My Comfort-Aire BHD 651-C died
The Comfort-Aire crapped out again! We started the season with a little 17-pint Sears, but it wasn't cutting the mustard getting the accumulated moisture out of the cellar, so we fired up the Comfort-Aire 65-pint machine. It got the humidity down to 50% pronto, and kept it there for the better part of a week when all of a sudden it quit. Died! Nothing! Not a glimmer in the control panel, and pushing the buttons did absolutely nothing. Unplugging it and plugging it in again produced a faint "chirp" but that was all. Naturally, the thing is weeks out of warranty. Without the warranty, the nearest service place wants a $60 "consultation fee" just to look at it, so I decided to see if I could fix it myself before seeking professional aid.
After getting an exploaded view of the machine from the web, I removed the collection bucket, the filter, and the two screws from under the plastic front cover. In addition to the two screws, the cover is held by little tabs that fit into notches in the steel sides. To get the plastic cover off, I slid a wooden popsicle stick under the plastic, thus stretching the plastic enough to get the tabs out of their holes without scratchng the unit.
The front cover is tethered to the unit by a cable attached to a circuit board which forms the back of the push-button control panel. On one side of this circuit board there is a row of 14 soldered connections. They are very close together, and any conductive contaminent that gathers between them is guaranteed to short them out. That's apparently what happened to mine, for scraping between them with a toothpick, and cleaning them with a toothbrush
brought the unit back to life again. That's all it took to repair my Comfort-Aire. The plastic cover snaps back
in place easily.
