Thanks. I'm sure the answer is somewhere, but I can't find it.

Craig

Connecting a 30 amp TT to a 50 amp service is possible with an adapter, but it comes with some caveats. It would be best to have an adapter with a single pole 30 amp breaker built in, but you would have to spend some money to make that happen.

i would suggest a protection device for voltage fluctuation to protect the Pod electronics as well. for instance:

The real concern is that you are connecting a 50A service to an electrical system designed for only 30A. That creates a fire risk and is an NEC code violation. The connector on your trailer says not to do it. Lots of people do it anyway, up to each individual to assess this risk and decide for themselves. 

BTW, current electrical code requires pedestals with 50A service to also have 30A  and 15A service, but until the campgrounds update their electrical systems you won't necessarily find this. 

Craig

The 50A EMS won't protect you from excess current flowing into your trailer's 30A power cord, connector and internal conductors in the event of a 50A fault in that circuit, because the EMS is going to think that 50A is a normal current. Might go 20 years like that and never have a problem, but the risk is there the whole time. 

In looking further just now I wasn't able to find any that provide overcurrent protection, meaning that none appear to both monitor the current flow through the device AND disconnect if that exceeds the rating. Too bad because it seems like it would be an easy feature to add at least in models that are already monitoring current. 

The 30A circuit breaker is going to protect the camper itself. What is *theoretically* in danger is the umbilical cord itself, but again, I can't find any reports of an actual, undamaged, proper RV power cord failing.

Power isn't "pushed" through wiring, it is pulled. So unless a bad or dead short happens somewhere between the post and the campers power distribution box, no issues. And if it does, as soon as it pulls more than 50A, which it will, the breaker at the post will trip.

But again, I can find no reports of either happening. At least that have been covered by a RVIA report.

Originally posted by furpod Power isn't "pushed" through wiring, it is pulled. So unless a bad or dead short happens somewhere between the post and the campers power distribution box, no issues. And if it does, as soon as it pulls more than 50A, which it will, the breaker at the post will trip.

There probably are people who run the air conditioner, the microwave, a hair dryer, a coffee maker, an electric heater and a few other things all at once, but I've never tripped a 30 amp breaker at the post.  Has anyone else?

It seems highly unlikely that short (sorry) of a fault in the power cord it would be likely that a 50 amp breaker would ever trip when used on a 30 amp trailer.  The 30 amp box in the trailer, with it's 30 amp main and 10 and 15 amp circuits, is going to protect from most stupidity or shorts in your hair dryer.

I'm not saying there aren't ways to screw up.  I've never had to use a 50 amp circuit.  If I did I guess I'd want an adapter that only let one leg of the current into the cable from the post to the Pod.

TT

Not to say it is without hazard, but I wouldn't put burning down your R-pod at the top of the list.   

Seems to me the significant risk lies in the wire run from the 30A connector on the outside of the trailer to the 30A breaker in the main panel.  The cord from the 50A plug to the trailer could have an issue, but the worst it's going to do is burn up and trip the 50A breaker in the process.

Yes.. but of course so could the 30A or 15/20A...

I am the last person to tell someone on this forum that they can't do something, that is a personal choice based on an individual's opinion. But there are new members here asking questions and they need the facts in order to make an informed decision. When someone says that this can't result in a trailer burning up that is not a factual statement and I feel an obligation to object.You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts, sorry. 

Well.. the fact is.. owners of many many many rigs do it out there every day, and the parks are not littered with burned out campers. 

We used 50A hookups 3 times this last season, because the 30A receptacles were terrible.

We are getting very close to dead horse territory here.

It seems there are often distinct differences of opinion regarding risk.  Some people seem to be very risk averse.  I suppose it makes sense to try to let people understand that a risk exists.  Other people seem okay with risk, especially if they think it's minimal.  And aside from any statistics, there is also the personal level of anxiety, or fear of a given possibility.

Most days I skip the helmet despite the risk of meteorites.

