Sometimes too much dust around the heating elements can cause the heater to switch off to prevent a fire. Check for dust build up first. You can try using a can of compressed air that can be found at many electronic stores.
Yes, as mentioned, dust on the inside of Vornados can cause the overload switch to shut many vornados down. Blowing the dust out of the unit with compressed air or a blower may help.
Another problem that causes vornados to stop working (light on - no heat no fan) is when one of the bearings starts to go bad in the unit. This causes the fan to be slower and less effective and the unit’s inability to move the heat away from the thermal overload switch again causes it to shut down.
Once the bearing starts to go bad, other than replacing the bearings there is little that can be done ... HOWEVER, here is one solution to get more life out of the unit.
First, use a blower to blow all the dust out of the unit.
Then, because it is typically the front bearing that goes bad first, lay the vornado on it’s back (so the unit would be blowing air up toward the ceiling), this will relieve the front bearing somewhat and rely more on the rear bearing which tends to last longer.
The vornados I’ve had are all thermistor units ... that is, they don’t just turn on and off when the set temp is reached but in fact slow themselves down (both heat and fan) to keep some level of air circulation in the room. This is a good thing by the way.
There are usually two toggle switches .... one is a heat switch - usually Low & High .... the other is the thermistor switch (this sometimes is labeled “fan”) - usually Auto & High.
Once the unit is on its back ... Now, change the settings as follows:
Turn the Heat switch to LOW
Turn the Fan switch to HIGH
Turn the dial (with the temperature in degrees on it) to the lowest setting - which is somewhere around 60’ish.
Now turn the unit on and it should stay working.
Three things that could cause it to turn back off ...
You turn the Fan switch back to Auto.
You turn the Heat switch back to High
You turn the temperature selection dial too high ... though, you can cautiously turn the dial up a few degrees at a time ... the unit will start shutting down again when you set the temp too high ... then just dial it back down ... unplug for a couple minutes, then turn back on.
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