Marty, welcome to the forum. Your comments tell me you have a faulty (poor) electrical connection somewhere in the trailer and as On The Road said, it could well be a corroded ground wire, attaching to the frame. You DO NOT have a "short" - that is an closed, NO resistance path that causes immediate wire overheating and blown fuses. Your low voltage (5-6V) is an indication of a high resistance path that is "eating up" all the electrical pressure (voltage), (like a kink in a water hose) so very little current gets through.
The suggestion to connect your meter's negative cable to the negative battery cable is spot on. You may need to employ a long jumper wire to do this. You could use about 20 feet of insulated primary wire (16 or 18 gauge) to extend your negative test probe back to the battery while you used the positive probe to check for voltage at any position in the trailer. I did this when I was troubleshooting a mouse chewed wire that was disabling my rear running lights.
A faulty ground connection will tend to disable multiple circuits, which is what you seem to have.
It's a tedious bit of troubleshooting, but for things to work, you need a complete, good path from the positive terminal of the battery, through the appliance and back to the negative terminal. Any weak connections in that path will result in low voltage and current or nothing getting through at all.
- Jack
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Hi-Lo 1707T - Tire Minder TPMS on Tow Vehicle and Trailer, 300W Solar Battery Charger, Equal-i-zer WDH, Progressive Dynamics Converter, Fan-Tastic Fan, LiFePO4 battery 12V DC Electrical System
2014 F150 Platinum 4x4 3.5L EcoBoost SCrew
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