Apex Heater issue

[Snarl]

Woke up this morning to my heater being powered off, temp of tank dropped to 76.5 F. The apex warned me of the temperature drop and that is why I checked the tank. The issue is that my Apex wont power up the heater when it is set to Auto. I can only get the heater to turn on when I set the apex to "on". This happened only today everything was working as normal for the last 4 months. I have the Apex set to On at 75F and off at 81F. The heater itself has its own thermometer set to be on at anything below 78.

Why would my apex suddenly not work in "auto" if I never changed anything? As soon as I set to auto it cuts the power. The temperature reading of the tank does not call for it to shut off. Any ideas would help me trouble shoot it.

[sleepydoc]

I don't have an apex, so these are just general suggestions, but the 2 things I can think of are an issue with the relay controlling the outlet the heater is plugged into and a bug/glitch in the code.

Since you can manually turn the heater on/off, I assume the outlet is working properly.

Does the apex give any logs that you can follow to see what it's 'thinking?' Otherwise I'd try resetting it, or deleting the programming for the heater and then re-entering it to see if that works.

[slief]

How large is the heater? It's possible that the heater thermostat failed and because of that, the Apex won't turn the outlet on until the tank hits 75. You can try putting the apex temp probe in a glass of ice water and see if it comes on.

[mmn]

^ Makes sense. You never got to 75 so it didn't turn the outlet on. Apex didn't turn it off because you didn't reach 81. The thermostat was doing all the control. Post your program.

[hkgar]

Copy and post your programming for the heater. If it is
Set Off
If Temp > 81 Then Off
If Temp < 75 Then On

it is not turning on because the temp is not less than 75

[DubiousMaximus]

Thats bc Set OFF makes it kick on below 81, ie; 79.9. The rest is kinda ignored. Remove Set off if you want temps to float between those ranges or keep and remove if temp < 75 Then OFF in the ex above

My code is; for regional dual heaters w/night drop & safeguards for example.

[Heater1]
Fallback OFF
If Temp < RT+-0.2 Then ON
If Temp > RT+0.1 Then OFF
If Temp < RT+-6.0 Then OFF
If Temp > RT+6.0 Then OFF
If Outlet Sun = OFF Then OFF
If Outlet LeftPump = OFF Then OFF
If ClogUp CLOSED Then OFF
Defer 015:00 Then ON

[Heater2]
Fallback ON
If Temp < RT+-0.3 Then ON
If Temp > RT+0.2 Then OFF
If Temp < RT+-9.0 Then OFF
If Temp > RT+9.0 Then OFF
If Outlet LeftPump = OFF Then OFF
Defer 030:00 Then ON

Hope that helps ya out either way

[JSimpson]

I use the following simple program:

Fallback ON
If Temp < 77.0 Then ON
If Temp > 77.4 Then OFF

I have my heater set to about 79 degrees, so it's basically always on during cooler months. The Apex will then turn the heater on at 77.0, off at 77.4. This keeps the tank (during the wintertime) within a .4 degree range all the time, and the temp is controlled by the Apex and not the heater's thermostat. If Apex sticks on, the heater should still switch itself off at 79.

[sleepydoc]

What you should do is have the heater thermostat set to turn off a couple degrees above the Apex Off temp, so if the outlet stays 'on' for some reason and the tank starts to overheat the heater thermostat will provide a backup failsafe. Not sure why, but it sounds like the OP had it reversed, so like mmn said, the heater was doing all the regulation and Apex never turned it off until the heater failed and the tank got up above 81º. (as an aside, 6º is a pretty wide range)

Can you check the history to see if the tank got above 81?

[mmn]

^What he said. The thermostat should be the failsafe and apex the primary control. And the difference between the apex high and low setting 1 - 2 degrees.

[hkgar]

Not sure why everything needs to be complicated. Heaters are for heating wthe water Remember KISS

My program:
Fallback OFF
If Temp > 81.0 Then OFF
If Temp < 80.5 Then ON

This shows my temp swings.

https://www.reeftronics.net/ga/gary-k/apex-history

I am going to lower the ON point a degree as you can see it warms quite a bit on warmer days - even with the a/c at 74