I recently started up my Brinsea Ova Easy 100 to join the Easter hatch a long, but discovered that it would not heat up. I checked everything I could and could find nothing wrong, so I called Brinsea.
Now I should say, some of what I will write below I found out on my own after talking with Brinsea support.
I called my North American 1-800 number, and they transferred me to the U.K. tech support as there are no people employed in that capacity in NA. The first actions of the support guy was to try and convince me I had damaged the incubator. I must have sprayed something in there, there must have been a power surge, I must not be using it correctly...I have no idea why he believed these things, but it certainly felt like he did not want to do anything to try and figure out what was wrong (just guessing instead).
First all of my problems were due to my fans not running. See, struggling to figure out if the four fans at the front were working or not, I said they were not. Later, using a pencil to stick into each fan, I discovered that the two outside fans were working and the two inside fans were not. This seemed perfectly logical to me as a sort of two-stage fan system...he insisted there was no such thing. Ok, so we were left with his guess that something had killed 2 of the fans...just the two fans on the inside not the two on the outside (all four are in one row, and all four are powered via the same connection). If something like a power spike killed them, its the strangest spike I've ever heard of.
Meanwhile, at the beginning he had me do a complete reset of the system...a reset which left the system setup to run at 50Hz (a european standard, after all, he is in the U.K.) where I am in Canada, and therefore require 60Hz. He never asked where I was. So we proceeded to do one more check. He told me to get a multi-meter and measure the resistance across a "fuse" inside the system. Let me point out that I am, by no means, an electrician...but I do own a multi-meter and so got it out. Mine has many different switches to set it to measure all sorts of electrical "stuff", I asked him which way should it be set. He said; "Set it to measure sound."...huh? I said I had a switch that said "Ohms", as last I remember that's a speaker measurement...he said; "No, not that"...ok, he never said what it should be set to. Needless to say, I got no measurement out of touching the probes to the two points he indicated, and he therefore guessed again that the "fuse" was gone. I keep putting quotes around "fuse" because it is no fuse I have ever seen. Its a small piece of plastic with a wire going in and out at the bottom, and nothing that I can see inside. Its certainly not something I can go and buy and replace.
After ending the convo with the alleged support guy, I switched my multi-meter to OHMS and got a single across the two points...so I guess the "fuse" is fine.
So I am left with his guess than because 2 of 4 fans do not work, the heater will not work. He had no web pages to refer me to to figure out how to fix this, nor did he offer any sort of RMA for me to return something to get fixed.
So, I am left with a 4 year old $1000+ Brinsea incubator that no longer works, cannot be fixed, and Brinsea offers no assistance whatsoever.
Since I am sure I am not the first person to find himself in this situation, I would love to hear from anyone here who can offer any advice.
Now I should say, some of what I will write below I found out on my own after talking with Brinsea support.
I called my North American 1-800 number, and they transferred me to the U.K. tech support as there are no people employed in that capacity in NA. The first actions of the support guy was to try and convince me I had damaged the incubator. I must have sprayed something in there, there must have been a power surge, I must not be using it correctly...I have no idea why he believed these things, but it certainly felt like he did not want to do anything to try and figure out what was wrong (just guessing instead).
First all of my problems were due to my fans not running. See, struggling to figure out if the four fans at the front were working or not, I said they were not. Later, using a pencil to stick into each fan, I discovered that the two outside fans were working and the two inside fans were not. This seemed perfectly logical to me as a sort of two-stage fan system...he insisted there was no such thing. Ok, so we were left with his guess that something had killed 2 of the fans...just the two fans on the inside not the two on the outside (all four are in one row, and all four are powered via the same connection). If something like a power spike killed them, its the strangest spike I've ever heard of.
Meanwhile, at the beginning he had me do a complete reset of the system...a reset which left the system setup to run at 50Hz (a european standard, after all, he is in the U.K.) where I am in Canada, and therefore require 60Hz. He never asked where I was. So we proceeded to do one more check. He told me to get a multi-meter and measure the resistance across a "fuse" inside the system. Let me point out that I am, by no means, an electrician...but I do own a multi-meter and so got it out. Mine has many different switches to set it to measure all sorts of electrical "stuff", I asked him which way should it be set. He said; "Set it to measure sound."...huh? I said I had a switch that said "Ohms", as last I remember that's a speaker measurement...he said; "No, not that"...ok, he never said what it should be set to. Needless to say, I got no measurement out of touching the probes to the two points he indicated, and he therefore guessed again that the "fuse" was gone. I keep putting quotes around "fuse" because it is no fuse I have ever seen. Its a small piece of plastic with a wire going in and out at the bottom, and nothing that I can see inside. Its certainly not something I can go and buy and replace.
After ending the convo with the alleged support guy, I switched my multi-meter to OHMS and got a single across the two points...so I guess the "fuse" is fine.
So I am left with his guess than because 2 of 4 fans do not work, the heater will not work. He had no web pages to refer me to to figure out how to fix this, nor did he offer any sort of RMA for me to return something to get fixed.
So, I am left with a 4 year old $1000+ Brinsea incubator that no longer works, cannot be fixed, and Brinsea offers no assistance whatsoever.
Since I am sure I am not the first person to find himself in this situation, I would love to hear from anyone here who can offer any advice.
