We had a kind of a smell the other day on Red Ranger. A new and unpleasant smell.

Found the cause.

Not happy about that.

It was a Samlex/Cotek ST1500-112 Pure Sine wave inverter with a 30A transfer switch and a 30A circuit breaker.

Emphasis on the was.

Clearly, something in the wiring harness wasn't up to the 15A draw of our space heater. It appears to be a serious design issue.

How bad would it have been if we'd pushed up to the stated limit of 30A?

Full-blown fire?

We're pretty unhappy with this.

We know that the circuit breaker worked once because we fired up the shop vac one day with the space heater running. That tripped the breaker straight away.

But this appears to be something that was not enough current to trip the breaker, but enough current to melt the wiring harness.

I'll be talking with the distributor to see what they can do to help us out. They seem to be big, reputable, and focused on inverters for a variety of markets including marine, household and RV. We'll see if they're able to stand behind their offerings.

For today, though, I've got to rig some kind of transfer switch in place of the relay system that was part of the inverter. 110V AC. 30A breaker on the shore power side. A pretty serious undertaking.