Print

[chillyhiker]

Since there isnt a ridgewood  dedicated thread on here Ill post this here. The other night I woke up house was cool furnace blower(forced air) was blowing cool air out of the vents. of course it was 2 am. ..went out to the stove and temp was 100 degrees with the flap closed...thought the selonoid might have went bad but geez its only a week old....got to looking and saw a wire had slipped off the connector...put it back on and it slipped on way to easy so i used a pair of plires and crimped it down a bit then put it back on checked the other wire and it was same way so I fixed it to. plugged stove back in and all is well again. Really wish Id got one of these years ago. Thanks again to all who have answered questions along the way hope this helps someone down the line. chuck

[Roger2561]

Glad it was an easy fix for you.  The one thing I've noticed, whenever these things decide they want to act up it's always in the middle of the night. 

[ITO]

 Chilly, the connections are always a suspect, I dont like slide on crimp connectors, they can make small points of contact and when they heat and cool they warp the metal, you can pinch them shut but they have a habit of loosening back up, the oxidation that occurs is nonconductive so that only makes matters worse. When the connection is marginal then that can take out your solenoid (motor...whatever), if possible I would look at soldering the connection or making some sort of solid wire contact, at very least I would put some conductive anti-sieze over the blades.
 Of course it will always go bad at 2AM!

[chillyhiker]

thats a good idea I will take your advice and do that. thanks.

[Scott7m]

Yep, those slip on connectors are on most brands and have granted me with a fair number of service calls over the years, thats for sure haha

[baldwin racing]

thats a good idea I will take your advice and do that. thanks.

I was going to say the same thing to soldier wires or if you crimp them use electrical grease to keep the contact along with helping it from wires corroding....
Kelly
glad it was a simple fix ....its always midnight and about 0-F to -30F when they have to act up....lol

[Speed]

I'd think twice about soldering, just for serviceability. When your solenoid does go bad, it'll be dark, snowing, windy, and colder than a *****. Ask me how I know. Do you want to have to deal with solder connections? At least solder them on and use some kind of inline connector.

[chillyhiker]

how long did your first selonoid last?

[Speed]

Sorry chillyhiker, I just now saw your question. First one, 6 weeks. The second one is darned near a year old, and the stove has never shut down since lighting it. So its a true year of running. The first one never sounded right. It stuck OPEN. Glad I was home when it did that.