Tempstik affected by.......temperature

DaveT2

I know it sounds a strange title, but I think I've discovered one of those little undocumented quirks.

Due to the fact that:

(a) The garage is full.
(b) I can't get a builder who's not too busy to give me a quote for the wet-room I've been promising myself.
(c) I'm getting to be an old git who can't manage to carry the YBOD (no - thanks to Kent Tooling is now a SBOD) upstairs to where it used to be stored.

My wife has graciously allowed me to leave the unit in the conservatory, but the sofnolime stays in the garage.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, building up the unit, I fetch the lime from the garage, get the scrubber canister out of the conservatory and do a fill. I always connect everything up just make sure all the bells ring and the whistles, well whistle; before putting the scrubber in the unit. As soon as it fires up, the buzzer beeps and carries on beeping every couple of seconds. When it finally reaches the end of the road (after Must Calibrate! - NO), I see "Scrubber Warning".

Bit of a puzzler, but never being one to be put off by these things, I pull the scrubber apart and go and have a cup of tea. Fire it up without the Tempstik - no warnings. So I assume I must have not pushed the connection all the way home, or loosened something whilst trying to get the excess of cable to hide in the head and not get it trapped. Fire it up - no warnings, so I decide I must be a numpty who can't manage a simple push connector. We then went diving on 2 consecutive weekends and everything is just fine.

Tonight, went through the same procedure and voila! "Scrubber Warning".

But this time, brain was working a bit faster and made the following connection - Conservatory : very warm - Garage : cold.

What I think is happening is that I've got a hot Tempstik and cold sofnolime. As I believe the Tempstik works on temperature differential rather than absolute temperature, I think the controller is working on the principle:

Tempstik hot - Sofnolime cold; this only happens when the sofnolime has BEEN hot (ie working) and has cooled down (ie NOT working). So if all the Tempstik sectors are significantly hotter than the surrounding lime, then it must have used up all the scrubber.

So in the spirit of investigative science, I did absolutely nothing, apart from make another cup of tea and wait for the temperature to equalise between the 2. 20 minutes later - no warning.

So, after this long story, I guess the moral is store the canister and Tempstik somewhere cooler than our conservatory. Unless anyone else knows better.............

Dave Tomlinson

RAL

Humm... Dave do you think you could talk her into allowing you to store the sorb inside as well. I don't know about your garage but mine gets brutal as far as temperture extremes & you know what that will do to your sorb. I would rather use sorb that was out of date by a good bit that had been stored properly then new stuff that has been abused.
I know this not what you asked but I would hate to hear about you having sorb problem in some dark & scary place

Regards RAL

DaveT2

I think if you checked with most people in the UK - Sorb stays in the garage!

The storage range on the MP datasheet is 0-35degC, so living in the tropics of South Yorkshire, below zero is fairly rare - especially in a garage that's inside the house (if you know what I mean).

regards
Dave

caveseeker7

Dave, next time you do it breath off the loop.
That should get the absorbing process going and warm up the sorb.
The alarm should shut off ... unless the sorb is too cold to react with the CO2.
Then, have a cup of tea.
And fill us in.

__________________
Cheers
Stefan



"Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority,
and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media,
which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.!"