Electrical Help pls

jimh406 wrote:
My first guess is the antenna amplifier is on. Many power outlets get their power from the same circuit the antenna amplifier is on. Turn the amplifier is off. Many have an LED to show if they are on or not.

Otherwise, check to see what else is off when the fuse blows just to make sure something else like a fridge etc isn't drawing a bit of power from the same circuit.

Also, it may make a difference at what the setting is on the heater for temperature. The difference in the surge could be different if you turn it all of the way down, turn it on, and then gradually turn the thermostat up.

I don't think we have an antenna amplifier. I had to google it to see what it was. We only watch DVDs with our little TV.

We will check the fridge, and I will ask my hubby about the circuits.

I, too, thought of that first surge. I texted him to see if he started the heater at 250 watts or on the lower setting. I think when I tested it at home, I started it on LOW and then powered it higher after a few minutes. That just seems logical to me.

Question: Because the inverter is only rated for 300 Watts, if the heater exceeded that 300 watts, would the fuse at the cigarette lighter blow, or would the inverter overheat? It seems that the 10A fuse should have been fine, even if there was a power surge because the surge likely couldn't have been more than 10A. But the bottleneck is at the inverter, so what happens when the inverter has to deal with more than 300 watts? A blown fuse (but I would think that the inverter would stop working)?

The fuse blowing happened immediately. Turn on heater and fuse blown. No time for anything to overheat.

Heater
Inverter