Neon Green Heratige Grande

[Ian]

So my heratige grande used to flow perfectly when I got it. No bubbles, very stretchy flow, amazing. After about 6 runs, it only send up pea sized blobs, with a bubble in each one. The bubbles are the reason it sends up such small blobs! It does not ever stop sending bubbles through the wax. It is like a bubble every second. But when it gets fully heated up, it will form a column and look amazing and some more big blobs, but all of the wax goes up to the top and then when it breaks from the column, there is not enough wax in the bottom and it sends up little blobs until all of the wax disconnects from the spring! It is very frustrating, because then the wax slowly oozes down from the top until it is all at the bottom and then it doesnt fully reconnect, so it sits in the bottom in either one or two giant blobs not doing anything.

I have tried dimming it ever so slightly before it stops flowing, but then it starts sending up only the pea sized blobs again and never does anything else. Its like it doesnt get hot enough, but I adjust the dimmer so slightly that I cant even tell that I adjusted it. Should I just keep running it and see if it fixes itself? I do not want to open it up and mess with it, but I love the color and flow until it all disconnects.

[VOXul]

Weird.  Mine never disconnects like that Ian.  Mine seems to hug the circumference of the coil and grips it. The main blob, while attached to the coil then strings up a little bit and sends a rather fast bubble up the center causing a grape sized blob to shoot off.  The main blob just seems to stew and blob around the bottom while it shoots grapes, haha. 

I am thinking that the second smaller coil, like Rodrigo suggests, helps to add interference to that inward convection and allows the blob to stretch itself out more and allow a larger blob to rip off.  I am going to let mine heat up on full power until the spikes start to melt off a bit then dim mine so the marker on the dimmer switch is pointing down.  This level seemed to tame my out of control convection last night but does take a lot of the lava illumination away.  If someone is a coil pro in Denver and wants to do surgery I may be open to that option as well.  I fear I will destroy my lamp if I try to do anything thus voiding my 2 week old warranty and destroying an otherwise beautiful vessel full of wax.

Ian said:

If you go to images, I posted in sequence what happens to my grande. I can't get a pic of what happens when it doesn't reconnect, cause it has been reconnecting (thank god) so maybe the issue with mine is cleared up. But as you can see, it gets plenty hot enough to flow. The pictures show it dimmed down a little, so it's not even at full power. It doesn't need to be. It is on day 3 of it not being at full power, and it has been flowing exactly like the pictures show. in that sequence. Its weird, I think.

[VOXul]

I think I am going to test the dimmer route today, cranked full bore right now until spikes then I will dim it.  My brother has the same lamp and he noticed his would flow nice once dimmed as it was shooting grapes at one point too. If this doesn't produce desirable flow I think I may contact LL again. I will chime in this afternoon with my findings of the dimmer behavior.  I emailed Susan in regards to some dents on the base and cap, she said they would send a replacement but have not heard if one is on the way or anything.  I may send her an email and tell her I have noticed that my standard has dual coil while the heritage is single outlining the flow differences.  Not to mention OG as it seems that sets off a flag with them that there is no fix, haha. 

This seems to be a combo of coil removal as well as a different wax recipe.  Not to discredit the China build of the lamp, I find this heritage to be one of the most beautiful lamps I have owned or seen before so the quality is there just a tamper with ratios and recipes.

I would like to tackle globe openings at some point, I have a Lumisource magma tower that has junk lava in it now that I want to gookit so it runs on a lower watt bulb.

Rodrigo said:

Unfortunately no, im not in Denver lol! but i could walk you through it if youd like. Your other option would be to contact LL and have them send a replacement, maybe that one wont act up. I would try a few more cycles and see if you get anywhere with it, before you open it at least. Opening it last resort since that will void the warranty and LL will not replace it after you do open it. I would try for a replacement first.

[VOXul]

After 4 hours of running I started to get the pea shooter. Cranked the dimmer to the point the mark on the knob was pointing straight down (reference is straight up when clicked off). The flow began to improve and after about 45 minutes dim the pea shot has started growing in size slowly.  Patients is key in letting it regulate down from the full power temperature as it will continue to shoot small blobs but they become further spaced apart and larger blobs begin ripping off. Let's see how this works on the long run, I will report back in a few hours.

