This morning I turned on my Anita, but it instantly turned off. I quickly discovered that the breaker push button on one of the outlets in my kitchen had popped out. Pushed it in, tried to turn on Anita, and she instantly shut off as the breaker again popped out.
After work, I called Chris Coffee: the friendly tech said it was probably water that had somehow gotten into machine. Sure enough, I checked: underneath the machine there was a small pool of water and, removing the shell I saw that water had dripped out from the tank (when I refilled last night) and there was water underneath the tank itself on its metal shelf, and, there were a couple of water drops just peeking out from under some electrical component directly below the tank housing.
I used a hair dryer for about ten minutes, working mostly on and around that electrical part and area. Put all back together, but still no luck, the breaker still pops out when I try to turn on Anita.
Is it possible that there is still some moisture in the machine?
How long should I let it dry out by itself before I need to worry about some other cause? Might it take a day (or two) to completely dry out the electricals?
Much Thanks

CTurner wrote:How long should I let it dry out by itself before I need to worry about some other cause? Might it take a day (or two) to completely dry out the electricals?

I have a little experience with this after dropping a cell phone into a beer. It took about 3 days to really dry out completely. Then it worked for about 6 months and died. There may be an issue with the component you found water in. I would give it some more time to dry out first. Keep all the panels off and put it under a fan if possible. If all else fails, the folks at CC will certainly get you back on track. Good luck!

CTurner wrote:Might it take a day (or two) to completely dry out the electricals?

Easily. Unless you can visually inspect every part of the machine and dry it, any semi accessible places e.g. inside a solenoid case could be hiding a drop of two of water. And it only takes one drop in the wrong place to short something out.

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Minimum of two days. If you live in a humid area, more like a week. You can speed up the process. Use a hair dryer. Give it a half hour worth of dry heat to speed up the process or take the shell off and put a small fan by it and let it blow air on it for a couple of days.

Zowie.

dailydose: I am so glad you wrote what you did. I decided to take off the cover again and let the kitchen fan do a bit of overnight work, only to discover that there was again water under the tank on its ledge and some more had leaked to below!
It was only then that I found an amazingly invisible hairline crack in the side of the water tank.
I have used superglue to seal the crack, and will test it overnight with some water inside to check for leaking.
I have re-hair dried the innards, will leave the fan on, and maybe check again sometime tomorrow.

wookie: I was afraid of that, but your caution will keep me from rushing.

cannonfodder: I'm looking for a small fan right now...

I really appreciate this forum and all three of you for the help.

A hair dryer will speed it up a bunch. I had a machine that got soaked in shipping once. I took the cup warmer off, opened the top panel so I could stick the wife's hair dryer in it, turned it on and let it run for a half hour. Did that 3 or 4 times over a couple days to get all the electronics dry.

The gizmo that's probably causing your GFI breaker to open is the SSR (solid state relay) shown in the pic below - the white "box" in the rear left of the machine - middle right in the pic. Next to it is the terminal block where the incoming power cord wires connect.



Undress your machine to the extent shown in the pic - you have probably already accomplished that. The top cover of the SSR will come off but I BELIEVE you need to remove the wires and screws which clamp them. Mark the wires and do this. The internal electronics of the SSR will be exposed and you can use the hair dryer with a little caution here. You can also use the hair dryer on the terminal block but that's probably not a problem area.

CTurner wrote:Zowie.


I have used superglue to seal the crack, and will test it overnight with some water inside to check for leaking.

CT just so you know you will not want to use CA (superglue) in a food environment. Especially if there is heat involved. Some type of hot glue or some other food safe plastic glue would be a better bet. Cyano is a bad first word to have around food.

-Cecil

A big thanks to all the help from this list. I took off the shell and as I think back, it most likely was the SSR device: drops of water came from underneath the device as I hair dried the thing out for about ten minutes and let is sit overnight.

CR: I appreciate what you say about superglue. I only applied it to the outside of the tank and the crack was astonishingly thin (would not even have seen it without testing the tank on the counter and seeing a <very>slow leak on the outside). I think the exposure to superglue by water in the tank is so small as to be really less than trivial.

A side note: thought about a new tank for Anita, but it costs $45. Even with the thought of a new and less erratic float device inside, that seemed a bit too much for me, so for now I'm all set.

Again, I much appreciate the terrific advice and technical insight from this site.