A Warning for Owners of Furman IT Refernence 20i

I recommend not leaving your stereo equipment plugged in and turned on and unattended for any length of time. I take it even further and unplug my stereo when I’m not home. Not for reasons of safety, but it’s more that I’ve known owners who lost their entire system due to a nearby lightening strike during a thunderstorm. As for Furman, I had hoped that they’d stand behind their product. 

I just called the customer service number:  800-472-5555

Here's the scoop:

• Furman does not do service on power conditioners.
• Units that are in warranty get replaced.
• Units out of warranty get discount purchases on a brand new unit IF you have your receipts.
• They recommend EBC for repairs.

Based on their web page the Merit and Elite units get a 3 year warranty, Reference, Classic and Prestige 5 years.

I do want to say a few things:

1 - I’ve had my Elite 15i for like 20 years. Never ever had a problem with it.

2 - The part in question seems correct for the load, maybe the built-in transformer however makes it undersized?

3 - The metal housing makes a fire very unlikely.

4 - The person who answered the phone at Furman was very helpful and straightforward about how things work now, if you got into a voice-mail merry go round with them I sure did not. I mean, I didn’t get the answers I wanted but it was all pretty straightforward.

Thanks so much for the information. I really do appreciate it! 
For whatever it’s worth (and after 40 some years of working with research instrumentation , I know this part is boring), their toroidal transformer is one of the largest I’ve yet seen in high end audio, bigger than what I’ve seen inside of big Krells or even the big Boulder amps. While toroidal transformers are well recognized for their low stray fields, it comes with a cost- serious ‘inrush current’ till the AC field is stabile. A very common approach to handling inrush is to place a thermistor in front of the transformer. Upon startup, the thermistor (dependent on type) appears as a high resistive load. That load is then dissipated as heat. Unfortunately, in this case, the heavy gauge wires carrying the AC load were run over the top of the thermistor. As the thermistor was overheating the circuit board traces, it was also melting through the load wires and would have eventually fused the wires together likely creating a ‘dead short’ to the metal chassis. The unit has a circuit breaker, as does the main panel to my house. But, after decades of working inside of instrumentation, I believe it’s always best not to ‘tempt the gods’. Never turning off the unit would definitely reduce the amount of ‘thermal cycling’ that the thermistor sees and extends its MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure- old term). I strongly recommend Not leaving electrical equipment powered on. 

If you are not getting a satisfactory response from the manufacture, I would threaten to take the issue up with electronic safety board in your country of residence?  If the unit has a known issue that could cause a fire, you would think that the manufacture would not want to risk the liability.