Firegods, help me troubleshoot! (~Enviro Meridian/GFI55)

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mroletta

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Hi folks,

I recently bought a GFI55 insert which is the exact same stove as the Enviro Meridian.

The install went well, but I had an odd issue with the stove.


I had ordered a new convection blower as the one that initially came with the stove was making a loud buzzing/humming noise. I swapped the new motor and went on a trip and left my wife to manage the stoves (I didn't test fire it after I swapped in the new part, as the house temp was 70F).

While I was out there, she called and let me know that she awoke one morning to find the stove was off. She tried turning it on that same day when she got home and it started okay and ran fine the rest of the evening.

I got home Sunday, cleaned out the stoves, and fired up the GFI55 last night to warm up the house before heading to bed. About an hour into the run, I heard the stove click and a change in the blower sounds. I walked over to the stove, and didn't notice anything in particular. The mode light was still on (blinking = startup, on = running), and the auger light was still feeding according to the setting it was on.

I tried turning up and down the stove heat level (1-5), and the auger and auger light would react accordingly by feeding more often/less often, but the convection blower wasn't changing speed to correspond with the setting change. The board would respond when I would change the feed/exhaust feed trim, but it wouldn't do anything when I tried toggling the convection blower on/off.

About 10 minutes later (I had lowered the setting to 1 from 3), I hear the stove change again, and walk over to see that the convection blower was off, but the mode light was still on and the auger was still feeding. I pushed the convection blower button and the fan started right up. About this time I just turned the stove off since I was heading to bed anyway.

I'll run it again tonight/tomorrow since I have a long weekend and can see how it behaves, but does anyone have any suggestions? It seems odd that I never noticed this behavior before I swapped the convection blower, but I can't see how that has anything to do with the odd behavior. I can't imagine it's hitting the upper temp switch as the blower is working fine/pushing out air, and even after the click/stove change it was still on and feeding.

Any help would be appreciated

Edit: I unplugged the stove when working on the blower, and I always ground myself before touching anything. The stove is plugged into a TripLite line conditioner/surge protector ~$100).
 
I had something similar happen to my M55. It was a magnet in the hopper lid not making contact with the switch when it closed. The stove would run normal, but the convection blower would turn off eventually. The stove would trip the hi limit switch as it got too hot as a result. Not sure if that's your problem or not, but sounds kind of similar.
 
Hmm good thinking, but my stove doesn't have a hopper lid switch.

I'm really at a loss as to what it could be. I'm anxious to go home this afternoon and see how it behaves. I'm trying to think of why the convection blower output from the board would be unresponsive, almost like if it was in a startup mode (i.e. in startup mode, once the convection blower kicks in, it still doesn't respond to on/off or change the voltage output to the blower if you change the heat level the stove will turn TO once it switches to on), but it was definitely in ON mode.
 
could the new convection blower be defective. Put the old blower back in if not to much trouble and see if you experience the same problem.
 
Well, I'll try tomorrow if I still keep seeing the same problem since I have the day off.

My only concern regarding that is that I see no reason why the control board would be unresponsive when I tried to turn off the blower. If the blower was bad, I could see not being able to turn it ON. If i can consistently get it to happen I'll wire in a DVM and monitor the output voltage and see what it's doing.
 
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