TT

"DO NOT EXCEED CIRCUIT RATING. EXCEEDING THE CIRCUIT RATING MAY CAUSE A FIRE AND RESULT IN DEATH OR SERIOUS INJURY".

Just sayin'...But feel free to ignore that label, as I've said that's a personal choice. 

What would I do if I was in a campground with hookups that I really had to use and found the 30A receptacle to be non functional? I'd use the 20A one which is perfectly safe and can run everything in an rPod (just not all at the same time).  

As far as risk aversion and fear are concerned, I'm personally not the least bit afraid of low (under 600V) electrical circuits. Been designing and working around them my whole professional life. Respectful yes.  Afraid no. Respectful in part because I've seen the results of electrical fires caused by the kind of high impedance faults that that warning label is trying to mitigate against. High impedance faults can create currents that are above the ampacity of the conductors but below the overcurrent protection rating in improperly designed systems.

Medium and high voltage circuits, now those scare the daylights out of me. 

 

So, one shouldn't connect the 18AWG lamp cord to a 20A circuit?  If I understand correctly something could happen in the lamp that could put a greater load on the lamp cord, but under 20 amps and the cord would burn up before the circuit breaker tripped?  I think this is not unheard of in house fires.  

Why doesn't someone sell a 50A to 30A converter that has 30A overcurrent protection right in the plug?  That would seem to be a simple solution.  The only risk, albeit minimal, would be in the space between where the plug connects and the 30A fuse or circuit breaker.  Indeed, selling converters without that protection might give me enough work to come out of retirement.

Folks who feel that the horse has died are welcome to move on anytime they want to, I don't know that its necessary to limit those of us who still sense an equine heartbeat from continuing on until we're certain that the animal has truly gone to greener pastures. 

Long live dead horses!   ...and pie in the sky, uh, er, I mean clover in the sky.

Seriously though, that 18 awg lamp cord the homeowner placed hidden behind the couch to light the lamps on the end tables, or the one he ran under the carpet to reach where there was no plug would seem to present a similar hazard regardless of whether NEC applies.  The principle seems to be the same:  Conductors not rated for the current load can burn up before the overcurrent is detected by the higher amp overcurrent protection device.  

I prefer live horses, they tend not to smell as bad, depending on how often you clean their stalls. 

Of the roughly 45,000 residential fires annually involving electrical failures roughly 1/3 are due to ignition of electrical/wire insulation.  Looks like about 1/3 of that was in lamps and fixtures, so quite a lot. Be careful about confirmation bias though, the lamps and fixtures fires could be a relatively high percentage because safety standards are working well to reduce other causes. 

 

Here's a link to the latest NFPA report on this.

http://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/Fire-causes/osHomeElectricalFires.pdf - http://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/Fire-causes/osHomeElectricalFires.pdf

The absolute number of electrical fires due to inadequate conductors is what it is, regardless of its relative proportion relative to other potential causes. 

Get some low voltage led Christmas lights for next year and give that pine tree a new lease on life. 

The best solution, it seems to me, would be to continue to boon dock and avoid those fancy high priced campgrounds that cater to those who use 50A for their RV's.  Besides when you park between two of them you look like little doll house.

As for my Christmas lights, I just bought a bunch of LED lights that run on regular household current.  I'll just keep paying my insurance premium and hoping for the best.  If the tree catches fire at least it'd look really cool blazing away on a dark, cold winter night.

How about a 50A cable to the pod, connected to device that plugs into the outside of the pod containing a 30A breaker that  goes to the 30A female plug that connects to the trailer?  Then there is really no point along the way where there isn't adequate wire size for the current protection. Another opportunity to sell more RV stuff to fill your available storage.

If you had a 200 amp breaker powering a 100 w light bulb, an 18g wire would work fine.  You'd be pulling 0.8333 amps.  Likewise, if your Pod is hooked up to a 50 amp breaker, the entire circuit, from the post to the converter, is only going to be carrying as many amps as you're using. 

