wiring a ranco dual-stage controller

cbcostanza

New member
I am about as electric illiterate as they come. I bought a ranco dual-stage controller to control my tank temp. I bought two 14 guage electrical cords, cut them in half, stripped the wires back and now I could use some help on the wiring. I found some stuff on the web and it only helped me out partially. if someone could give me some really, really easy instructions I would and my tank would love it!! Thanks!
 
This is about as simple as it can be made. Follow THIS LINK and see if you can figure out what they are talking about. If not you could bring the parts Friday and I will slap it together for you. The only difference on your dual stage is that you will have another set of NO/C/NC connectors for the second stage. You will want to connect the black wire of the outlet side (not the plug side) of the cord to the NO post and the white should just be connected to the other whites.

I haven't wired a Ranco controller but from looking at the diagram that is what I gathered about them.

All the controller does is touch the black wires together at the right temperature. If the sensor is too cold it closes the connection for your heater and too hot it closes the fan/chiller connection. It is as if you have the white wire still connected and you touch the blacks together.

NO means Normally Open ... the wires arent closed until the temp is reached.
C means Common ... this is where the black wire goes IN.
NC means Normally Closed ... The wires are closed until the temp is reached.

When you turn one of those little roller cord switches that turn on a lamp it just opens or closes the black wire to stop the light bulb from getting electricity. You are doing the same thing with this controller using temperatures.

Oh, BTW you won't need the second plug part from cord number 2... just plug #1 and socket #1 & #2.

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

-- Kevin
 
I found this page that has a picture. It looks like in stage1(left sensor) you plug the black wire into the NO part and the green into the C part. Then the same thing in stage two. Then on the top sensor the black wire into the 120 and the white wire into the COM part now I can't tell from the pic though which wires tie together that you have left. Can you help me with that? Thanks for your time.

http://sio.midco.net/cdshelton/website/DIY/Ranco-dual-stage/ranco_dual_stage_temperature_con.htm
 
OK that helps a lot. The wires on his drawing that are RED are going to be your hot wires (BLACK). The wires that are BLUE are going to be your neutral (WHITE). The ground are green (still going to be GREEN).

The GREEN are just to ground the devices you are running. You don't need to connect them to any posts at all. If your cords don't have ground prongs then you will not even have GREEN.

The WHITE are going to go from your PLUG to the COM and also to the TWO OTHER WHITE receptacle wires. You could use a spare piece of white and tie it from the controller to the other 3 whites and then twist them all into a single wire nut.

The BLACK is going from the wall PLUG to the 120v post as well as the TWO OTHER COM posts on the 2 stages.

From the NO on stage 1 and NO on stage 2 you will screw in the BLACK WIRES from the two receptacles. You should put some tape on them and label Stage1 and Stage 2 near the outlets so you know which you are going to program at which temp.

It looks very simple if you just start at one end and slowly work through. One wire at a time and CAREFULLY.

It looks as though he used a scrap piece of GREEN wire to connect the 2 COM wires to the black one with the wire nut. Don't try to follow colors in the pics just use his drawing.

I have decided to modify the drawing to make it easier for you to follow. I will post it here and hope it explains a lot. I changed his colors around to make it easier to follow. The white are shown as grey in the new drawing. The black are shown as black and the green are shown as green.

Good Luck! I know this will help :D

-- Kevin
 
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