Electric Blankets

[reid9439]

Last winter I took an electric blanket from the house with the intentions of using it in the motor home. I figured that when we were boondocking, while traveling, that it would work of off the inverter and keep the gas furnace from running. It would not work. The controllers were erratic and I think that I even burned up one of the 2 controllers since now only one side works.

One of the members of my local FMCA chapter said that the the "sine wave" is different when working off of an inverter.

Is this right? Does anyone know of a blanket that would work off of the 110v inverter plug. I don't want to run the blanket off of 12v if I can help it.

[wolfe10]

Couple if questions:

1. What inverter do you have? It is true that some devises ARE sensitive to MSW (modified sine wave) vs "regular 120 VAC" which is sine wave.

2. As a practical matter, to see if the electric blanket is a reasonable alternative to your propane furnace, what is its watt or amp rating?

3. What amp hour house batteries do you have?

4. Do you only dry camp one night at a time or for multiple days (i.e. will your alternator be able to bring the batteries back to full charge or will you need to run your generator to restore power used to power the electric blanket)?

[tbutler]

We have used a Sunbeam electric mattress pad for years. We had a modified sine wave inverter and it would blitz the controls if it was even plugged in (not turned on) when we were on the inverter. We made a practice of unplugging it when we unplugged the electric. That works when you remember. I think we went through three of them before giving up. Now we have a sine wave inverter Xantrax RS3500 and we have no problems with our mattress pad. It works on inverter just fine.

[allbifaith]

Which one is better, to use a space heater or an electric blanket ?

[wolfe10]

Which one is better, to use a space heater or an electric blanket ?

Electric blankets take a lot less power than space heaters, but produce far less heat. You should have the amp/watt rating on each to compare.

Not that big a deal if you are plugged into shore power, other than increased power consumption with the space heater.

But, it could be a critical difference if you are trying to run it off your batteries through an inverter. It would take a HUGE battery battery bank to run a space heater (and really would not be practical because of recharge time). Even the electric blanket would require a fairly large battery bank if you are trying to run this while dry camping. Again, look at the watt rating of whatever you are wanting to run.