There are imaginable scenarios in which the load could increase to 50 amps.  Other than stupidity, the cause would likely be a short circuit -- a bad connection or a bare wire touching ground.  Maybe the campground's ground crew ran over your power cable, something like that. 

I'm guessing in most cases a 50 amp breaker would flip just about as fast as a 30 amp breaker in such a situation. 

There are good reasons, of course, for having circuits of the appropriate amperage, but it just doesn't seem to me that there's much to worry about in using a 50 to 30 amp dogbone if used with a touch of intelligence.

It is interesting, perhaps telling, that 50 to 30 amp dogbones seem to be sold without dire warnings.  They should have labels telling users they are very likely to die of electrocution or in an electrically ignited inferno.  But they don't. 

I like the idea of a dogbone with a built-in 30 amp breaker.  I can't find one though.

TT

Tars, I made a reasonably comfortable living thanks to the stupidity of others whos acts resulted in unplanned and adverse consequences.   And the supply of those actors seemed to be nearly limitless.

With my 18awg example connected to a 200A breaker and our Pod, it's the unplanned events, such as causing a dead short with a sharp metal object that could initiate the cascade of physical occurrances that lead to unpleasant consequences, not the normal current draw from what ever device you happen to be running, like a light bulb.  If I ran my ac on the lamp cord with inadequate current protection, …. well I hardly ever use it anyway. ;--)

Heck, I had one of these faults in my house after the last hurricane corroded one of my outside receptacles. Tripped the breaker only after I turned on my skillsaw, which didn't trip on any other breakers. Couldn't figure out why for awhile. After I found the corrosion and replaced the receptacle, problem solved.  If I had had undersized conductors for my breaker I could easily have had a fire.

You can't really anticipate all the permutations you might run into with these kind of things. If you follow the NEC it will almost always save your bacon, its saved mine many times. And even if something bad happens anyway, if you follow the code you won't be giving lostagain grounds for a negligence suit 

http://www.gordonelectricsupply.com/index~text~6019698~path~product~part~6019698~ds~dept~process~search?gclid=Cj0KCQjwrZLdBRCmARIsAFBZllELPAmgs86UJ-zDo2Nm-iIaP8NFonsn8lONX0TJymNO0kl_7kWSiTYaAkNjEALw_wcB - http://www.gordonelectricsupply.com/index~text~6019698~path~product~part~6019698~ds~dept~process~search?gclid=Cj0KCQjwrZLdBRCmARIsAFBZllELPAmgs86UJ-zDo2Nm-iIaP8NFonsn8lONX0TJymNO0kl_7kWSiTYaAkNjEALw_wcB

https://www.amazon.com/Cooper-Wiring-Devices-GFI13M1NN-GFCI/dp/B00DUGWDOM/

There's a thread on another forum i read titled, "The last person to post to this thread WINS!"  You don't win anything, you just win.  It's been going on since 2006 and has almost 56,000 posts.  That forum is somewhat more active than this one.  Nevertheless, maybe we could get Furpod to change the title of this thread.

TT

Ok, so a dead short using my hypothetical 18awg lamp cord plugged into a 50A circuit would be one way to start a fire, but offgrid mentioned some high impedance events that could also create a fire hazard using a conductor not matched to the amperage of the circuit.  What would cause high impedance that could light my lamp cord on fire?  

Thanks, Mike, those are effectively dead short scenarios and in both, as was observed earlier, they would burn up the undersized cable possibly before the 50A breaker would trip since not a lot of heat would make it to the breaker due to limited wire size.  That certainly presents a safety problem since there is no effective overcurrent/heat protection for the undersized cable.  Of course in the RV setting we are talking about 10awg wire in the 30A compatible cable which is a lot closer to the 6awg for a 50A circuit so the danger is diminished.

Wow, you had quite a danger there with the mis-wired plug.  I had a similar experience when I worked in the grape sheds and a field box nailing machine arrived from Delano with a mis-wired 220.  My co-campesino touched it and grounded himself when he touched a properly wired box skid.  It nearly killed him.

