Interesting

Our house temp controls are a bit more midievel.

Little stove on low...and when the house gets too hot..turn the stove off.

House too cold...shut little stove off and turn on big stove.

Still too cold..crank up the big stove...still too cold, fire up the little one again.
If the weather gets colder and the two Whitfields can't hack it then we can resort to firing off the big Quad 1000

We have only run the Quad one winter since 2009/2010 when we installed the Whitfield Brothers (Little Prodigy 2 and the Advantage 2t) and then it was only for a few early weeeee hour runs for a day or two....

Hoooooman management technology

 

My house is only 1100 square feet so one stove is enough to blow us out. My typical pellet usage for the year is only 3000 pounds. Some years it's less than a ton!

 

alcohol on contacts does not always remove the oxidation. it is a game between MFG and repair techs mfg goes cheap[est way possible and we go for the least expensive way to correct their stacked tolerances. Conductive grease is your friend - a very thin film is all it takes to ward off the oxidation particularly on the plug in /on terminals and connectors. I still have a hateful relationship with those wire wrap connections. Wave soldering always was and still is prone to cold joints . Kinda like robotic welding of late/ pretty welds but no penetration.

 

Whatever,I am only trying to report the facts,as I see them

 

Yes indeed.

Sadly the poor solder joints can be nearly impossible to find, especially if they are the tiny ones.
A cracked trace on the board can also present issues that can be nearly impossible to locate

 

Yeah, I looked as closely as I could but didn't see anything. I did notice something that could prove it's a bad solder joint or a connection somewhere. It's been warm here the last day or so so the stove has only come on for a short period of time to take the chill off. It starts and runs perfectly. It's only when the stove runs often that I get the problem. So I suppose it could be affected by the heat generated in the board. When I change the board out I will bring the old board to my old place of employment and go in the electrical repair shop and use their microscope they they use for circuit boards. Maybe I'll find something.

 

Sounds like a plan...

If you can trace out the circuit that feeds from the ESP and then check that part of the board you may be able to find the gremlin.

A trace, a resistor, a bad solder joint....it can be any one of many things in that board.

Now if you could score a schematic of the board (Complete schematic of the board) and the company is not likely going to let loose of that info.....it would be pretty easy to figure out the trouble spot.

The ESP sends a signal to a particular component to switch power on or off and when the signal is not received the thing complains with the blinky lights...

Depending on what components were used it could be nearly impossible to find the issue without really knowing the layout of the board.....

I would bet that the factory has a test bench that can isolate problems right quick...and their engineering dept. has all the blue prints/CAD drawings.... of exactly wassssup in there.

Good luck on the little beast.

 

I'm sure getting a schematic would be next to impossible. I talked to one of the engineers at work and they said they would like to "play" around with the board after I change it out. I'll have a talk with him when the time comes.

 

That technical info is proprietary....and it would be impossible unless you have a mole in the Harman engineering office...and then likely not gonna happen...
All this proprietary stuff is why I went the way I did.

Built like a tank

 

That is an old school tank indeed!

 

Hi
Good to have a backup.
I have a P61a in the basement for the main heat for the house and a few backups.
Pic 1 - Basement P61a
Pic 2 - Backup P61a in garage that can still heat the house
Pic 3 - On Demand electric hot water panel for hot water
Pic 4 - Backup Buderus boiler for backup heat or backup hot water
Pic 5 - propane fireplace for backup heat in case of a power failure
Also note the 900 watt electric kick space heater built into the basement pellet stove raised hearth
and the hydronic kick space heater built into the propane fireplace raised hearth in the livingroom.
Pic 6 - Last but not least, good ole stinky the portable Kero heater to use wherever needed.
The above does not mention the workshop and shed pellet stoves either.

 

Don, you have backups to the backups!

 

...So now, about the rocks??

 

Well, the board came in. I set the dip switch and installed it. The stove fired up in its usual time...about 6 or 7 minutes...and ran until the thermostat was happy. It's off now and seems to run as it always had. I will report back hopefully with good news

 

Hope that fixes the issue and it performs flawlessly for years to come.

 

Great news.....

Sad part is you really have no clue as to what took a puke on the other board...
Swapping parts and praying is not my preferred way to fix stuff.

 

Me either Snowy. I used the process of elimination by checking and ruling out the ESP and all other connections. That data was backed up by the fact that the stove performed flawlessly in Stove Temp as it is running 100% off of the ESP. I was pretty confident that the board was at fault.

One other thing. I noticed that the ignitor stayed powered on for an extended period of time. Sometimes it would come on out of nowhere while the stove was running.

The stoves been on since 2 and it's working perfectly... (knock wood)

 

Likely your gremlin has been vanquished

 

I'll let you know tomorrow morning. So far it has been running for over 8 hours. Yay!