Fire!

d2mini

d2mini

Reef enthusiast
I awoke this morning to a burning electrical smell. Opened up the tank stand and damn it stunk! Checked the rkl display and my temp was at 85.3!! Pulled the heater out of the sump and it started sizzling. Through it back in, went around to the other side where it plugs into my rkl and the outlet was melting! The rkl sees to still be functioning but that one outlet is toast. The heater was a Blue Line Titanium heater.

Any idea what caused this and which piece of equipment is to blame???? Crap, that was a close call not only for my tank but for my house! :shock:
 
holy crap that's scary glad you did not sleep in this morning.glad you and the house are safe.that's weird they are both good quality pieces of equipment.wonder if the heater stuck and was to much draw on the outlet
 
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I don't know, but the rkl should have shut off that outlet if the water got too hot. Apparently it didn't.

Here's the PC4.

1196333226_JqxbA-O.jpg
 
Is it possible that you got some salt creep in there? that would certainly cause it, but I know you keep your cabinet nice and tidy...

As a general rule, I would assume it would be the cheapest piece of equipment first...In your case, the heater.
 
Here's a pic of what I Pm'd you about. The 2 circles in front are lights that you pull out and can rotate.
 

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Holy moly!!! what's up with these non-glass heaters??? First marineland stealth, next your titanium! I thought you had a finnex? You should put in a complaint with your heater's company, just so they can know if many more people call in with the same problem.

I am picking up my via aqua titanium heaters today....I hope I won't be having the same problems. Luckily, my stealth marinelands haven't blown up yet. :shock:
 
:shock: Wow - glad you were able to catch this! This should be a good reminder to all of us in the hobby how serious issues like this can get.
 
I'm about to run to work. PRC, i'll take a look at that later this morning.
But real quick... I'm not sure if its the heater or not. That particular heater needs a controller to run, it doesn't have its own thermostat. It's controlled completely by the PC4. So I would think it could only get stuck on if the PC4 was stuck on. It should have sensed the water was too hot (like it doesn't all day every day) and turned off, but it didn't. And with the outlet looking like that??? I dunno. I turned the whole pc4 off. No dosing calc/alk today.
 
Den, with that set up, I'd agree that it should have shut off the heater when it sensed the high temp, so I'd suspect the problem is with the controller over the heater. Maybe something internally shorted and held open a connection to the heater.
 
I have been reading alot of complaints with the titanium heaters recently. The first people I would contact would be the controller people. Your controller should have shut it off. Does your system send out alerts, or alarms if there is a problem?
 
parrotchute said:
Maybe something internally shorted and held open a connection to the heater.
Click to expand...

Definitely a short somewhere. Good call.

Malfunction of a heater prolly would not do that. The melting of the outlet indicates there was a higher current running through there than it could handle. But what gets me when this happens is why the power strip doesn't flip when this happens... were any cords melted/deformed?? The reason I ask is the power supply to my computer caused a similar problem and it was because the cord they gave me with the power supply couldn't handle the wattage it drew from the outlet >_< So the cord started melting and burned the power strip and all, good thing I was there! But that was a quick problem that happened on the initial usage of it : /

If your setup has been running for a while it prolly wasn't that..

The most probable cause was from a short somewhere, but where? Usually it would be from water shorting it out but yours is prolly pretty clean and leak free so idk...

Must have been an internal short in the controller! Maybe >_<!?

Can you decide the setup a little better? Outlet(GFCI?) => Power Strip => Controller => Heater?
 
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Ya, i too am surprised the whole unit didn't turn off. The other three outlets on that PC4 were still functioning. They run two of my dosing pumps and a fuge light. Everything was working.

It's set up as House Power => GFI Outlet => DJ Strip => PC4

Neither the GFI nor the fuse in the DJ strip tripped.
Interestingly though, the two PC4's were plugged into one of my other two DJ strips until a few weeks ago. That strip kept tripping. So I moved both PC4's to another strip that had two empty outlets left as a test. This dj strip hasn't tripped. So I don't know if the first one was picking up some odd current from the PC4, or if that dj strip was just going bad, or it was all just a coincidence.

The heater cord seemed fine, other than the plug on the end that was melting.

This PC4 is unplugged now. The other one that runs my lights and system pump is still running.
 
Sorry to hear about this, glad nothing of significance (Not that your cube isnt significant) was harmed

Just a reminder that even though we use GFCI and strips, this can still happen. Scary :shock:
 
Wow I'm glad u caught it! I would contact the place that made your heater because a lot of them have insurance where they will pay for any damage and replace the heater. my friend had one that got to hot and killed her fish and the company paid and replaced everything.
 
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