Quadrafire santa fe not feeding pellets

[tjnamtiw]

Linky no worky.

Yea, Smokey, I pulled a 'stupid' and linked to myself..........
The newer one should work.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Yea, Smokey, I pulled a 'stupid' and linked to myself..........
The newer one should work.

Don't feel bad tj I pull all kinds of stupids it goes with the territory. You know old ageitude does that. I can't come up with a valid reason for the voltage to drop to zero across the power leads other than a short in the motor or the so-called hot lead is some how shunted to ground. I've seen some strange wiring over the years.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Don't feel bad tj I pull all kinds of stupids it goes with the territory. You know old ageitude does that. I can't come up with a valid reason for the voltage to drop to zero across the power leads other than a short in the motor or the so-called hot lead is some how shunted to ground. I've seen some strange wiring over the years.

I'm with you, Smokey.

 

[55chevy]

Hey guys,

I made a mistake following the etches from pin 11. It does not go to the coil, it goes to the a resistor and Q5. I measure the voltage on the input to Q5 I get 120AC I measure the center pin which goes to the fan (pin 11) I get 0 with the snap disc jumped. Looks like a bad component.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Hey guys,

I made a mistake following the etches from pin 11. It does not go to the coil, it goes to the a resistor and Q5. I measure the voltage on the input to Q5 I get 120AC I measure the center pin which goes to the fan (pin 11) I get 0 with the snap disc jumped. Looks like a bad component.

What was the voltage on the gate? (the third pin)
http://www.ab.com/support/abdrives/documentation/fb/1012.pdf

 

[tjnamtiw]

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/castile-auger-motor-wont-shut-off-clear-control-box.103929/

 

[55chevy]

3rd pin had 120AC.

So in summary pin 1 and 3 120AC pin 2 0. Not sure how these Triacs work. More of a digital guy myself. It seems like the way they are used is to replace a relay? Maybe to limit current?

 

[tjnamtiw]

As far as I know (I'm from the tube era myself!), Triacs are switches. When the 'gate' gets a signal, it lets current pass. Not knowing the pin out of the Triac makes it impossible to know if pin 2 is the gate or the output. On most from what research I did, pin 2 is usually the output and pin 3 is the gate, which would point toward a bad triac. If it were me and the stove were out of warranty, I'd pull the triac out, get its number, look up the pin out and then test it per the link I posted.

 

[stoveguy13]

if you jump the wires out the wire off the snap disc that controls the conv. fan does the fan run?

 

[55chevy]

No fan no matter what.

From me chasing the etches I would say pin 1 is input (goes to AC line in). Triac pin 2 goes to the fan which should be output. So that leaves pin 3 as the gate. I got the number off the Triac and ordered a couple. I also read up a little. One thing I read was they are like a switch and one advantage was that they eliminate arcing like contacts.

Since I have AC on pin 3 I would think it would be doing something.

Stove is way out of warranty so I will replace when I get the new ones. I will post the result.

 

[stoveguy13]

have you put power direct to the fan?

 

[55chevy]

OK gents,

I replaced both Triacs (a lead broke on the other one when I was unbolting the heat sink) and I get the same result. I have 120 AC at the Snap disc until it shorts. or I jump it. Then it goes to zero.

I really thought I had it. I am pretty much out of ideas.


I will take it over to my friends house and see if it runs his fan. Just to verify it is the board.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Darn! The one thing I noticed in the link I posted above was this statement > 'check the aqh2223 when its pluged in it will get to hot to touch in about 10 seconds if its bad. the opto isolater will usualy get taken out when the relay goes bad.'

I still sure sounds like you have a short somewhere but I can't explain why you wouldn't blow a fuse.

Oh, and don't forget to unplug the stoves when you remove or replace the control boxes! You don't want to buy a new one for your buddy too

 

[rexbest]

Chevy55, I have a Santa Fe as well and have experienced a similar problem recently. I am not as electrically savvy as it appears you are but I have checked current at the snap discs and have reading there. I just pulled my auger motor and did the same as you did by hooking up a direct power cord to the red and black wires. All that the motor did was make some odd noise and jerk a little but no spinning. How did your auger react when you did this? Does it sound like this is a bad motor?

Thanks for any help you guys can provide.

 

[pen]

Welcome to the site @rexbest.

This thread is from a couple of months ago (Chevy55 hasn't logged in since Oct, but maybe this will wake him up if he gets an alert), if you aren't able to get your question answered in this thread, don't be afraid to start a new thread with more detail about what you are going through.

pen

 

[55chevy]

Chevy55, I have a Santa Fe as well and have experienced a similar problem recently. I am not as electrically savvy as it appears you are but I have checked current at the snap discs and have reading there. I just pulled my auger motor and did the same as you did by hooking up a direct power cord to the red and black wires. All that the motor did was make some odd noise and jerk a little but no spinning. How did your auger react when you did this? Does it sound like this is a bad motor?

