I was roasting with my Hottop P the other evening, and as is my habit, decided to brew a cup to go with the roasting ambiance. The problem was, the hot water dispenser I use to speed up the vac pot just got a fresh load of cold water, and I did not want to wait, so I decided to boil a small pot of water on the stove.
Now, we recently moved from our large house with gas stove to a small condo with a countertop electric stove. Whereas it used to be convenient to roast where ever I wanted, I usually did it on a large cutting board on the gas range with the exhaust hood on. This time, I just put the roaster on the countertop range, but well away from the burner I was using for water. The problem was, this burner is adjustable for 6, 9, & 12" heating surface. I really did think I had it set to 6", so I did not notice until too late that it was heating a 12" area. The base, side, and control panel of my HT-P melted!
Although it still worked, all I could see was the warped plastic.
In comes Hotop USA. I went on line to order a new base, side, and control panel face plate, but the face plate is not available. I wrote to Michael, and he said he would send me a new control panel along with the other parts, and asking only that I return the old melted panel. Three days later, I had the box of parts. I could not wait to begin... so I didn't.
Following the instruction on Hottop's Web site made it all seem so simple: pop out the control panel, remove the side panel, take the bottom piece off, replace and reassemble. There were hints that the main circuit board will have to be unplugged, but, hey, how much trouble can that be? Phillip's head screw driver in hand, I commenced with the operation. It went fine until I got the bottom panel un-screwed and realized I also had to remove the main circuit board and many un-labeled wires, the cooling pan motor, and the cooling fan. No problem: label the wires, remove, unscrew the other parts, move over to the new base, reattach, replug, and re-assemble. It went well until it was time to reattach the wires, and I found two of the sticky labels on the floor, and not on the wires. Well, looking at where they come from, and the labels on the circuit board, I made what I had hoped to be an educated guess, and put it all back together again.
Plugged in for a test run: looks good! Eject beans: out they come! It was unusually silent, though. The cooling fan did not activate, nor did the cooling arm. I opened the back again, remembered those two wires that lost the labels, decided my guess was not as educated as I had thought, switched them, and re-tested. This time, it worked just fine!
One difference, though, was when I tried my first full batch, when the temperature reached 374 F, the roaster beeped for half a minute, and then ejected the beans. I was thinking: "Oh, no! Did I fry some logics on the control panel?" Well, I sent an e-mail to Michael at Hottop, and he quickly responded. It turns out that the newest version of the P control panel has a new safety function, where it warns and requires a response at 374F and 410F. It turns out that my old/new Hottop P was behaving just as it should.
The moral of the story is: I really like Hottop. It is a solid appliance, but is open to hacking and self-repair. Almost every spare part is available from the N.A. representative, and is fairly easy to fix. In fact, there have been some very interesting hacks, some of which have appeared right here on this forum.