My question, though, is not the simple overcurrent dead short situation but other forms of impedance that offgrid alluded to.  What other high impedance situations are within the world of possibilities that could also make an undersized conductor dangerous.  I can think of, for example, running a hair dryer on high with 22awg wire.  It may not trip the breaker, but it certainly would get the wire pretty warm.  I got the impression there are other examples that it would be nice to know about.

Thinking about the situation, a 30 amp cord will handle something between 30 and 50 amps for a "little while". The question is whether it would handle it long enough to cause a problem. In many situations, it just might be. Would it cause an arc? Don't know. If it did, then we would be done here. 

The idea with circuit breakers in general is to protect the wires from seeing current that is beyond their specification. The problem being that going over their capacity "just a little" will cause them to heat up and potentially cause a fire before they fail completely.

So my feeling is that if you build or use a dogbone to allow you to use a 50 amp receptacle it should include a breaker, or even just a fuse that will protect the wire in the connecting cord beyond the dogbone.

Oversizing conductors is never really going to be a problem.  It's undersized conductors that are grossly mismatched to the circuit breaker that presents the fire danger.  If the mismatch is not too disproportionate it's not likely that a undersized conductor would be an issue unless there was a dead short or a very heavy load on it.  

Seem to me, as GlueGuy suggests, the simple solution is to look for a dog bone converter that has a 30A overcurrent protection right before the point where the wire drops in size, or at the pedestal.  A simple and probably inexpensive solution to the fire risk issue.

What I was reading is that GFCI protects against personal injury and AFCI protects against fire. One of the examples was insulation breakdown or cracking that allows current to arc between conductors. For homes, it looks like the NEC does now require it but that probably applies to new construction (second link below). The dead short in an undersized wire is just one of the situations that an AFCI would protect against.

https://blog.happyhiller.com/blog/gfci-afci-electrical-circuit-interrupter-protection - https://blog.happyhiller.com/blog/gfci-afci-electrical-circuit-interrupter-protection

https://www.afcisafety.org/afci/what-is-afci/#1469600273550-8af1ebf3-e88d - https://www.afcisafety.org/afci/what-is-afci/#1469600273550-8af1ebf3-e88d

Yes, it would likely be overkill and it is highly unlikely that such protection would be available at the pedestal. What is available though are the breakers in the RPod's panel and the GFCI outlet. Between them both, it would seem that the likelihood of fire risk is minimal even if a 30A breaker is not in the 50A to 30A dog bone. It is difficult to conceive of a situation where the 30A breaker in the panel will not trip long before the wires between it and the dog bone would get hot enough to cause a fire.

Going back to ohm's law, V= I*R or better stated for our purposes, I=V/R. So current flow equals voltage divided by resistance. Our voltage is 120Vac and effectively doesn't change, so we can just worry about current which changes inversely with resistance. 

If you rephrase it to say that neglecting to take Ohm's law into account can have bad consequences then I'm with you.  

To try avoid the potential for argument, as yet another disclaimer, I would just like to be sure everyone interested has a clear fact based understanding of the issues, then what you do or don't do about it is a risk/reward decision and as such is a matter of personal opinion. 

The 30A CB in the pod has no way to know if there is a fault upstream from it. It only knows about load and fault currents flowing through it heading downstream. If the fault is in the cable or in the trailer connector or in the conductors between the trailer connector and the pod breaker panel then the conductors from the pedestal to the fault will see the total of the fault current plus the load currents of anything you have on in the trailer. The trailer cb will see the load currents only. If the load currents are 30A or less and the combined fault and load currents exceed 30A but are less than 50A then neither the park's 50A nor the pod's 30A breaker will trip, but the 30A rated conductors up to the fault location will overheat. That is where the fire risk lies.

Greetings 

The pods have a 110 volt breaker on the panel in the pod which Is I believe a 30 amp.  So the main concern is the 10 gauge cable to the station.  The surge protectors are a very good idea.  Many campgrounds have old systems and of course a nearby lightning strike or high winds could cause problems

Crankster78

Surge protectors are a good idea and offer protection from lightning strikes but won't help for the kind of overcurrent fault we're discussing here. 

