Hi Jim, Next time keep some cognac in your boat, it may not keep you warm but at least you will have a smile on your face when they find you :-) Anyway, getting back to the failure mode analysis : I am glad you determined the root cause of the heat pump failure. Actually you found two root causes, the open 7.5uF capacitor and the dead battery at the thermostat. If you ever need to test your 7.5uF capacitor again, I recommend you connect the capacitor across your AC source and measure the current through it. I recommend you short the terminals of your series ammeter as you connect the capacitor across the line and then open the meter terminals, this way, the initial current surge will not take out the fuse in the meter. (Wear rubber gloves and eye protection or be very carefull, or ideally do both during testing) The 7.5uF cap across 120Vac at 60Hz should have about 340mA current through it. The equation for a 1uF capacitor getting discharged by 100k in 0.063 seconds et cetera has some major errors, I recommend you use to the current measurement described above. All the best, Ahmet sv8827
> Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 18:04:12 -0500 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] Motor start capacitor. > > Jim Lynch wrote: > > Ben Okopnik wrote: > > > >> On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 07:25:00PM -0500, Jim Lynch wrote: > >> > >> > >>> > >>> > >> The general rule of thumb is that you should replace those caps with > >> their exact replacements, or at least stay within 10% of the original > >> capacitance. In my experience, as long as the voltage rating is the same > >> or higher and the capacitance value is somewhere in the same universe > >> with the original one (-50% - +100%), it doesn't seem to make much of a > >> difference for start caps (not true for run caps, though.) Don't ever go > >> below the original voltage rating, though; the fireworks can be pretty > >> impressive. I know _all_ about it. :))) > >> > OK just as a followup. The cap was bad however when I replaced it the > motor only ran for a few seconds. I called Mermaid in Florida and > talked with Brian. Now it turns out Brian is a sales geek, not a > support fellow. He instructed me to remove the thermostat and twist > some wires together. Hm, so the blower IS working. He then said the > thermostat was bad. I looked at it critically and realized the 2AA > batteries were not 100%. In fact one of them was leaking a bit. I > replaced them and ...........It works! I'm not basking in warmth. > Well, it didn't hurt that the temp here got to 67 today, but the > A-C/heat pump works again. > > Jim. > _______________________________________________ > Liveaboard mailing list > [email protected] > To adjust your membership settings over the web > http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard > To subscribe send an email to [email protected] > > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ > > To search the archives > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > The Mailman Users Guide can be found here > http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
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