Radiator Heater Power?

Sean

Guest
Hi Again!

I just recently purchased an oil radiator and to my horror when I plug it into the camper and turn it on, power dies and the light on my zig board goes too. The zig is set to onsite (so not to charge) and everything is turned off and unplugged where possible (i.e the fridge)

After removing the heater and testing the power it actually takes a few minutes before the power will come back on and stay on. If I turn it on too soon the power light turns on and then fades (to black).

My initial guess is that the heater (220-240v 50Htz 1000W) is pulling too much power. Do you guys think that is consistent with what I am seeing?

Therefore how do I correctly size the heater for the camper? The camper is a Talbot Express 2.5.

Once again - thank you ALL in advance for helping me!

Cheers
Sean
 
hi

Hi, you are not saying if this is on the mains power to the motorhome, but my 1st reaction is 1000 watts is just to big for your motorhome, what amp rating is the unit. but 1000 watts will work out at around 100 volts of power so will kill any batterys you may have, and yes this is what you are seeing.
Try it on the mains and see what happens, but thats a lot of power drain, and maybe 6 amps to boot.
michael
 
terry1956 said:
Hi, you are not saying if this is on the mains power to the motorhome, but my 1st reaction is 1000 watts is just to big for your motorhome, what amp rating is the unit. but 1000 watts will work out at around 100 volts of power so will kill any batterys you may have, and yes this is what you are seeing.
Try it on the mains and see what happens, but thats a lot of power drain, and maybe 6 amps to boot.
michael
Click to expand...

Hey Terry - yes the camper is on mains during these test and we dont' have an onboard inverter or anything to that effect. That's the thing that confuses me - if it were overloading the circuit I thought it would have just blown the fuse and been done with it?
 
Actually the more and more I think about this the less likely I am to blame the heater but to blame something else in the electrics. With all things being equal - there should be no reason why the heater won't work when the camper is on mains and nothing else is plugged in. Especially given that all the fuses appear to be intact and working.
 
have used vaccum cleaners convector heaters and so on before and had no problems
 
oil filled radiator

hi sean
you shouldn't have any trouble with the radiator if it is 1000 watts i would check that this is correct as some of these are rated up to 3000 watts.
i regularly use a 1 to 2000 watt fan heater when on site with no problems.
i agree the heater may be faulty.
has your electrics got a circuit breaker, is this rated at 16 amps, if not fit one. if it's got a circuit breaker at 16 amps it may be faulty.
try replacing it.
a 1000w appliance only uses 4 amps.

live long and prosper:):D
 
Hey Guys,

thanks for your input. I got it working and believe it or not, it was the freakin wall socket only producing 217v! Not sure why - but that's another post for another time! I discovered this using a multimeter

Just for reference (and to give something back to the community) my setup:

Zig cf8
40Amp fuse on the main +
2x10Amps

The heater is an oil radiator 1000w which at 240v equates to 4.16 amps (1000/240) which is well within the 10 amp range range of the Zip/Distributor board. All is now hunky dory - and WARM!
 
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it was the freakin wall socket only producing 217v!
Click to expand...

This voltage is quite common if the shore supply is coming via a 25 metre flexible cord.
With a resistive load like a convection heater, a lower supply voltage will not increase the load current (theoretically could happen if the element wire had a very large temperature coefficient of resistance), and generally decreases the current.
 
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