On the question of whether the arc fault breakers are better now, I'm not sure but it looks like we're on the 3rd or 4th generation already. The original type from 1999 aren't even allowed anymore. The newer ones are intended to detect series arcs (like from a loose connection) as well as the kind of parallel line to line and line to ground arcs we've been discussing. So they are still adding features and sorting the technology out. 

Looks like we're in "violent agreement" at this point mcarter 

The fact that they have not, and again, the complete lack of any data points I can find about occurrences, says it's a non issue.

Like walking in the woods.. a tree "can" fall on you.. but it doesn't happen often enough to keep us out of the woods..

I used to live in a neighborhood filled with 80 to 100 year old Monterrey pines.  When the wind got going during a rain storm, it was common for them to break about 2 meters up from the ground.  I saw and heard several fall.  It's not like the lumberjack cutting a tree with an nice key and a slow fall.  Within one block of my house, over the years there were several fatalities from the trees falling on houses.  

Moral of the story, it's better to match your conductor capacity and breakers even though the instances of fires are relatively rare.  Being trapped in a burning Pod doesn't sound like a very pleasant way to go.  The cost of putting in a breaker in the 30/50A dogbone is much less than the cost of starting a forest fire or your own funeral.  Ask PG&E about the cost of electric conductor fires.  Just a thought from a lay person.  This has been a very informative discussion.

By the same token, the number of fires caused and/or property damaged and/or people hurt using a 50 amp to 30 amp dogbone that is not fused is most likely statistically insignificant. Maybe kind of like gas stations exploding because of lit propane refrigerators.

Why is it hard to find coconuts on trees in Hawaii? Because the public works people go around and cut the coconuts off the ones in public areas to prevent people from getting hit by a falling coconut.

We always have risks. One has to decide whether the risk is small enough to take the proposed course of action. I try to make sure my R-Pod's wiring and my power cord (plus my 30A extension cord) at home are in good shape and rated for the load. I have only had one instance where there was no 30A power outlets available. If I wanted power, I needed to use a 50A to 30A dog bone. It was either that or stay at the RV park without shore power. I judged the risk to be acceptable and used the dog bone.

Another time, we pulled into one site. I plugged in my circuit analyzer (my usual practice) to check the power and discovered the post was incorrectly wired. I changed sites to one where the circuit analyzer okayed the power. Then I plugged in my RPod. The owner was unaware there was a problem so informing him meant that it could be fixed before someone got hurt. In that case, the risk was way too high to use that site even though the outlet was the correct 30A rating.

Sounds reasonable to me.  If you use care in not overloading the circuit, you will probably be fine for as long as you use an RV.  But it is good to know of the issue so you can use care not to run too much stuff at the same time.  

At my advanced age, I've decided that skydiving is not in my best interest, though it may be in the interest of Dr. Orr, my orthopaedist, or the local funeral director.  On the other hand, while we're here in Colombia, there are lots of very remote places I plan to visit, though some say it's risky.  One risk I always try to avoid is getting stuck on an escalator.  It's really embarrassing.  ;--)

Originally posted by lostagain I confess, I'm not going to go out and buy a 50A dogbone for the off chance that the 30A plug ain't working.  I'll get by with the 20A or battery and not worry about it.  It's not that I'm risk averse, but more that I'm a minimalist and don't need many electrons.

I use a CPAP machine and when the weather is cool and the furnace is running, I don't want to run on batteries alone for several days and risk running out of power. While we frequently stop and operate on batteries for a few days in mild weather, when it is really hot or cold, I would like the option of plugging in. I'm not going to go out and buy a 50A to 30A dog bone either. The one time I needed it, the RV campground supplied it. The 20A would work for cold weather. However, in hot weather, it is better for my wife and her asthma to have power for the AC. 20A would work, but if  I am plugged in and paying for it, I would prefer to run the AC and run the microwave as needed or also run our induction cooktop or my coffee maker at the same time while also running the water heater on AC. 20A just would not suffice for that.

