one that is supposed to be always on with the power switch up or down. So it should be Living & garage, or Living & bedroom. That makes more sense to me. If there is a factory standard and the dealer changed it, I can ask them to change it back and get them to not charge me for it. But if they can order it wired that way, they can probably charge me to change it. If I have to pay an electrician to wire around it I will.

IN any case we are taking it out again for the upcoming long weekend so will try to run the front two in case the technician did not know what he was talking about.

I think when Heartland first started with the switch, they had it wired one way but many owners were critical. So now they're wiring it in response to those complaints. Guess what? There are some who want it the other way. There's no one answer that satisfies every owner because the trailers are not all used the same way.

Did your dealer change the wiring? Probably not. Is it expensive to get an electrician to change it? I'd guess no more than an hour's labor. But if you're paying an electrician, you might spend a little more to get the extra circuit breaker so that all 3 units have power available all the time. Just have the electrician make sure that the loads are balanced on Leg 1 and Leg 2 of the circuit breaker panel. For example, you wouldn't want 2 A/C units, your microwave outlet, and the coffee pot outlet all on a single 50 amp leg.

Thanks for the great explanation, and load balancing advice. I understand trying to do what customers want. At the same time I disagree with the logic of Heartland on this, I know only a very few people who AC their garage in a brick home. I bought this thing specifically so I can carry our two Harley's. They have never complained about being too hot, or cold!. I guess I'm up for an electrician bill. I suppose I should look for an experience RV electrician too.

Not sure if Heartland monitors this forum, but here is one voice for not AC'ing the garage full time!

A lot of folks use the garage for a second bedroom after the toys are unloaded, therefore AC needed. Mine has a 3 position switch; Bed-Garage, Bed Only, and Bed-Main. It's just a matter of moving 3 wires around to configure it however you want or tie all 3 together and manage it yourself.

I too find the Heartland A/C wiring a bit silly, however just bypass the 3 way switch. All you do is connect all 3 black wires together and then all 3 white wires together. This takes the switch completely out of the equation. Now this still only allows you to run 2 A/C's at once but atleast allows you to choose. For all 3 A/C's to run you must have an electrician add another breaker and load balance.

I'm having the same complaint in Texas on a new unit (4150 HD). Garage AC is main, option of either living room or bedroom secondary. I bought a toy hauler, not a bunkhouse and don't need garage cooled with an unusable living area until late at night (10 pm) when ambient temps drop enough I can enter coach. My problem is compounded by the fact that in this toy hauler, I use the garage as a gym and have a squat rack installed. I can lower the bunks about a foot from ceiling before contacting squat rack, but theres a switch somewhere not allowing garage ac to turn on unless bunks are lowered further (which I can't do more than 1 foot with rack installed). One AC on a 80k trailer in 100+ degree temps has got me furious.

I took the suggestion of others in this thread, and every one I could find in search function to bypass light switch that selects which ac I can run and turn them on manually. While I'm not happy about rewiring factory switch I have to have a trailer I can use more than 6 hours a day and tried it. Problem is , living room AC won't run for more than a minute with bedroom AC before it trips breaker. I've shut off every light, unplugged micro, turned off water heater, and unplugged every 110 item I can get to, no change. Any suggestions to get this thing usuable?

On the 2016 it appears that the living room A/C and bedroom A/C are on the same breaker. Mine does the same thing. We will need to add a separate 20 amp breaker so each A/C will have its own. Then we should be able to run all 3 at the same time as long as we are on shore power.

Some with 2015 models are able to run all 3 A/C's by just bypassing switch (atleast thats what I have gathered from reading).

I'm going to pick mine up tomorrow and I'll take my panel off and detail the change. It's a very simple process to load balance and add the third breaker. Very simple! Pictures will help.

I'll post everything tomorrow night if possible.

Mine was wired to run living room always and switch between bedroom and garage. Since the kids sleep back there I took the time to wire the switch out of the equation.

It was incredible simple to do by adding a new circuit breaker and running a few feet of wire to the switch. I put off doing it for about a year because I was intimidated by it. I did some other wiring in the same area and regret waiting so long. It only took a few minutes.

You can see the new wire sticking out above the breaker box in the first photo. The second photo shows the connections after the switch is out. The existing feed wire entered the box on the lower left. The wires running to each ac left through the top of the box. I fed the new wire into the bottom of the box and made the connections. It should be a straight shot into your basement from the breaker box to the switch box.


I would recommend not connecting the wires at the switch since the two acs would be running off the same breaker.