Meanwhile the standard yellow/purple grande of mine has me nervous. I have noticed that it begins to make random, but not often, clicks/pops. The glass seems fine, almost like a metal expansion noise. The very bottom of the base gets extremely hot as well as the seam where the two cones meet. Flow is perfect but the noise and heat bother me, it is oddly much hotter than the heritage but it has a solid base and the bulb is much lower, creating a mini oven in the cone. This compared to the raised heritage bulb and pinhole base have me thinking it is this design difference causing the discrepancy. could be nothing to worry about.

[Cowmatian]

Mine are doing the little water filled blobs too. I'm trying to work it out with LL right now, but it really seems that a second coil, as Rodrigo noted, will solve the problem by "anchoring" the wax in the center down. Are these bottles difficult to open and reseal?

[Joanne]

If you open the bottle it will void any warranty. For the price we pay you shouldnt have to open them . they should run right out of the box . they are a pain in the butt to open , its very tedious . and getting them sealed back up water tight again is difficult . 

[Loren]

^

That is the reason I'm NOT opening my pink one. I don't have another "spare" 52oz coil anyway.

I have tried everything with the pink grande, just like I did with the green one. All I get are marbles....for hours on end.

This all started...on both lamps...after the first time the wax flipped, instead of spiking. It's a coil issue. The coil is getting bare spots, and they're drawing water in. I can sometimes get the pink one to flow for a while by spinning the globe while it's hot, but that hasn't lasted for long. The only thing that's going to fix it is adding a second coil, just like with the green one.

It's been over a month now, and I still haven't heard back from lavalite.

But I'm over this...I don't want this lamp any more.

[Joanne]

i understand your frustration Loren . have you tried calling and sending follow up emails ?

[Loren]

I haven't...I figure they're just busy, and will get to me when they can...but I probably should try to touch base with them again. The last time this happened was with my colossus, and 3 months later, they had never seen my email.

[Joanne]

it would be advisable

[VOXul]

Yea, after a night of tinkering dimmers I fully agree with Rodrigo.  Lower setting was just causing the wax blobs to get bigger but also cool down so wax was stiffening towards the top after an hour.  Cranked up you can see the convection coming from the coil to the center is too hot solo and causes it to rip off grapes and peas.  I believe I am going to write back to Susan now and let her know not only was the base dented but now the globe has decided to not run like it did the first full boil.  I will not open a lamp I paid almost $140 for just last week to void the warranty.  If it was older and out of warranty it would definitely be my franken lamp and getting popped for a coil.  It is night and day to the dual coil standard I have, and ridiculous that Lava seems to deny they ever put dual coils in them.  I wish I got a V1... this globe is just absolutely flawless outside of its pea brain flow, duh duh tiss.

[VOXul]

Email sent, lets see what Lava says.  I brought to attention that my standard grande has 2 coils out of the box where the Heritage only has one.  Not being a scientist or rocket guy or something, I just know know that the single coil is causing that super hot center of the globe glass to shoot a pea stream up the center, it does need that smaller coil to control the force and heat of that upward flow while breaking up that intense convection.   

VOXul (Nick) said:

Yea, after a night of tinkering dimmers I fully agree with Rodrigo.  Lower setting was just causing the wax blobs to get bigger but also cool down so wax was stiffening towards the top after an hour.  Cranked up you can see the convection coming from the coil to the center is too hot solo and causes it to rip off grapes and peas.  I believe I am going to write back to Susan now and let her know not only was the base dented but now the globe has decided to not run like it did the first full boil.  I will not open a lamp I paid almost $140 for just last week to void the warranty.  If it was older and out of warranty it would definitely be my franken lamp and getting popped for a coil.  It is night and day to the dual coil standard I have, and ridiculous that Lava seems to deny they ever put dual coils in them.  I wish I got a V1... this globe is just absolutely flawless outside of its pea brain flow, duh duh tiss.

[Rodrigo]

I would contact Susan and not mention OG or any "V1,V2" designations as she said there is no such ting as a v1 or v2 just some lamps that accidentally got 2 coils during production when they're supposed to have just one.