Fire!, well smoke any way - electric heater - 2011

Electric heater
We were sitting in the salon and smelling burning something electrical. Thinking it was the electric heater I picked it up and changed the setting to 750 watts instead of 1500 watts.
December - Currently at Marina Cortez Harbor Island, San Diego, CA


 I smell it but it was not the problem. The we opened the door to the back of the nav station and we could see smoke. Dam!
 We cut the shore power off and continued to look around.
 We looked around and opened up the lazzerett hatch and smoke was coming out. Debbie grabbed a fire Extinguisher and we kept looking.
 We found the smoke was coming from the 30-amp breaker we installed.
 After three years I finny read the fire Extinguisher to see if it would work on electrical fires. Of course, this was after we decide not to use it.
 It turns out one of the incoming 30-amp shore power wires going into the 30-amp breaker had twisted over a bit and was touching another connection. They were melting and smoking.
This tell me that using this 30-amp breaker in this box is a bad idea. We dodged a fire here and am really grateful.
 The box is a bit too small, and you cannot steak down the wires inside, so they do not move. The boat is in constant motion, so the wires need to be secured.
  We have decided now that we know more about the 110-volt wiring that we do not need the two original single pole breakers at the panel and will remove them and place the new 30 double pole breaker there instead of the box.
We will remove the top three breakers and install the double pole breaker here.
 This will take a while so for now we just re-connected the original shore power wiring.
 Also, in the future we will need yet another 30-amp breaker for a second 30-amp line into the boat for the 12000 btu AC\heat unit. Could be we just get a two-breaker panel for here. 

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