What to do if the thermal cutoff fails in a Vornado heater (or any similarly made device). Don't forget to subscribe! They matter and are appreciated. Thanks!
i have a VH2 heater like this one i have gotten enough spare thermal cutoff fuses before radio shack went out so im well stocked on them. as well as the power switch i had to replace on it it failed so got some on hand too. as the heater is still working great. i mainly run it on low setting but when its really cold out i run it on the high setting. being they use 12.5 amps the replacement switch must be adquate for it.
That's always an option, but I'd recommend running them on the low heat setting. You can still heat a room with them on the lower setting. It just takes longer to heat the room. It avoids the temperature and load extremes that break these things. Good luck!
Mine just went out & it was making funny noises before it went out. The only fix that works for now is the on switch won't turn off. But if I wedge a metal piece into the crevice of the on/off button it turns on & works. Is the power switch the issue? Or is it something worse? I just don't want it to blow up or something 😂
@@ZillaMesh Yes. They are poorly designed, however. You might have to do it more than once over the lifetime of the unit. I never run mine in high heat mode for that reason anymore.
I know this is old but I just found it and I have a similar one but I cannot get the two top deep screws out using the Phillips head if there’s some other tool to get the screws open?
I doubt it. They might have used torx screws at some point, but that seems unlikely. You may want to try different sizes of Phillips heads. Maybe your driver is just too big or too small.
I see you're still replying to comments, so I thought I'd ask a question. I have a similar heater, used up till 2 years ago. Need to use it again and fan won't run and no heat. My switch light does turn on. Sounds like it could be this thermal but off, right?
I can't remember if a blown thermal fuse will keep the fan from turning, but it would be pretty easy to probe around in there with a voltmeter to see where the open circuit is. I've done two videos on the subject. One fail was a thermal cutoff, and the other was just the main switch was blown. I'd put equal odds on either. My heater still works, but I never run it at full power, since in my opinion it wasn't really designed well to handle the full load. On medium heat though, it seems to do pretty well. Good luck!
Sounds like bad thermal cutoff's to me. If that's the case, this video should offer some useful tips. Bypass that cutoff with a screwdriver or heavy gauge wire and if the thing turns on, you've isolated your problem. Check the power switches as well. They don't handle the high currents very well and can melt open.
The rheostat on my VH110 seems to be giving up. When the heater is running you can see the area below the rotary knob occasionally arc and spark, and when it does the heater shuts off. I suspect it's the rheostat because if you turn the heater upside down or move it around the rheostat appears to make a better connection, and the heater starts working again. I'm considering just cutting the wires running to the rheostat (or potentiometer) and splicing them together. My understanding is that doing so would just make the heater/fan run at full "throttle" for whatever position the switch is set to. Not a problem for my application. Is this something you'd consider? Don't care to buy parts for a $5 swap meet heater. Thanks!
If you know the potentiometer has gone bad, you can bypass it, but at the risk of also bypassing any fixed base resistance that is supposed to be there for a properly functioning heater, even at full throttle. If that's the case you could fry it by doing a bypass. I'd measure all the resistances with the thing unplugged before doing any bypass operations. Make sure you're really getting what you think by doing that. In my mind, the best option would be to replace the potentiometer with something equivalent.
@@DoctorFixMaster Good thinking, and easy to check that the potentiometers "full throttle" is actually 0 ohms... didn't think of that. Thanks for the tip.
Not sure if you're still responding but my VH2 is now acting up. You can hear what I'm assuming is the thermostat clicking and clicking over and over when it tries to kick in the heat. It turn it all the way high heat it seems to work for a bit and then clicking starts and the heat goes on and off. Would it be the same fix you think?
Your problem sounds like something else. When the thermal cutoff fails, the heat doesn't come on at all, so I don't think that's it. The thermal cutoff is also a solid state device, so it is unlikely that you'd hear a click coming from it. I seem to recall another device in there near the thermal cutoff that was another fail safe against a heater getting too hot which looks like a mechanical temperature sensing device. At 7:00 in the video I give a good look at it and talk about it a little bit. That could be the sensor device which allows you to set the temperature like a thermostat. It will click on and off whenever it is doing it's job, according to what you have the temperature setting set to on the top of the unit. The temperature setting is probably a rheostat (a variable resistor). If that goes bad, it could also cause what you're experiencing. The fact that your unit is turning on and off means all the heating equipment works, so now you just have to figure out if the rheostat has gone bad or the temperature sensor. I'd guess it was the rheostat. You should be able to short the rheostat (approximating its max heat setting) to test it. If the thing goes on and stays on, then you know your rheostat is bad and you can just order a new one to replace it. If the actual heat sensitive on/off switch has gone bad, it's new territory for me. I'm not sure where you'd find one of those, but I'm sure they exist. You might have to probe around with a voltmeter while its running. That should also clearly indicate where the problems is, because you could compare voltages when the heat is on vs off and see if they are in normal ranges for those two devices. Good luck!
