Poorly fermentation fridge!

[Dabooka]

Well that went well. After getting my fridge up and running at the weekend, I dropped my FV of wherry in there and merrily left it at a nice 21 while I sat inside feeling all smug. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=64979

Popped out to the shed and found the heater hasn't came on; fridge temperature dropped to about 15! FOr now I've bought the FV back inside and will give it a gentle stir with me spoon. Then it's back to the fridge to see what the problem is. Relay clicks on, fridge clicks when temperature changed to 10 so asusming it's the bar heater. Only been on a few hours form new so not impressed if it's borked already. I do have a 'spare' STC-1000 should it be that, but I guess not.

A very quick check shows the wiring looks intact, can anyone think of anything obvious I missed? I'm gutted about this, my last two kits were unsucvcessful becaue (I assume) I had real trouble managing the temperature throughout, and hoped this would fix that. I'v even got the gubbins for another all sorted except the bar heater, hence the spare the STC.

Cheers,

Dabooka

[joe1002]

Why don't you plug the heater straight into a plug socket, that will soon tell you whether it's the heater or not. My first heater went pretty quickly, it was a tool station one.

[LeeH]

Same think happened to mine, it was a faulty heater. Only lasted a few months.

[Dabooka]

Cheers chaps, that's my plan to wire it up direct and see what happens. Worringly mine is a Toolstation jobbie too....

[lord groan]

does sound like the heater doesn't it.
Just one other thing to check on, how is the control wired? The heater couldn't be wired into the cooling side could it, hence not coming on because the temp is below 21c
On my first attempt at a stat controlled heat box I wired the stat in reverse so the heater only came on when it was above the target temp rather than below target. The wiring was perfect but it was effectively wired to cool rather than heat

[Dabooka]

Well it was the heating element (I had wired it up incorrectly first time Lord Groan, but that wasn't the cause this time ).
As I had nothing to lose I took it apart yesterday, and after drilling the rivets out I found the heating 'element' (thin wire) had burnt out where it connects to the temrinal. I assume it was grotty or something and over heated, so I just bent open the terminal and reattached it after rerouting it a little. Been on since and seems to be working fine.

I couldn't just chuck it out, I mean there's no parts in there to fail really. Bloody annoying though.

[Jocky]

Helps if you wire up sockets to the temperature controller, and put plugs on your heater and fridge. That way you can test/replace everything independently.