SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20190413-5C7D3-2147381640. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: eheat Envi wall mounted heater HW1012T (eheat, Inc (Envi Wall Mounted Heater) model HW1012T serial 329851). Incident: At approximately 6PM on April 10, 2019 my wife came home to find our house smoky with a strange smell in the air. She sent our daughters outside and began a frantic search for the source. She finally found our EHEAT Envi Heater in our daughters' room charred, smoking and melted near the power switch for the heater. She shut off the break to the heater and removed the heater from the room, then notified me at work about what had happened. The heater was hardwired with power being fed off the GFCI outlet in my daughters sink area. This incident did not trip the GFCI on the outlet or the breaker in the main electrical panel. It also did not set off the smoke detectors (which have since been tested and found to be working with back up batteries dated 10-2018). The heater has a built in thermostat and is normally left in the on position. Until last week it had been "on" all winter, but I turned it off last week when we went out of town. I can't say for sure if cycling the switch last week contributed to the failure, but it seems like it may have. I was inform last spring of a recall on these heater and did, at that time, use EHeat's web site to see if my heaters (I purchased 3 originally) were affected by the recall. The serial number and model numbers I purchased were not listed as affected. I checked the web site again this morning to see if they were listed now as an update and they are still NOT listed as affected, but clearly there is a fire hazard with this heater. We are now in the process of trying to remove the burnt electrical smell from the room.