Thanks for any help you guys can provide.

Hey guys,

when I jumped the auger motor it did turn so it sounds like you found your problem. Mine turned smoothly at a fairly slow pace Like I would have expected.

For the guys that helped me (over and over) with my problem I apologize for not letting them know the outcome. Probably because I cheated and was a little embarrassed. I did replace the Triacs and still no power to the recirculating fan. So here is the cheating part, I soldered a jumper between 120 AC input pin on the control board to the pin that goes to the snap disc for the recirculating fan. Since I was going to replace the board anyway I had nothing to lose. This works fine with the only concern being that the 120AC is always at the snap disc even when the stove is idle. The fuse is still in the circuit so if there was a problem you have protection. Probably not a recommended fix and I do plan on doing some more research when the weather is warmer and I do not need the stove. if I can find a schematic for the board It would be very helpful. Otherwise I am just shotgunning compontents

 

[tjnamtiw]

It sounds like you actually did what B-Mod and I did a couple of years ago but just in a little different fashion, 55Chev. Your convection fan always runs in high then, just as ours do, right? In my case, I got my 120 volts from the output side of the safety snap disc #3 so I have both the fuse AND the protection of an overfire condition afforded by the snap disk #3. You might want to change that just for safety's sake. Otherwise, It's nice to see you back. I've enjoyed your digging into the control board and have earmarked all that info. Like you, I wish we had a schematic of the box. I'm sure it's pretty 'caveman' logic in there!

 

[55chevy]

It sounds like you actually did what B-Mod and I did a couple of years ago but just in a little different fashion, 55Chev. Your convection fan always runs in high then, just as ours do, right? In my case, I got my 120 volts from the output side of the safety snap disc #3 so I have both the fuse AND the protection of an overfire condition afforded by the snap disk #3. You might want to change that just for safety's sake. Otherwise, It's nice to see you back. I've enjoyed your digging into the control board and have earmarked all that info. Like you, I wish we had a schematic of the box. I'm sure it's pretty 'caveman' logic in there!

 

[55chevy]

Yep, always runs on high. I always had it set on high anyway. Why did you guys jump the voltage?

It was kind of fun digging in to the circuits. I was an electrical engineer for many years designing circuit boards for computers. Back when it took a whole circuit board to run a disk drive. It has been a long time since I did any debugging so it brought back a lot of old memories. I am a program manager for the Air Force so they don't let me get to close to any logic or test equipment.

I did look up some of the components on the board and it does seem like a very simple logic. Even and old engineer could follow if he had a schematic. If you think about it there is really no much to it. With the Snap discs for protection the control board only has to control the feed (both start up and on going), turn th igniter on and off, and last sense if the fire started within a period of time.

I don't monitor the site a lot but if I see an alert I will respond. I appreciate all the help you guys gave me.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Yep, always runs on high. I always had it set on high anyway. Why did you guys jump the voltage?

It was kind of fun digging in to the circuits. I was an electrical engineer for many years designing circuit boards for computers. Back when it took a whole circuit board to run a disk drive. It has been a long time since I did any debugging so it brought back a lot of old memories. I am a program manager for the Air Force so they don't let me get to close to any logic or test equipment.

I did look up some of the components on the board and it does seem like a very simple logic. Even and old engineer could follow if he had a schematic. If you think about it there is really no much to it. With the Snap discs for protection the control board only has to control the feed (both start up and on going), turn th igniter on and off, and last sense if the fire started within a period of time.

I don't monitor the site a lot but if I see an alert I will respond. I appreciate all the help you guys gave me.

We jumped the voltage so that even if we run the stove on LOW, the convection fan will run on high to get the most turbulent flow through the tubes that we've put springs into to increase the surface area and create the most heat transfer.
I see the control box mostly there to control the speeds of the motors and 'marry' the protective logic of the snap discs and flame sensor, which is more complicated than it has to be. You could just as easily put a snap disc on the outlet of the exhaust fan to sense the presence of flame. I've played around with CUBLOC, which is a neat little compact controller. One advantage is that you can write in ladder logic, which I'm most familiar with from my engineering days writing programs for PLC'S to control assembly line equipment. You can also program them in Basic PLUS marry the two together with subroutines. I've gotten as far as to write some programs but didn't go any further yet. The programming language is free to download on line too. http://cubloc.com/ I know you'll find it interesting.

