Element not working on first test run

BobH · Joined: 01 Jun 2017 Posts: 6

The good news is that I fired up my panel for the first time yesterday. And almost everything worked!

One of the element select lights and a pump indicator light didn't come on when they were supposed to. I need to check if the lights are defective or if the wiring is wrong. One PID and the timer alarms went off when the switch was flipped so I'm not sure if the other two PIDs are hooked up correctly or not. I didn't mess with any settings to try to set off an alarm to keep things simple this first time. Everything else seemed to work-the element and pump outlets all had power at the outlets, the switches turned on power, most lights worked, the alarm works and, most importantly, no flames or smoke! (low voltage, probe wires and safety interlock were left out for safety and simplicity for the first test)

After checking everything over several times, I decided to take the next step and plug in my boil kettle to check if 220V was flowing correctly to each of the outlets. Filled the kettle with water, plugged it in, turned the switch, "click" and......it seemed like nothing. Wait 10 minutes. Still nothing. Non-contact tester says the wire to BK is energized. Take the cover off of the element to test the wires. My tester has 2 lights, one lights up for 110 and the other lights up for 220. Touch black & ground. 110 lights up. Touch white to ground. 110 lights up. Touch white to black, nothing. I'm not experienced working with 220, but I'm thinking that 220 should have lit up when I touched the black to white since they both lit up 110 with the ground and I think this means my element is fried (or actually, the exact opposite of that, see below). Is my understanding of 220 correct?

More on my element: When I did my initial test run with the heating element a month ago (I built the boil kettle first while waiting for panel parts to arrive), it was 19*F in my garage. The water came to a boil just shy of 20 minutes. Great! Unplugged. Dumped the water on the yard and left the keg in the garage. About an hour or so later it dawned on me that it may not be the best to leave the empty but still wet kettle out in the garage with it that cold and brought it inside. The small amount of water left at the bottom had frozen. Unsure about anything else. Yesterday's test was the first time since then that the element has been plugged in and it didn't work. My guess is that the water froze, cracked the element and now there isn't a complete circuit to make the 220 light come on but I am unsure and seeking guidance. Any help is appreciated.

**kal** · Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:14 pm Post subject:

Hi!

CHeck out the troubleshooting thread here: http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25460
Specifically the section " My heating element is not firing at all! (or firing continuously) ". It'll walk you through step by step to find out where the issue is. There's any number of places that there could be an issue - it's a common problem and can occur due to incorrect wiring, incorrect PID settings, incorrectly using the PID, a defective part, or a combination of the above.

Good luck!

Kal