Thought my big ol' Xantrex inverter would be safer to use on my heated mattress pad instead of my little 300 Watt Morningstar inverter. Wrong! Fried both controllers. Won't do THat again!
My first Wife Linda, 45+years
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CT_WANDERER wrote: I have a PSW inverter and if nothing else on on and it is in stand-by. I can not get my electric mattess pad to work. The control of the pad heater will not fire the inverter up, however if the TV is on or something else, I can turn on the heater and it will work. Will run after turning off the TV. It just seems that the control circut can not turn the inverter on.
You need to turn off the standby mode. Lots of low wattage items will have this issue. The load of the control is too small to get out of standby. Without the control you can't get the heating element on to get out of standby. Classic catch 22.
smkettner, I just turn the TV on and I am good to go the rest of the night with the heater, or someother higher wattage unit. I have a cheap inverter and can not over ride the stand-by. I have a switch that I installed so I can shut down the inverter completely when not in use.
Well Gang,
It appears that my buddy and myself are not the only ones with issues of the ole' electric blanket and inverters. One thing I've never professed to be is, real savvy on electronics. I can do basic 12V stuff and even some basic 110V AC stuff but, when it gets into this hi-tech stuff of sine wave, modified sine wave, square wave, pure sine wave, it's all way over my head. My Lincoln TIG welder is a 175 Amp "Square wave" welder too. I had no idea what square wave was when I bought it 10 years ago, I just bought it.
Anyway, thanks for all the replies and the experiences with this situation. Hopefully there's no damage do any of the blanket controllers, since we've not tried them on shore power since that time camping. I guess I should try them to make sure they work for the next time.
Scott
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CT_WANDERER wrote: I have a PSW inverter and if nothing else on on and it is in stand-by. I can not get my electric mattess pad to work. The control of the pad heater will not fire the inverter up, however if the TV is on or something else, I can turn on the heater and it will work. Will run after turning off the TV. It just seems that the control circut can not turn the inverter on.
You need to turn off the standby mode. Lots of low wattage items will have this issue. The load of the control is too small to get out of standby. Without the control you can't get the heating element on to get out of standby. Classic catch 22.
FIRE UP wrote: Hopefully there's no damage do any of the blanket controllers, since we've not tried them on shore power since that time camping. I guess I should try them to make sure they work for the next time.
Definitely check the controllers. On my Sunbeam heated throw, it worked fine until I used it on the modified sine wave (MSW) inverter, and the controller got really really hot and started smelling. Boyfriend took the controller apart and found something burned up in there (probably a resistor--he doesn't remember), replaced it, and it works fine again. But I never use it on the inverter. This is probably the same thing that happened to Fishinghat.
In terms of working on a MSW inverter, a blanket 4-5 years old is "new." We've been using a very old electric blanket for the past 8 years (fulltimers) and it still works. It doesn't seem to heat really fast (either on shore power or inverter, and I can't say if it's due to age or being subjected to funky power), but it definitely works and I wouldn't be without it when we're boondocking in cold weather.
Since your blanket has an LCD screen, it's definitely too new to work on a MSW inverter. If you find one where the controller has a real spinning dial or a switch, it will probably work. If it looks like a dial but you actually press on a portion of the dial to select HI or LO or whatever (like my Sunbeam), then I wouldn't even try it.
I will add, however, that within the past year I bought a jumbo heating pad by SoftHeat, and the controller is a skinny thing with a vertical slider switch for the three settings. It's about 12" x24"-- big enough to wrap around my feet--and it has worked perfectly on the inverter.
It's obviously nowhere near big enough to use as a blanket, but it's bigger than a standard heating pad and I use it all the time when I'm sitting around. That said, it's the only electric warming item I've ever seen in stores that I thought might work; the rest had controllers that looked like trouble.
Oh, wait, this looks like it, although they don't mention the dimensions: heating pad, on sale!
If nothing else, you can see the switch that works on my inverter. Not to say it'll work on yours, but it's mechanical, not digital, so it should. I looked at other heating pads on their site, and some have a different controller, and I can't say whether those would work or not.
One more note: you can buy 12-volt blankets, but check the size carefully. I've never found one big enough to use as a bed blanket. I have one, but it's just big enough for one person to use and even then you're not all wrapped up. It's marketed as something to use in a car, and sized accordingly.
There are 12-volt mattress pads out there, made for truckers. I don't have any experience with them because I don't want a mattress pad, but some RVers use (and recommend) them.
Nothing wrong with that if it works for you. Inverters have a minimum wattage to exit the standby mode so for some electronic loads you have to find a workaround.
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