I changed my mind. A rheostat is usually pretty reliable, and if you observe the same phenomenon at a high temperature setting as well as a low temperature setting with repeated on/off cycles, I'm guessing that little temperature sensor is bad. Anything mechanical is usually the first thing to go in a system like this.
I have the same problem. On the thermostat there is what looks like a rheostat (I think, it's on and off not varying voltage), it's a part of the tip over safety. There are 2 plates are joined by some type of different metal and that metal piece is no longer connecting the plates. There is arcing between the 2 plates. I have tried to see if you could replace that thermostat switch but I can't find the part. You can join the plates or just bypass the switch, so it's either on or off. I don't mind bypassing the thermostat but I worry about bypassing the tip over function. I have this setup to a smart switch that turns on/off depending on a temperature sensor in the same room. I'm seeing another comment below that this is called a potentiometer and is a common failure area
@@bsteimel I suppose someone could bypass such devices with some kind of well oriented mercury switch to preserve the tip over safety feature, but the unit would no longer sense temperature and would run at the same setting all the time. I've seen other heaters that had a mechanical tip over switch mounted into the bottom of the unit. That would also work, but you'd have to jury rig it. That mechanical temp sensor device is strange. I have no idea where someone could get something like that. :( It might be fun to just probe around with a meter on a good unit to see exactly what it is doing while in operation. That might provide enough clues to rig up a suitable equivalent. The functions are pretty simple.
My fan stopped working. The red power light comes on, but the yellow fan light does not. I was hoping it was just the thermal cutoff, I took the unit apart and found it, bypassed with a piece of metal, but still no fan. Any ideas? Fan switch? If so, where could I find another?
It sounds like what I saw on another Vornado heater I own. I'd bet money it's your power switch. Check out this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GELccLGT8ys.html
@@DoctorFixMaster Thanks, just ordered the two pack of switches. I know the unit over heated. Had it under a tarp trying to dry something out. So the power for the fan runs thru this red on/off switch?
@@martywilliams3425 The power through the entire unit runs through that switch. If you run it on high for a long time, it will melt out until it open circuits. For that reason (poor design), I only operate my Vornado in its lower power setting.
@@DoctorFixMaster I must have a smaller unit, as the power is either on or off. The only high low setting is on the fan switch. Will change out the power switch and go from there.
@@martywilliams3425 It will be easiest to figure out if you can probe around in there with a voltmeter to see where voltage is going and where it isn't. My guess though is one of the switches, even if yours is a different model. The fact that it failed during a high workload event suggests to me a switch issue, but it could be a number of things. A meter will make it much easier to track down. Put the meter on the terminals of the fan. If you have power there, you know your fan is bad. If you see nothing, then the fan is getting no power and you have to trace it back from there to the failed component that isn't letting power through.
Hi DoctorFixMaster - I have a DTVH and AVH2 that both have what seems to be a bearing issue - fan works at high speed but grinds to halt when in heater mode. Do you know a fix for that? I would be willing to buy a new motor if I could find it - Thanks
The fan and the heating coil are separate functions. If the fan works at high speed fan only, then your fan motor is probably fine. If the fan stops when you engage the heater mode, there is likely a short in it somewhere that not only disables the heating coil, but shuts down the fan because you're dumping all the power to ground. If you put an ammeter on the supply line, you could measure the current in heater mode and see if you're pulling a lot of current during that time. That would confirm the problem. The only way to diagnose a short is to take a volt meter and start probing the circuit all the way through from the supply, through the switch, on the fan motor terminals and finally the coil itself. The voltages near the defective component will be very low, because a shorted device will dump all the current to ground. Be careful, and good luck!
I don't know what a 'mains' component is, but if you're talking about the solder free thermal cutoff, that's exactly what I did. Pulling that much current through it would be a problem with a solder connection, so I assume that's why it was originally built with solder free crimp connections.
I don't know if Vornado even sells replacement parts. In this particular case, I just identified the bad component and replaced it with an equivalent that I ordered from a major electronic component distributor. Digi-Key in this case.
According to video, Microtemp G4A00, a thermal cutoff at 152C. Rated 10AMP. I found a similar part on Amazon with higher cutofff. Works. May have fewer nuisance trips, use at your own risk. Thanks for video.