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Alex beat me to the pictures. I'll just add a bit about the load balance. The main 50 amp breaker(bridged) has two breakers. You can't flip one or the other, but it represents the two legs or poles. I call them leg A and B. These dual pole breakers represent 1 leg and then alternate between A and B. So the top dual breakers is leg A and the next one is leg B. A, B, A, B, A... All the way to the bottom.
Why it can't keep the pictures straight us beyond me. 1st pictures is the two pole 50 amp breaker.top is A and bottom is B.
This second picture represents Leg A on the 50 amp and the 1st dual pole breaker which is also leg A. Then every other dual pole breaker is also on Leg A.
So these two must be...... Yep, leg B


so the goal was to separate the high amp users like the three AC's, fireplace, water heater, fridge , microwave and the YETI pack. So I used Leg A for the toy hauler AC, the living room AC, the fireplace and the microwave and the YETI Pack. The thought behind the fireplace, two AC's and the YETI pack was common sense as I'm not sure I'll ever run the AC's and the fireplace or YETI at the same time. The other thought was at night, I may want to have the fireplace on, but run the bedroom AC for the noise and a cold bedroom. The lights are a non issue being LED.

Moving the amps to a specific leg is a simple black wire move. Simply remove the black wire from the breaker and move the service to the required Leg by counting odd or even legs. With almost everything on, I was pulling 26amps on leg A and 21 amps on leg B.

Takes a little time, but sure is comfortable on a 100 degree day.

So far, I've had zero issues with the pole or the trailer on tripped breakers.

I have the same issue I will tell you there are no schematics for the electrical and talking with heartland I got brushed off with the engineer stating that is the way we decided to wore it and it's not a simple fix to change it, i was in Virgina last week at 84 degrees and the one unit would not cool the living area, I plan to live in this unit eventually in Florida may have to go with a competitors fifthwheel to live in it. It's hard to believe that there isn't a fix for this makes me wish that I didn't get the 3rd ac.

?? I hear you're frustrated, but there is a fix and it's listed below. An Electrician can have this done in 30 Minutes to an hour. Switching RV's will cost you Thousands and the fix below is a $100 job. If you need help, IM me and I'll gladly help you.

Hang in there!

Do you have solution to changing which 2 run at the same time we leave the garage open so I really don't care about it but it is or seems to be the main one. I can run the bedroom and garage or the living and the garage but not the bedroom and the living what can I do to have this changed, I understand that all 3 are fed from 2 brakers and thats why you can't run the two that are piggy backed,

Thanks you've already done more than I got from heartland very frustrated. I noticed that one of the responses was to tie all 3 white wires and all 3 black wires together to by pass the switch will this make 220 volt since your tying both 110v legs together?

I think the best solution is to have an electrician add a third circuit breaker and run wire to the switch location. Then each A/C load can be run off a separate circuit breaker (eliminating the selector switch from the circuit). If you also have the electrician balance the loads in the circuit breaker panel, you may even be able to run all 3 at the same time when on 50 amp shore power (but not on generator).

Bart-
As usual, excellent pictures and explanation. Thanks to you and Alex for taking the time.
Thanks,
Jay

campr-pete said:

Thanks you've already done more than I got from heartland very frustrated. I noticed that one of the responses was to tie all 3 white wires and all 3 black wires together to by pass the switch will this make 220 volt since your tying both 110v legs together?

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Yes and no. You are bypassing the switch, but not making 220 volts. Let's talk about the switch for a second. Inside this switch you have three 12/2 gauge wires. 1 is located and pulled through the bottom of the switch housing. This wire is connected to a breaker in your breaker box. The other two wires in the switch box are located and pulled through the top of the switch housing. These two 12/2 wires are direct connect to the AC units. The switch is hard wired to the breaker and allows you to pick which single unit you want to run.. I said single, because the 3rd AC, not mentioned has nothing to do with this switch. Only two AC' and one breaker have anything to do with the switch on the wall.

So the fix. You can't change the home runs, but you can add about two feet of 12/2 wire from the switch housing through the UDC and pull it to a new breaker. By doing this, you are now using a single breaker for each of three AC's which is really the correct way to do this. I don't have before and after, but my switch now looks like this. Sideways pictures again.. Sorry!!

if you look closely, you will see 4 - 12/2 wires. The two on the bottom go to the breakers and the two on the top go to the home run AC's. ( The grey wire nut is the 4 grounds wires connected, but needed to extend one that was cut too short).

Replace the wall plate and throw the switch in your goodies bag for a later date

No laughing, I couldn't find a black plate and I dang sure didn't cut the box in crooked. ( mine was built on Friday at 5: pm as well) .


This process.. Took about 1 hour from when I unlocked the door.

And actually, You CAN change the home runs, but it's pointless since it requires as much work pulling cables out of the breaker box and rerouting to the switch. Pretty sure it would be more painful trying to change the "Always on" AC.

I have read multiple owners asking for the dealer to rewire the box, and they did. Maybe worth a call to the dealer if this is the route you want to take.