Heater goes haywire

"Tristan" wrote in message
...
I ofund out a long time ago the biggest weak link in a setup be it
fresh or salt is the heater.......MOst SW will continue on if lights
go oout or if a p[ump or p ower head fials as they usually have more
than one pump or powehead, but a heater that fails to keep a tank
warm enough or one that boils the inhabitands is sure not good to
have. I use a separate temperature ocntrol unit anymore on all my
tanks. Expensive....yes and no......Its not as expensive as some of
the fish or corals we buy are, so when yu consider the value of corals
and fish in a tank, they are really cheap to buy for peace of mind.

I use the Aqua Logic Digital Temp controls that AES sells for a bit
more than $100. I set the temp onthe controller to what I want, turn
up heater to that point or just a bit above,or even on HI, and plug
it into the controller, drop controllers sensor and the heater into
the tank, turn it all on and for the most paart ignore it. Its got a
digiotal display to indicate settings and temp of tank or even air. I
played with one of these controllers to turn on my fans automatically,
but then came up with a schematic for a thermistor (I think thats the
right term) to control my fans...)which worked fine, but I have since
lost track of my schematic...as I think working of water temp would be
a better more accurate method than working off air temp..... and my
unit has died, and I am not that electronics savy) anyway any decent
quality heater controled by Aqua Logic controller is pretty darn
reliable and bullet proof........lots more so than the controls found
in a typical heater.

I use the TC11 mainly but do have two TC12's in use as well, as they
control other devices like my home brew chiller etc.


I use the
On Thu, 01 Feb 2007 22:46:21 -0500, KurtG
wrote:


I just pulled a heater out of my sump. It was 82.8 and it was still
heating.

How often do these go haywire? There seems to be lots of stories of
run
away devices. You'd think they could design them to fail by turning
off
rather then on.

I certainly like my digital thermometer w/ an alarm. I think it just
earned the $10 I spent on it.

--Kurt



-------
I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!

Tristan,
You nailed it on the head
"Its not as expensive as some of
the fish or corals we buy are, so when you consider the value of corals
and fish in a tank, they are really cheap to buy for peace of mind."

I personally have thousands tied up in my 3 tanks with rock, corals, fish,
inverts and etc. A few hundred bucks is very cheap insurance against losing
it all due to a stuck heater, chiller or etc. My wife wasn't thrilled at the
costs when I first started yrs ago with of all these gadgets but after
seeing a few crashes due to something staying on or off she understands all
too well now. She actually is the one that requested on our new house that
we had an automated whole house generator be integrated into the build.

Makes you feel better having back ups if you are away from the tank allot
for travel, vacations or etc and no one is watching them all day.

Also if you see condensation in the heater, then
it's time to change it. Moisture will cause
corrosions of the electrical contacts. and the
corrosion will cause them to stick.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets


KurtG wrote on 2/1/2007 10:46 PM:

I just pulled a heater out of my sump. It was 82.8 and it was still
heating.

How often do these go haywire? There seems to be lots of stories of run
away devices. You'd think they could design them to fail by turning off
rather then on.

I certainly like my digital thermometer w/ an alarm. I think it just
earned the $10 I spent on it.

--Kurt

Like I posted in a previous post. The price of a simple electronic
temp controller is dirt cheap compared to whata prices we pay for the
critters in our tanks, and a well made reliable unit can be had for
about $105 from Aquatic Eco Systems in Florida. Lacking the funds to
buy the temp controller, its best to divide the required heater
wattage amount in half and use two heaters to achieve the needed
wattage, as this will reduce or at least delay overheating and also
help with allowing a tank to get too cold if one of th eheaters
happens to fail.

An alarm is nice, as is a gen set in power outages, but it does
little good if your not there when it activates or the power goes off!
;-)


Its thematerials they make the bi metal switch out of. They use IIRC
positive co-efficient materials as they are cheaper, and requires less
parts etc to make it work. We had temp controls on aircraft that used
negative coefficient parts and they were about 4 times the price of
what a positive coefficient unit was. Last thing you would want is the
aircraft heater to stick on in a sinfle seat fighter aircraft ;-) YOu
can always drop down in altitude and point canonpy to sun to warm up a
bit, but cooling down is much harder to do when oiy have 1100 deg
bleed air pouring into thatsmall cockpit space.... I guess thats why
we only pay about $20 bucks for a name brand heater in most cases.....


On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:38:22 GMT, Wayne Sallee
wrote:

Also if you see condensation in the heater, then
it's time to change it. Moisture will cause
corrosions of the electrical contacts. and the
corrosion will cause them to stick.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets


KurtG wrote on 2/1/2007 10:46 PM:

I just pulled a heater out of my sump. It was 82.8 and it was still
heating.

How often do these go haywire? There seems to be lots of stories of run
away devices. You'd think they could design them to fail by turning off
rather then on.

I certainly like my digital thermometer w/ an alarm. I think it just
earned the $10 I spent on it.

--Kurt



-------
I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!