Originally posted by lostagain StephenH, you have a very important need for power and for you, using the 50A dogbone makes sense.  I count my blessings that so far, I don't have health issues that necessitate a consistent supply of electric power.

Thank you. My point exactly. One must do a risk/benefit calculation. For us, the benefit far outweighs the risk. For others, the risk/benefit ratio is completely different. That is also why I opted for dual-6V batteries (and learned our first night out on our first long trip that I can't run the refrigerator on 12V even with those dual 6V batteries). So, I also run the refrigerator on propane while traveling and only switch to 110V when it is available.

Again, yes electrical fires happen.. your statistical average is for all electrical fires. 12v.. yes 12v, is the number one cause of RV fires. By a large margin actually.

Again, looking through the RVIA data, I can find NO report of a fire caused by a dogbone. That data only goes back 14 years, and of course only covers what gets reported to them by dealer members, but.. well.. as much as some seem to worry, for most people, it's a nonissue.

Not using hookups at all, ever, still doesn't insulate you from the possibility. In fact it leaves you open to the number one cause of RV fires.

I fully understand that you have not found a case in the RVIA data where a dogbone has been found to be the direct cause of an RV fire.  Again, there is a good reason why the NEC requires and the manufacturers apply a warning label not to apply 50A to a 30A trailer connector. And, again, because there has not been a case documented doesn't mean that there hasn't actually been one, and it also doesn't mean that it is a non issue. Obviously, the code authorities and FR think that it is. 

When we do risk assessments and decide something is or is not worth the risk, one off the things we always need to bear in mind is that if sh#* happens and someone gets hurt, we need to step up and take full responsibility for it turning out badly.  Even when we take personal risks, there are always others to consider.  If I choose to go sky diving and splatter myself on the tarmac, it isn't just me who loses [and I'll never know the difference anyway].  My wife, my children, grandchildren, friends and my creditors [enemies] are all affected and it isn't likely to be in a favorable way.  

If I choose to take the risk of using a 30/50 A dogbone and start a fire like the Camp Fire in Paradise, CA, well, I better be ready to step up and pay the consequences.  Sadly, in some instances we choose to take risks that turn out to hurt someone else and are unwilling or unable to compensate those whom we hurt.  Then it's time to blame those dirty ambulance chasing lawyers.

And yes, I realize we take risks every day as mundane as going to the bathroom at night to deciding to drive 100 mph in a school zone or worse.  It is impossible to avoid taking risks in life, but by the same token it is impossible to avoid the moral imperative that we should accept responsibility for the consequences of our actions, including the risks we choose to take.

I'm probably going to regret posting this, but here goes anyway.

I'm sure everything that's been said in this thread so far is true and correct, but maybe it's stretching things a lttle too far to compare using a 50/30 dogbone to driving 100 mph through a school zone or saying that I might be responsible for burning down 14.000 homes if I use a dogbone.  

I lobbied, mildly, for the continuation of this thread after it was shut down for beating dead equines, but there is a mostly small group here, who have been just about the only particpants in this thread, except maybe the OP.  I gotta say, I think we all know what everyone's position is on the subject.  I guess I'm just trying to say that it might be nice if we didn't try to keep hitting each other over the head with just one more point. 

I just went to the effort to tally things up.  If I counted correctly this is the 94th post on this subject.  The OP posted twice, once with the original question and then just a few posts later to thank everyone for their replies.  Seven people posted once, mostly long ago.  Everyone else has posted multiple times, some more than 15 or 20 times.

I'm totally fine with this thread dying a natural death, even if it lingers another 50 years but it does seem to me that one of the dynamics going on here is that there are only a few people participating in this thread anymore.  Aside from the fact that there probably really isn't much useful to add, I think it would be helpful if we realize what a small audience there really is here.  I've been around the internet long enough that I have pretty tough skin, and I know this wasn't really anyone's intention, but when it gets to the point that someone basicallysays you're going straight to hell if you use a dogbone (running over kids in a school zone or killing 79 people by causing a forest fire will probably put you on a shortcut to hell, I assume), well, just my opinion, maybe it's past time to give it a rest and move on.

