Broken Heater

While the HVAC technicians praised my overdone heater install they suggested that they would have gone with a higher quality heater than I did. By that point I already had it hanging from the ceiling and I had good luck with Mr Heater at the old house so we went ahead with the install.

Within weeks the insulation inside the heater came unglued from the panels and the fan sent the little shiny pieces flying all over the shop. Mr heater sent me a replacement foam but no instructions and I saw no way to reapply it without taking the heater down and completely apart so I just removed as much as I could reaching in and called it good enough.

A little more than a year after that I got an alert e-mail from Honeywell that the shop thermostat was offline. I’m pretty used to getting these when we have a power or internet outage but I was home the whole time and knew there were no issues. When I went to investigate there was no familiar green glow in the inception shed from the thermostat display. I hoped flipping the breaker for the heater would magically bring it back but no luck.

Fortunately by dumb luck there was just enough room to stand next to the 3000GT on the lift and work on the heater.

I verified power going into the unit and to the logic board but noted the status LED was not on at all. No blinks, nothing. Mr Heater’s basic troubleshooting guide says to check the 3 amp fuse on the board and sure enough it was blown. I replaced it with my fingers crossed but predictably the new fuse immediately blew once I turned on the breaker. There were no other troubleshooting tips beyond that but I figured if the fuse was immediately blowing the logic board was probably shorted out.

I poked around a bit and found a replacement board on Amazon for ~$65 that I had in my hands 3 days later.

Swapped out the boards, climbed down and turned the breaker back on. It didn’t seem promising for about a minute, but then it started coming alive and another minute later it was making up for lost time!

I was without heat for about 4 days but the weather was mild at the time so the shop didn’t drop below 50 degrees. Disappointing to have the heater break within a year and a half but it was an inexpensive and fairly simple fix. I ordered another logic board to keep on hand since I figured this will probably happen again.

Buy a Modine, not a Mr Heater.