Hello everyone,

I am new to the forum, but have been a long time fan of GardenWeb. There appear to be a lot of good people on this web site, happy to share their skills and knowledge.

With that said, our circa 2008 (bought by previous home owner) Accentra insert worked fine until last week when I discovered a blown fuse was the cause of why it randomly (and instantly) shut off. I ordered the specific fuse online (for those who don't know, the replacement is a 120V/250V fast acting 6A glass fuse that measures 6mm x 30mm; the more common 20mm size will be too short). While waiting for the fuses to arrive, I took the time to thoroughly clean out the insert- including taking out the medallion and side plates and cleaning out the ports/vents in each corner. I discovered the left plate was rusted shut and found, once I pried it off, wet gunk and a lot of rust packed around the port/vent. It looks like this side of the insert was not properly venting for a long time.

Once I put everything back together and replaced the blown fuse, I turned it on and discovered a problem. The power light will come on and when I turn up the temperature, the activity light and combustion motor light turn on. However, the actual combustion blower/fan does not power on. The insert remains silent and the feed motor never powers on (nor does the light turn on). Oddly enough, when I put the feed rate controller in the test mode to force the feed auger to turn on, it does not actually turn on, but the combustion blower/fan does finally turn on. FYI, I was not using a surge protector and the norm is for me to turn off the insert abruptly by disconnecting it from the outlet via a remote control. I know, probably bad practice.

My hypothesis are the following:

1) A surge caused the fuse to blow, but somehow not fast enough causing damage to the controller PCB. Visually, I see no signs of shorting or overheating.
2) In order for me to get to the fuse, I had to disconnect the controller board from its various connections and wiring bundle. I noticed the two blue wires with spade connectors had very little slack. The wire bundle was also tight. Perhaps me tugging at it caused a wiring issue?
3) Maybe the severely blocked and strangely wet port/vent caused a sensor to go bad or a motor to burn out?

I would love to get this running sooner than later, but I'm not sure how to troubleshoot it. What could have caused this issue? If anyone has an ideas what I should do or check out next, please share. Thank you!

- ÃÂukasz