gremlin in Enviro EF4

[jtakeman]

If it isn't a flakey POT, I'm all out of help. With power off, Check the Ohm's on the low settings of the POT.

 

[Delta-T]

hmm. well, i suppose you could have the wires switched from the conv blower and the comb blower (just double check against the wire diagram), or there is a chance that the phase controller you got is not correct. with your multi-meter you can check to see if voltage drops out completely going to the comb blower, you could then check to see if voltage drops from the board, going to the phase controller. If you have volts coming from the board, but not from the phase controller, its pretty much the phase controller still.

 

[Kristy]

hmm. well, i suppose you could have the wires switched from the conv blower and the comb blower (just double check against the wire diagram), or there is a chance that the phase controller you got is not correct. with your multi-meter you can check to see if voltage drops out completely going to the comb blower, you could then check to see if voltage drops from the board, going to the phase controller. If you have volts coming from the board, but not from the phase controller, its pretty much the phase controller still.

It did it with the 1amp (wrong) phase controller they sent me as well. It originally came with a 6amp, and it now has a 10amp (they didn't have 6amp in stock and I would have waited 6 weeks for it). According too Infitec (the original manufacutrer) the 10amp version is overkill but should function properly with no issues (I specifcally asked -including what it was going in and what it controlled). Do you mean the wires are switched on the phase controller? I could double check that but, can you explain what affect that would have (before I go messing somehting up).

@tjakeman you think the Power Up Timer could be bad? Or is POT an acronym for something else?

 

[Delta-T]

POT= potentiometer...the knob contacts themselves.
the convection blower should turn on at a higher temp than the 140 (I call Proof of Fire Switch) switch, but if the wires for the convection blower are actually connected to the 140, and the combustion to the 160 (fan sensor) then you'd have the combustion blower turning off below 160 and the convection shutting off at 140. when it should be the other way around. Just double check, unlikely, since you have not mentioned unplugging the convection blower, but at this point, I bet you're game for anything, and I just want to cover bases. If it is the POT, then a $5 can of electronics cleaner form Radio Shack might fix that up just fine.

 

[Kristy]

POT= potentiometer...the knob contacts themselves.
the convection blower should turn on at a higher temp than the 140 (I call Proof of Fire Switch) switch, but if the wires for the convection blower are actually connected to the 140, and the combustion to the 160 (fan sensor) then you'd have the combustion blower turning off below 160 and the convection shutting off at 140. when it should be the other way around. Just double check, unlikely, since you have not mentioned unplugging the convection blower, but at this point, I bet you're game for anything, and I just want to cover bases. If it is the POT, then a $5 can of electronics cleaner form Radio Shack might fix that up just fine.

OK, I removed both grey wires from the phase controller and put probes on the phase controller prongs to try and measure resistance across it (in Ohms). Hopefully I did this right. Across every possible selection of Ohms I got no no reading. 3 questions, 1. Did I measure this in the proper manner? 2. Is the tool I used appropriate/the selections on the upper right correct to try and measure the resistance? 3. With no reading, does this mean I need to replace the dial a fire or is there a seperate potentiometer I am unaware of? Here is what I used to measure with:

 

[Delta-T]

you want to measure volts (vAC) to make sure power is moving from 1 component to the next. That meter will do just fine for everything, no worries.

 

[Kristy]

Just to update for anyone else who might have an EF4 with the same problem. Someone gave me a referral to contact an enviro service technician (thank you very much), and he diagnosed the problem as one of the POT in the dial a fire. So I replaced the dial a fire and the stove works properly. He informed me that when the ignitor shorts it can mess up the electronics further up the line. My ignitor would still light (after a long time-I usually had to push the start up button twice), but obveously it was going bad. Ironically I had replaced the ignitor last winter, but didn't think it related to my problems (shows how much I know). For anyone else with a similar problem the dial a fire has 2 POT in it. To test them, you need to probe the pair of yellow wires coming from the Dial a fire and test the Ohms. It should range from 800 to 900 KOhms on the low fire to 36.5 KOhms on the high fire. I am unsure of what the symptoms of this potentiometer being bad are. For the other potentiometer (the one bad on my stove) you probe the grey wires coming off of the dial a fire and test the Ohms. It should read between 10 Ohms and 400 KOhms (depending on the setting of the dial a fire). So in summary, if your stove will run, but when you turn the stove off or the dial a fire below 12 o'clock and the exhaust fan shuts down, your dial a fire is bad. I hope this helps anyone else with the same problem. I'm just happy to be done with it. Thank you all for your help.

 

[jtakeman]

Glad you got it going again! I had a feeling it was the pot. If it gets to low a reading the phase controller will just shut off.

I hope Enviro offers a digital upgrade kit in the future. IMHO the phase controller is/was a nightmare!