Blobs and more blobs

[Cheylynn Marie Owen]

Okay so I recently bought a lava globe that I found at Goodwill. It was a little messed up because the coil had detached from the bottom and was embedded in the wax vertically. Having recently discovered my hidden love/obsession for lava lamps I thought  "I can fix this!" Plus I was stoked because the wax was blue :) anyway I got it home plugged it in and it worked really well. It had columns and blobs and was moving a little on the slow side but still good. However, the longer it was on the more the wax broke up into blobs to where it resembled slow boiling water at the bottom. I thought it may have been too hot so I shut it off and didn't turn it on for about 24 hrs.

The next day I turned it on and after heating up again it resembled the slow boil from the day before after just a couple hours.

I'm not sure what it could be. The globe has been opened, the cap spins but wont come off.I read another post saying that too much surf makes more blobs. Is there a way I can fix that besides dumping the water out and starting from scratch?

The pic is clearly not my lamp but that is very similar to what it looks like except with smaller blobs as many as 10 to 15 at a time maybe more.

[Tim Gill]

The temp is probably ok then - its has probably been messed with by one of the previous owners.
I guess its a bottle cap - they are not supposed to spin so again it seams like a dodgy sealing job.
I think the thing to do would be to do a complete water change and see if this helps as it may be way to much surf added.

[Cheylynn Marie Owen]

I wasabout to try that then it started working like normal. a little slow at some moments but still like normal. If it acts up again I will probably do the water change. Will the serf that is in there now effect the goo at all for a new water change

[Tim Gill]

Surf doesn't affect the wax itself so doing a water change wont affect the wax formula. The wax and water don't affect each other as indervigual substances (i.e. the don't mix / react) its how the different properties of the wax and water interact when the lamp is on which makes it flow (or not).

[Cheylynn Marie Owen]

okay, but on lamps I have worked on in the past, I thought the serf might have mixed in with the wax because as some blobs rose up the top of the blobs were translucent  like  a soap bubble, and it was like that every time I ran it

[Tim Gill]

That is air in the wax or 'bubbly' wax - there is info in the lava library to deal with this, it basically involves super heating the wax.

Cheylynn Marie Owen said:

okay, but on lamps I have worked on in the past, I thought the serf might have mixed in with the wax because as some blobs rose up the top of the blobs were translucent  like  a soap bubble, and it was like that every time I ran it