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botched controller installation

updated tue 12 mar 02

 

annabelle on mon 11 mar 02


After years of early morning drives to the studio to start the kilns so
that I'd be there when they went off to manually soak,ect, I finally broke
down and bought two wall mounted kiln controllers. Today the electrician
came to hard wire everything, install a breaker box in the studio ( I'm 200
feet from the old breaker ) mount the controllers outside the kiln room,
and make sure everything is up to code. Well after five hours$$$$$,
somehow the wiring in the controllers has been changed. No lights, no
display...... I called my kiln supplier and he will e-mail some
digital pics of the wiring of these exact controllers as they left the
factory. Also is sending a wiring diagram. Electrician had to switch some
whips inside the box but swears he didn't change anything. I looked at the
wiring and it is defiantly wrong. I don't know the terms, but the wires
from bottom of the big black thing go to the toggle switch on one and to
the mercury switch on the other. Neither one works.
I did pay him, just wanted him out. Says he'll come back if its his bad.
I don't think he wants his boss to know. At this point I think I need to
forget about the controllers for a while, have him return and hardwire the
kilns to the new breaker box. I also had to convince him that yes, I
really had to have 60 amp service even though the kilns say 45 amps, If any
of you have any advice I sure would like to hear it. I thought I could
hire a professional person for this but I was wrong. I do re-wire my own
kilns change elements and switches but I don't like to do breaker box type
stuff. Thanks, Annabelle in Naples Fl