A 1500-watt metal immersion heater is the part of Golden Resale’s portable camping shower that the Consumer Product Safety Commission says can quickly catch fire when the bucket it heats is partially or completely out of water. About 400 of the kits, each with a 5-gallon collapsible bucket, a rechargeable pump and a hose, were sold on Amazon.com and Walmart.com from February through August 2026 for roughly $60.
CPSC announced the recall, number 27-013, on October 1, 2026. The distributor is Golden Resale LLC of Mesa, Arizona, and the kits were made in China. No incidents have been reported, and the notice lists no incident tied to any of the roughly 400 kits.
An immersion heater with nothing to immerse it
An immersion heater is a metal element dropped into water, and it depends on the water to carry heat away as fast as the element produces it. In the CPSC recall notice, the agency states that the recalled heaters “can quickly ignite when they are partially or completely out of water.” Partial exposure counts, which matters in a shower: a bucket drained by a pump can leave the element above the waterline long before the bucket is empty.
The notice gives no time to ignition for this particular model, so “quickly” is CPSC’s word and no more precise figure is available. The recalled kit is identifiable by a black rechargeable electric shower pump, a black shower head with gold trim, a black hose and the ZAREI logo on the bucket and pump. The heater itself has distinctive heart-shaped openings in its metal housing and a black plastic endcap.
Lakkzoom, Laboomkey and HAIYEATBNB as the comparison
CPSC has been warning about bare immersion heaters for more than a year, and the figures from those warnings show what the failure looks like at scale. In a July 22, 2026 warning on Lakkzoom immersion heaters, the agency said the units can ignite within minutes when partially or completely out of water. It put the affected total near 98,000 units sold on Amazon.com and eBay.com from September 2022 through July 2026 and counted 235 reports of fires.
The earlier warnings are smaller but follow the same pattern. A June 2025 Laboomkey warning documented 81 incidents of ignition, melting, smoking or overheating, with at least 31 confirmed fires, for heaters sold on Amazon.com from May 2023 through May 2025 at about $35. A January 2025 HAIYEATBNB warning recorded 29 incidents and at least 11 fires on heaters sold from June 2023 through November 2024 at about $20.
The timing is close. The Lakkzoom warning came 71 days before the Golden Resale recall, and the Lakkzoom sales window overlaps the whole February-to-August 2026 period in which the Golden Resale kits were listed on Amazon.com. Within a single marketplace season, then, CPSC issued two separate fire notices on the same class of heater.
Laboomkey and HAIYEATBNB were warnings, not recalls: the overseas importers refused to cooperate with CPSC, no remedy was available, and the agency urged owners to dispose of the heaters. The Golden Resale action differs in kind, as a formal recall of a complete shower kit by a distributor based in Mesa, Arizona.
Pump, bucket and heater in one kit
CPSC maintains a product page for electric immersion water heaters that collects its recalls and warnings in the category. The Golden Resale recall belongs to that group by mechanism: a high-wattage element, a metal housing and a fire that begins when the water disappears. What sets it apart is the packaging, since a camping shower pairs the heater with a pump that pulls water out of a small bucket, the very condition that exposes the element.
A rough calculation shows how little margin a small bucket leaves. Raising 5 gallons of water, about 19 liters, by 20 degrees Celsius takes roughly 1.6 million joules, which a 1500-watt element delivers in about 18 minutes. That is long enough for a user to start a shower, run the pump and drain the bucket while the element is still switched on, and it is the sequence CPSC describes when the water level falls below the heater.
The sales channels also matter. Amazon.com and Walmart.com are where the kits were listed, and the notice dates the sales to the six months from February to August 2026, so every kit is under a year old. At 400 units and about $60 apiece, the recall covers roughly $24,000 in sales at the listed price.
Against Lakkzoom’s 235 fire reports on about 98,000 units, the Golden Resale notice stands at zero reported incidents on about 400 kits, so the recall was announced with no injury on the record.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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