12v Mattress heating pad woes
Last night was kinda chilly.
An hour before climbing into bed I, plug my 'watts up' meter inline with my mattress heating pad, crank it up to 7, check out the amp draw, and see it is only half of normal.
Sure enough, I climb into bed, and only half the mattress pad is heating up.
Drat.
I have a suspicion that perhaps this failure was caused by something I recently did to the product.
What I did was remove about 5 feet of 18 awg wire from between the controller and the Ciggy plug, and the Ciggy plug itself, and replaced it with a 45 amp Anderson Powerpole connector at the end of 10 awg wire. Voltage drop went from over 2 volts, to 0.2 volts just by eliminating 2 ciggy plug receptacles and plugs. I say 2 ciggy plug receptacles as I was plugging the mattress pad's heating plug into an extension cord into which I could easily insert the 'watts up' generic meter inline and see how much Juice I used overnight.
What I also found interesting, is that the Ciggy plug, which I had earlier thought to be of a better design than most others, has no Internal fuse, like most every other ciggy plug I ever opened. I assume the fuse has been moved to inside the controller itself.
When the ciggy plug receptacles warmed up, and the voltage drop increased to over two volts, the amp draw lowered to about 4.2.
After the powerpole swap, the amp draw had increased to 6.8 amps, and the mattress heating pad heated up much faster, and all was good in my microcosm.
Until yesterday, when only half the mattress pad worked.
So was this failure induced by me minimizing the voltage drop, or just co-incidence and the failure is due to 3 winters of sleeping on the pad and breakdown of the wires inside?
I assume there are no serviceable parts inside the blanket itself and that is where the failure lies. Concur?
I'd rather not spend 90$ on a new one, but it has been a nice luxury the last few winters I'd rather not live without.
An hour before climbing into bed I, plug my 'watts up' meter inline with my mattress heating pad, crank it up to 7, check out the amp draw, and see it is only half of normal.
Sure enough, I climb into bed, and only half the mattress pad is heating up.
Drat.
I have a suspicion that perhaps this failure was caused by something I recently did to the product.
What I did was remove about 5 feet of 18 awg wire from between the controller and the Ciggy plug, and the Ciggy plug itself, and replaced it with a 45 amp Anderson Powerpole connector at the end of 10 awg wire. Voltage drop went from over 2 volts, to 0.2 volts just by eliminating 2 ciggy plug receptacles and plugs. I say 2 ciggy plug receptacles as I was plugging the mattress pad's heating plug into an extension cord into which I could easily insert the 'watts up' generic meter inline and see how much Juice I used overnight.
What I also found interesting, is that the Ciggy plug, which I had earlier thought to be of a better design than most others, has no Internal fuse, like most every other ciggy plug I ever opened. I assume the fuse has been moved to inside the controller itself.
When the ciggy plug receptacles warmed up, and the voltage drop increased to over two volts, the amp draw lowered to about 4.2.
After the powerpole swap, the amp draw had increased to 6.8 amps, and the mattress heating pad heated up much faster, and all was good in my microcosm.
Until yesterday, when only half the mattress pad worked.
So was this failure induced by me minimizing the voltage drop, or just co-incidence and the failure is due to 3 winters of sleeping on the pad and breakdown of the wires inside?
I assume there are no serviceable parts inside the blanket itself and that is where the failure lies. Concur?
I'd rather not spend 90$ on a new one, but it has been a nice luxury the last few winters I'd rather not live without.