 

[rexbest]

Hey guys,

when I jumped the auger motor it did turn so it sounds like you found your problem. Mine turned smoothly at a fairly slow pace Like I would have expected.

For the guys that helped me (over and over) with my problem I apologize for not letting them know the outcome. Probably because I cheated and was a little embarrassed. I did replace the Triacs and still no power to the recirculating fan. So here is the cheating part, I soldered a jumper between 120 AC input pin on the control board to the pin that goes to the snap disc for the recirculating fan. Since I was going to replace the board anyway I had nothing to lose. This works fine with the only concern being that the 120AC is always at the snap disc even when the stove is idle. The fuse is still in the circuit so if there was a problem you have protection. Probably not a recommended fix and I do plan on doing some more research when the weather is warmer and I do not need the stove. if I can find a schematic for the board It would be very helpful. Otherwise I am just shotgunning compontents

Thanks for the reply Chevy55. I got a new motor today and it works fine but I still do not get a startup when I flip to heat. I did some more digging and it appears that my vacuum switch is the culprit now. I disconnected the leads and hooked a jumper wire between them and everything started working right. I did some meter checking on the vacuum switch posts and applied positive and negative pressure. When the switch made contact I would get a reading on my meter so it looks like my vacuum switch is still good (unless anyone can tell me different). I have checked the chimney pipe and it appears clean and I have done a pretty thorough clean out of the entire unit but I still cannot get it to work without jumping the vacuum switch. If I jump the vacuum switch for a couple of days to get through this cold snap does anyone see a problem?

 

[tjnamtiw]

By getting a reading on the snap disc, I'm assuming that if you were on ohms that it went to zero across the terminals when you put a vacuum on it. That rules out the vacuum switch and snap disc #2. Now you have to find out why there's not enough vacuum to close the switch. What heat setting are you using? Try it on HIGH for most vacuum. Make sure dump gate on bottom of burn pot is fully closed and is not hanging down (take out ash pan and look). Check door gasket with a dollar bill. It should show significant drag as you pull it out after closing the door. Make sure that the combustion fan turns freely by hand and you don't feel any resistance which would indicate a buildup of ash in that little chamber where it sits.

 

[rexbest]

By getting a reading on the snap disc, I'm assuming that if you were on ohms that it went to zero across the terminals when you put a vacuum on it. That rules out the vacuum switch and snap disc #2. Now you have to find out why there's not enough vacuum to close the switch. What heat setting are you using? Try it on HIGH for most vacuum. Make sure dump gate on bottom of burn pot is fully closed and is not hanging down (take out ash pan and look). Check door gasket with a dollar bill. It should show significant drag as you pull it out after closing the door. Make sure that the combustion fan turns freely by hand and you don't feel any resistance which would indicate a buildup of ash in that little chamber where it sits.

OK guys..If you ever want to talk with a bonehead give me a call. With the advice that you guys gave me I was able to get back up and running. I was able to clean out my flue to a point from both directions and ended up finding a huge build up of clinkers or creosote (whatever you want to call it). Ended up taking my flue pipe apart and getting to that area and thoroughly cleaned it out. Also learned (here is the bonehead part) you can't get vacuum if you don't have pellets in the hopper. I had a chimney sweep set up to come out Wednesday but was able to get a sweep brush and cleaned every inch of the pipe myself. Saved $100 there. Thanks for all of the advice. Also wanted to ask is there a brand of pellets available nationally that is low ash or comes highly recommended? I live in Kansas and the ones I get from Lowes or Home Depot seem to not burn as very good.

 

[tjnamtiw]

That's great news that you got it going! You are talking to a group of boneheads because we have ALL done stupid stuff, whether we want to admit it or not. Yep, without pellets you won't get enough vacuum to close the switch, especially on LOW. I discovered that and posted about it a couple of years ago. I guess I was troubleshooting a problem and hooked up a meter to the vacuum switch.
Stay warm. 7 degrees here in GEORGIA!! WTF did I move down here for???

 

[55chevy]

That's great news that you got it going! You are talking to a group of boneheads because we have ALL done stupid stuff, whether we want to admit it or not. Yep, without pellets you won't get enough vacuum to close the switch, especially on LOW. I discovered that and posted about it a couple of years ago. I guess I was troubleshooting a problem and hooked up a meter to the vacuum switch.
Stay warm. 7 degrees here in GEORGIA!! WTF did I move down here for???

I am interested in the springs you inserted in the tubes. Length, Diameter, anything special about them or did you just go to the hardware store and see what they had? Did it make a difference? I have a big family room (28', 32') with a 15' ceiling. When it get into the single digits the stove really struglles to keep up.

We were 57 on Monday, 2 this morning. I can't keep up.