AC3 Temp probe

[iangibby]

I was giving my daughter a bath and happened to look at my phone " ok i was playing scrabble" and my temp read 121*F. So yelling to my wife to take over the bathtub watch while im running to the basement to see what everything looked like boiled. Thankfully everything was happy and swimming. Heres what my controller status showed.

 

00:00 01/19/2012 78.0 8.43 01:00 01/19/2012 77.8 8.41 02:00 01/19/2012 78.0 8.40 03:00 01/19/2012 77.8 8.39 04:00 01/19/2012 77.8 8.38 05:00 01/19/2012 77.8 8.40 06:00 01/19/2012 77.9 8.41 07:00 01/19/2012 77.9 8.41 08:00 01/19/2012 77.8 8.42 09:00 01/19/2012 77.6 8.42 10:00 01/19/2012 77.4 8.43 11:00 01/19/2012 77.3 8.44 12:00 01/19/2012 77.3 8.45 13:00 01/19/2012 77.6 8.50 14:00 01/19/2012 78.0 8.53 15:00 01/19/2012 18.9 8.56 16:00 01/19/2012 18.9 8.57 17:00 01/19/2012 18.9 8.59 18:00 01/19/2012 18.9 8.59 19:00 01/19/2012 18.9 8.56

I need to figure out weather its the controller or the temp sensor. How many people use their controller to manage the temp? After looking at how many times its turning on and off my heater oulet im wondering if its too much? Also any LFS have an AC3 temp probe fs? Thanks for any input!!

 

 

[Jon Lazar]

I've seen other people experience wild fluctuations in their temperature readout (but not the actual temperature), but it's not all that common.

 

I think it's a best practice to add a couple lines of code that sense for a temperature well below and well above what you can reasonably expect to see, and turn your heater off and sound the alarm. For example, in addition to your normal temperature control and alarm codes:

 

If Temp < 50.0 Then HTR OFF

If Temp < 50.0 Then ALM ON

If Temp > 100.0 Then HTR OFF

If Temp > 100.0 Then ALM ON

[Coral Hind]

Check the connector going into the unit to make sure it is seated well. I use my ACIII to control two of my heaters but I also have a Ranco plugged into my DC8 as a backup temp controller. I also have another Ranco in the sump in the garage with two heaters plugged into that as a backup.

 

From my experience having probes for both the Ranco and ACIII going bad, normally when the probes go bad the temp reading will be higher then actual. With wiring issues like connectors or broken wires it results in really low reading from the actual.

[iangibby]

I think I isolated the problem being the probe. With the probe plugged in and go to calibrate it I cant manually go below 107F, with it unplugged I can so hopefully it is just the probe. I can also see water seeping out of the seal around the probe wire. Thanks for the input!!

[darkcirca]

I've had 2 probes go bad on my ACJr, as they were the old design. Both times the temps read high when they failed as well, so my guess is on the probe. Both were less than a year after purchase.. one was about 20 days, the second was 10 months.