Electric Fireplace Repair

Let me start this project page off saying that I never expected this project to be as difficult as it turned out. The primary reason I call it difficult is a direct result of so little information about this product being available on the internet. I am used to being able to look up a model number and finding all of the technical information available somewhere on the internet. I expect to be able to locate part numbers and order OEM or aftermarket parts designed for the upkeep and maintenance of the product over it’s lifespan. These portable electric fireplaces do not seem to have that sort of information available. At least not for the machine I needed to fix.

What Went Wrong (WWW)

Mom complained about the artificial fire light effects saying that nothing happens when activating the fire button on the front panel. After the fireplace has been turned on, there is a fire button that when depressed activates the brightest setting of the artificial light effect. Pressing the button additionally cycles through three other light settings in a dimmer effect. There is no light being generated. I immediately suspected the bulb was faulty. I expected to have a maintenance port in the back to change the bulb. There is no port. In fact the label on the back of the fireplace says “no user serviceable parts inside”.

Troubleshooting the problem

There are many screws holding the back panel in place. The photograph below shows all of the screws locations. There are two different sizes of screws. One set secures the panel into the press board frame while the other screws hold the back panel to the metal frame inside. The Blue arrows indicated the metal style screw whereas the Yellow arrows indicate the wood style screws.

After removing the back panel and reviewing the wiring I realized this unit utilized and LED light system instead of a bulb style lighting system. The main control board is located in the top left hand section of the frame which controls the operation of the heater, the thermostat and the lights. There are two components of the lights that were managed by two separate controls on the main controller. Both activate simultaneously but one set of the leads powers the actual light strip while the other leads powers the rotating simulated light effect mechanism. Clearly the LED strip was not functioning.

I went to the internet to learn how to diagnose LEDs and learned that LEDs are diodes that can be tested using a multimeter on the diode setting. Passing a slight current across a diode should only produce an effect when the polarity is correctly aligned. In the case of a Light Emitting Diode or LED, the light should shine when current is passed. If it doesn’t shine something is wrong with the LED. Interestingly none of the lights produced an effect regardless of the polarity. However, as I was fiddling with the strip while the unit was under power I did get the all 4 of the LEDs to shine albeit very briefly. I could never replicate that again. At this point I decided the LED lights had to be replaces.

The Plan

The plan was simply to replace the LED lights with a replacement set of lights. I have the original component and there was printing on the board that I assumed was the part number. It appeared to me that GM-LED-4W was the part number. That google search leads nowhere. I spent many many hours searching for any sort of information about the fireplace itself and other brands of fireplaces that might lead me to finding replacement parts. This however was a dead end. I decided I could use LED strip lighting in place of the OEM lights. I happened to have some LED light strips in my shop so I setup an experiment to run leads from the light controller pins on the main board to alligator clips that I could use to connect to my LED strip. That worked, I was able to get light and was able to dim the light by depressing the fireplace light button. This reinforced my belief that the LED light component was bad.

My project list:

1. LED strip that I could cut down to size and that wasn’t white or RBG. I ended up ordering several types of LED strips for various reasons which I’ll describe later. Bottom line is that a combination of Red and Orange LED scrips provided the most realistic fire effect. These LED strips sell on Amazon for about $16 for 5m of LED tape.
2. LED strip wiring harnesses. I suck a soldering and I ran across these LED strip connectors that use screws to connect wires to LED tape. I bought a pack of 25 for $6 on Amazon.
3. Wire for connecting all of the components. I used white for positive and black for negative. I had this wire laying around my shop. It’s about 18 gauge.
4. A multimeter. I have a Fluke brand multimeter which is a nice product and I didn’t need to buy anything new. You can certainly get by with cheaper brands just be sure you understand how to use the device safely. There are plenty of videos available. I like to watch one before I use my meter just to reinforce what I already know.
5. Mounting tape. I used mounting tape to secure the components into place. I already has this in my shop so no expense here.
6. Voltage step down module. I didn’t know I was going to need this until later in the game. I ended up buying one from China for $4. I’ll cover this component later in the story.

The Process

The first thing that should be done is to unplug the fireplace. I can’t tell you how important this is. I was trying to be careful and I did have the unit unplugged for the majority of the work there was still one time the device was still plugged in. Even though the device was turned off, the unit was still energized. Some how I touched the frame or the hosing of something and it shocked me. Not bad but enough to be painful and remind me to unplug the device. So unplug that device before doing any work.

Removing the OEM LEDs was simple, I just used wire cutters and cut the leads and popped the LED board off the mounting plastic. Later I would remove the mounting plastic using a pair of plyers. I didn’t need the mounting plastic because the strips would be connected using adhesive. During the fix process I also continued to analyze the system to understand how everything worked. For example, after removing the OEM LED is used wire leads and alligator clips to test the functionality of the controller pins. I wanted to make sure the LED problem wasn’t actually a controller board problem. At that time I ended up measuring the voltage output on those pins, it measure 18 volts. I thought that was unusual because all LED strips are either 12 volt or 24 volt. Later on I figured out that I needed to use a voltage stepdown to make sure I wasn’t over powering the LED strips. I did try 24 volt LED strip thinking it might just be dim but could handle the 18 volts. The 24 volt strip didn’t even try to shine with only 18 volt input. I ended up buying a step down voltage regulator.

There was a lot of trial and error trying to get the LED look correct. My first attempt was using white LEDs. I thought the color of the effect was driven by colored plastic by the front cover of the fireplace. I was wrong. The white LED basically presented a white fire effect and a washed out ember effect. I then tried Red followed by Orange and then a combination of Red and Orange. Take a look at the differences.

To make the Red and Orange light work I needed to wire in a stretch of Orange LEDs and in series a a stretch of Red LEDs. This is where the LED wiring harness comes into play. I used these wiring blocks to connect the positive and negative leads from the controller board to each positive and negative wiring point on the LED strip.

Conclusion

I learned quite a bit from this project which is why I wanted to document it. Even without proper wiring specs and replacement parts I was still able to keep this fireplace from the junk yard. While a new unit only costs about $250. I was able to repair this for about $40 and of course my time. Considering I’m retired and have all the time in the world to do these projects, it really came down to how much fun I had figuring out this problem.