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While I'm At It...Anyone?

MarsWalker 6 years ago updated 6 years ago 4

What does this mean? In this pic I have two working heating elements, but one has the white colored circle. I never knew what that meant. Shouldn't they all be green, if they're in working condition?

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Answered

White means it's working, but unnecessary for normal operation. It's extra basically.

Oh, okay. So I don't need full on components. I mean, I don't use all the fuses but I thought that elements and like that were important to have full. I've read that all aren't needed but I thought if you can, all is better. Hmmmm, maybe I'm over using stuff that would be better left in storage and in good condition? Or do things degrade overtime while in storage too? That's something I haven't yet paid attention to.

When you have extras to fill in "backup" slots, that gives a tradeoff: you will have a "hotswap" for that component category if another one fails, reaching zero condition sooner than the rest. If you need one and have only one and that fails while you are not around, the system shuts down. If you have one which started at a lower condition and an extra (currently marked as white) which started at higher, then even if you don't make it back in time to fix the one that was lower to begin with, if/when that one fails, the extra will take over and keep the system running. On the other hand, everything that's installed in a system is at risk of breaking when its slot breaks before you can prevent it, while things at storage do not degrade. Components themselves have no "condition", the condition is of the slot that they are installed into. If the slot itself breaks, it will destroy the component that was installed into it.


And there's another factor: for certain component categories, such as carbon filters and hoses, the "load" of the system operation is spread across the number of components installed. When you have more components in those categories (green and white slots with no empties), the individual ones will degrade somewhat slower and the system will produce slighly more of what it does compared to when you only have as many installed as necessary to function (only green and empty slots).

Thanks, that explains a lot. If you've read any of my previous comments from awhile back, you'd see that I already knew that it was only slot integrity that needs damage control, so I don't know why I asked about item damage in storage, lol. That said though, I understand the green and white dots now and what should or doesn't need to be installed but it does seems to me that all installed components degrade at the same rate of time. So are you saying that if I have five fuses installed, the rate of overall degradation will be noticeably slower?