TT

I'll let lostagain speak for himself but for folks living in the far west the last couple of years electrical fires have been a really big deal.  He may be thinking about the cause of the Tubbs fire in 2017 which up until the Camp fire this year was the largest in CA history (22 deaths, 5600 buildings, 37000 acres). 

By all means, post away.  I'm not sure whose mind you think you might sway at this point; there are only about 8 of us, all regulars, most, if not all, Senior Members, participating anymore. 

And I'm sure Lostagain's intentions were good, as I know yours are, but comparing dogbone users to people who drive through school zones at 100 mph or saying they might kill 79 people and burn down 14,000 homes, is, intended or otherwise, in my opinion, one very tiny step away from the fulfillment of Godwin's Law.

TT

I like that you are asking to separate facts from opinions. Like many things in life though knowing the facts doesn't necessarily result in a decision between black and white. 

The facts are that when you use a 50A to 30A dogbone you are leaving the conductors between the output of your dogbone and the 30A circuit breaker in your trailer panel (the power cord and the internal trailer wiring) unprotected against certain types of electrical fault conditions. The result could be an electrical fire. Leaving these conductors unprotected from those fault conditions is not allowed under the National Electrical Code which is why you have a label next to your trailer connector warning you not to do that.

If your standard of proof is that there are actual cases where this has resulted in fires than it is most likely that does not exist, as the probability of occurrence of these particular fault conditions is low and the reporting of such things is spotty. 

At this point your decision to use the dogbone or not becomes a matter of opinion. I think you have three choices:  accept the risk of a fire from these faults in order to have the convenience of using the dogbone, don't use the dogbone and accept the inconvenience in order to avoid this fire risk (and/or to avoid violating your warning label instructions if such things bother you), or spend $ to add in a 30A circuit breaker after the dogbone to eliminate this risk.  Note that options 2 and 3 would not magically remove all fire risk, just this particular one. 

I for one don't think satan has anything to do with this and am OK with any of the above choices. 

Hope that helps.

Tars, I guess I have to weigh in on this.  I was not comparing the use of a 50/30A dogbone to driving 100 in a school zone.  The point was we all take risks, some mundane, some extraordinarily foolish but when we do so we have to take personal responsibility for what we do.  Some risks are so minimal that the chance of hurting someone is nearly non-existent, while others present dangers that approach engaging in reckless disregard for the safety of others, indeed a criminal act.  

I have read all the posts here and have learned a lot about not only the consequences of a dead short when using a 50/30A dogbone, but also the consequences of heating the conductors up by putting too much of a load on the circuit.  I also note that FR and other manufactures caution against this type of amperage conversion.  One cannot say it is risk free.  The real issue, and one that hasn't been answered here is how small is the risk?  If I get into an elevator I know I have about a 1 in 3M chance of sustaining a medically treatable injury and I chose to take the risk.  When I boarded the Avianca flight to Colombia a week and a half ago, I knew I had about a 1 in 350K chance of getting hurt.  Here, we don't have information to assess risk probability.  All we can say is that it is theoretically possible.

I understand people using the dogbone and someone like StephenH has some pretty darn good reasons to use it to run his CPAP machine and possibly other medical devices.  Each person hast to make his own risk assessment and pray for the best outcome.  My comment about personal responsibility is that if you make a conscious choice to take a risk, you have the moral imperative to accept responsibility for the consequences, even if it bankrupts you.  Sadly, in our culture, we have moved far away from taking responsibility for our conduct and are always looking to blame others for the consequences of our acts. 

Bottom line, if you chose to take the risk, by all means do it.  But in the very unlikely event it turns out badly, don't whine about having to compensate those who got hurt and don't say it was someone else's fault. 

I had to look up Godwin's law. I've heard folks in the electrical industry grumble about "Code Nazis" (folks who write and/or defend the NEC) before so I guess I could easily be accused of that