Pedestals, Amps, and the Hottest Saturday of the Year
If you have owned a park for a while, you have a sense for the electrical system the way you have a sense for an old truck. You know which loop trips when it hits a hundred degrees. You know the pedestal by the big oak that "just needs a jiggle." You have probably replaced more receptacles than you can count.
A buyer does not have that feel. A buyer has a licensed electrician, a clamp meter, and a lender asking whether the park can actually deliver the power it is selling. This page walks you through what they will look at, and how to get in front of it.
The good news: electrical problems are some of the most fixable glitches in a park. An old 30-amp loop is not a reason to walk away. It is a line item. The trick is making sure you write that line item, not the buyer.
Why Electrical Matters at Sale
Modern RVs are not the RVs your park was built for. Many big rigs want 50-amp service and run two air conditioners, a residential fridge, and sometimes a washer and dryer. Parks built around 30-amp service, older wire, and a utility service sized for lighter loads can struggle under that demand.
When that happens, a few things show up at once:
- Voltage sag at the far end of a loop on hot afternoons.
- Tripped breakers and cut-outs. Many RVers now plug in through surge protectors or energy management devices that shut off power on low voltage, reversed polarity, or a bad ground. Guests notice. So do online reviews.
- Heat damage: melted receptacles, scorched plastic, discolored breakers.
- Lost revenue when you turn away 50-amp rigs because you do not have enough 50-amp sites.
Buyers look at all of that as either immediate capital expense (fix it on day one), ongoing bleed (lost bookings, unrecovered power), or risk (unknowns that justify a lower offer). Lenders and insurers care too. A system with visible safety issues can create problems getting coverage or financing until it is addressed.
What Buyers and Lenders Will Scrutinize
Documents they will ask for
- Utility service details: size of the service (amps, voltage, phase), who owns the transformer, and 12 to 24 months of electric bills, ideally showing demand (kW), not just usage.
- A site-by-site pedestal inventory: 20, 30, or 50 amp at each site, rough age, and whether a meter is present.
- Electrical permits for past upgrades and any inspection records.
- Repair history: invoices for pedestal replacements, feeder work, breaker replacements.
- Known problems: which loops trip, which sites get complaints, any outages.
Tests they will run
- A pedestal walk by a licensed electrician looking at condition, corrosion, grounding and bonding, ground-fault protection where required, and signs of heat.
- Voltage under load, especially at the furthest sites on each branch, on a busy, hot day if they can.
- Thermal imaging to spot connections that run hot.
- A load calculation comparing your site mix to your service size, using the electrical code edition your local authority has adopted. This tells the buyer how many sites can go to 50-amp before a bigger service is needed.
Red flags that move price
- Melt marks, scorch marks, or loose, broken pedestal covers.
- Daisy-chained or improvised grounds, or DIY splices.
- Voltage that drops hard at the end of a loop under load.
- No permits for work that obviously needed one.
- A rent roll that claims "mostly 50-amp" without a site list to prove it.
- Unmetered sites with long-term guests and big summer bills you absorb. (See our page on utilities and sub-metering.)
What to Check, Fix, and Document
1. Map every site
Make a simple spreadsheet or hand sketch: site number, amp rating, which panel or branch feeds it, transient or monthly, metered or not. This one page answers half of what a buyer's electrician will ask. Owners are often surprised. "Mostly 50" turns out to be "about half."
2. Pull your bills and look at summer vs. winter
Line up twelve months of electric bills. If summer runs far higher than winter and you are not recovering it from guests, that is both a capacity story and a money story. Keep the bills in one folder.
3. Run a Saturday-night load test
On a hot, full weekend, have a qualified person measure voltage at the nearest and furthest pedestals on each loop while rigs are running. Note the date, temperature, and which sites were occupied. Our field rule of thumb is to keep the furthest pedestal from sagging much below about 108 volts under load. Your electrician sets the real standard for your system. Photograph the meter readings.
4. Photograph pedestals like evidence
Take clear photos of problem pedestals and a sample of good ones: labels, breaker ratings, melt marks, corrosion, standing water. Do not open live equipment unless you are qualified to. These photos become your repair bid package instead of the buyer's discount package.
5. Hire a licensed electrician, and phase the work
Do not drive extra ground rods or improvise fixes because a forum said to. Improper grounding can create real hazards and makes inspectors distrust the whole system. Get a licensed electrician to diagnose the worst branches and give you a written, phased plan. You rarely need a full-park rewire on day one. Fixing the worst loop first, with permits, often changes the conversation.
6. Price the 30A-to-50A question honestly
If you are losing 50-amp bookings, ask your electrician two questions: How many sites can we upgrade on our current service? And what does it cost to go beyond that? The answer may be "more than you think on the current service" or "you need a utility upgrade first." Either way, a written answer is worth far more at sale than a guess.
Get-Ready-for-Sale Checklist
- Site-by-site map: amp rating, branch, metered or not, transient or monthly
- 12 to 24 months of electric bills, with demand charges if shown
- Utility service size and transformer ownership confirmed
- Saturday-night voltage readings at near and far pedestals, with photos
- Pedestal photo set: problems and a healthy sample
- Licensed electrician's written assessment and phased bid
- Permits pulled for any work you do before sale
- Count of 50-amp rigs turned away in the last season
- Repair invoices and past permits in one folder
- Known-issues list in your own words
Common Mistakes
- Skipping the load test. The buyer's electrician will run one. Failing it under their clock costs more than failing it under yours.
- Ignoring melt marks. Heat evidence is the first thing a careful inspector photographs.
- DIY grounding. It creates hazards and erases trust in the whole system.
- Overstating your 50-amp count. A buyer will count the pedestals.
- Painting pedestals before fixing them. Fresh paint over a scorched receptacle reads as hiding, not caring.
- Assuming a full rewire is the only answer. Often a phased plan on the worst branches is enough to make the park financeable.
An Example
Illustrative example. Composite of situations we see; details and numbers changed.
An owner of a 60-some-site park believed most of his sites were 50-amp. He had been losing big-rig bookings every summer and fighting tripped breakers on one loop for years.
Before talking to buyers, he made a site map and found that roughly a third of his sites were still 30-amp, almost all on the same older branch. A Saturday-night test showed the far end of that branch sagging well below the rest of the park. A licensed electrician confirmed undersized wire on that loop and quoted a phased plan: rebuild that one branch first, then convert additional sites to 50-amp in a second phase once the service capacity was confirmed with the utility.
He did phase one before going to market and kept the second-phase bid in his folder. When a buyer's electrician walked the park, the story matched the paperwork. The second phase became a known capital item in the buyer's plan, not a surprise discount.
Want a Straight Read on Your Pedestals?
Request a free Glitch Audit. Email wayyago@gmail.com with pedestal photos, your amp ratings, whether sites are metered, summer and winter electric bills, and how many 50-amp rigs you turned away last season. Add your last twelve months and rent roll if you have them.
We will tell you whether you are looking at a sub-meter job, a phased repair, or a bigger upgrade, and how a buyer will see it. No Zoom pitch. You pay us nothing. Our 1.9% Transparency Premium is buyer-funded at closing; sellers pay 0% in brokerage fees.
Request a free Glitch AuditThis page is general education, not electrical engineering or code advice. A licensed electrician and your local authority having jurisdiction make all code and safety calls.