Timely reminder - Fan Heaters, check for hot running and clean.

Tim W · 2009-12-28T16:25:44+00:00

Worth a little mention I think.Noticed two of my fan heaters were running cherry red on parts of the element, whihc is not normal for my ones. Obviously a bit scunged up, so after adapting some screwdrivers and torx bits to get round the damnable security screws I took each one apart for a good clean up.Scunged up was an understatement. One had a nearly continuous but thin mat of fluff across the back of the element block. 2 others were going that way of which one had stopped working. The last, an ancient second hand one was merely a little dusty.Simple enough job, bar the security screws. Managed to fix the broken one - it was the only one without a melting type thermal fuse - it had a set of bimetallic contacts instead, which I think may have operated and then got some shite lodged in between the contacts.Worth a check if you have a fan heater or two running somewhere and haven't already thought to do so.The 3 that were clagging up had air intakes on the base as well as the top which seems to be a fundamentally bad idea. The dusty one was top intake only, and made by Honeywell.Honeywell seem to have the best internal engineering, though they were all pretty solidly built bar the stupid design decision.

Dec 28, 2009 61 Replies

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Grimly Curmudgeon 16 years ago

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Jules saying something like:

Same on mine. There's a definite correlation with humidity, ie, high RH, sticky shift.

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Jules 16 years ago

Hmm, not so sure with mine - we're at 63% RH here, and the key seems no more or less sticky than during the summer months. Pressed anywhere in the last right-hand 10% of the key length, it doesn't want to go down, but is fine in the other 90% (actually, I realised that perhaps we're describing different problems; with mine the problem is that the key sticks and won't go down - not that it sticks and won't come back up once pressed)

That RH shift key is the longest key other than the spacebar, but (unlike the spacebar) there's no sway bar* underneath it - I think that might be the problem with mine, in that the key just tilts too much (and given the age, maybe there's a wear issue at play) when pressed right on the outer edge in the last 10%.

not on my early one, anyway - not sure if they added one on later models...

Adding a sway bar might be possible, but that's a rainy-day project for when I get sufficiently annoyed by it :-)

cheers

Jules

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