Posted by:
zefdin
at Sun Dec 30 11:04:05 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by zefdin ]
Your question about why the thermostat didnt shut off when the flexwatt burnt is a good one. It seems to me that what probably happened is that the flexwatt over-heated only in the spot where the hole burned into it. If the temperature probe on the thermostat wasnt near this spot, the thermostat woud have no way of knowing that it was overheating somewhere else in the strip.
I would really like to inspect this flexwatt and see if the heating element portions are still working, either before or after (or both) where the burn hole is? Flexwatt is setup with two "rails", one running down each side of the flexwatt and this is where the A/C power is connected and the heating element is between these two rails. It works like the rear window defogger on your car. Alot of times in your car one or two of the heating elements will burn out and stop working, but the others will continue to function and you will have unmelted strips of ice on your rear window. This is because your rear defogger and flexwatt are both parallel circuits. The flexwatt is so much more dangerous because(in addition to it being in your house), the 120Volt AC line power used in the flexxwat application is capable of supplying far more current than the 12 Volt DC from your car battery. If you wanted to be able to remotely monitor this for failure, you would need to monitor current draw and/or line voltage drop on the fexwatt in addition to the thermostat alone that most people use...
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Thermostat question - zefdin, Sun Dec 30 11:04:05 2007