At 10:51 AM 2/21/2009, Dug Smith wrote:
>the circuit breaker and replaced it with a GFCI socket (with a power on
>light),

Ouch.  Not safe, mate.  The ground-fault protection is nice, but
losing the breaker puts your wiring at the mercy of the breaker on
the other end of your supply cord, which in an RV place is liable to
be at least thirty amps.  You really, really need to put some kind of
fifteen-amp protection back, either fuse or breaker, it's a real fire
hazard otherwise; and one that your insurance company will fall on
from a great height if the situation arises and they find out.

>and wired up a 220W inverter in that hidden area going to a switched
>socket - I now have 2 GFCI sockets plugged into the 110V line, and above
>that a single 110V socket that I turn on when I need it.  I also extended

All you folks putting inverters in enclosed spaces -- remember they
need circulating air for cooling.  You have to provide it
somehow.  Potential malfunction and even possible fire hazard.  I'd
suggest hooking a Radio Shack or similar thermometer to the case and
finding out how hot it runs in free air, then monitor the enclosed
temps until you know how much ventilation is needed.

One thing I think is very  important is making sure that ventilation
and safety issues in general are sufficient for worst-case situations
-- in this case, hot day, van in direct sun, full load on the
inverter, continuous operation; and here's why -- a few years ago,
working over the telephone, I came very close to killing my father
and possibly my mother as well, because of an electrical hazard that
he allowed to continue and "worked around."  Well unfortunately he
contracted Lewy-body Dementia and she became crazy from stress, and I
was trying to talk the two of them through diagnosing why the lights
had gone out.  At the crucial moment I got cold feet and told them to
leave it and get a neighbor to check it in the morning.  Months later
I discovered that he had been at the very point, in his confusion, of
unscrewing a large screw that was hooked directly to the service feed
inside the panel, thinking that he needed to remove it in order to
pull the fuse pack from the panel.  That screw was one about eight in
the panel that had been filled over with red insulating putty by the
maker back at the dawn of time.  The filling had fallen out of four
of them years before and of course he knew better than to touch them,
so he didn't bother re-filling them.  Damn near killed himself
retroactively...with me on the phone a hundred miles away telling him
what to do.

What I learned from this shocking (in all senses) encounter was that
the safety work-arounds that I can easily handle now may be passed on
to someone else who doesn't understand them -- maybe even myself --
and who can get hurt or killed on that account.  And I would share
responsibility for that injury or death.  At the age of 55 (at the
time) I had never thought of things in that way before.

--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'89 Whitestar "Scamp"