I'm sorry I wasn't clear. We've had the extended cycle blinking as long as we've had it. We talked to Raritan early on and they suggested we must not have enough salt in the water but we are in real salt water area, not brackish. We've done the muriatic acid routine as indicated in the manual at regular intervals. We've kept it free of other cleaners like standard toilet cleaners, etc. When it made unusually loud noise was when we called and Raritan suggested we must have something caught in it (excess TP?)so the answer was to open the side we did not have the hose attached to and generally look at anything we could see and gently probe around. We did that and didn't find anything so we resumed using it and it did finally return to more normal noise levels. Things went pretty well for a while. Now that I read your reply, I realize that a steady red light was what we had. The chart in the manual (which I could almost quote by now) suggested fuse blown or control board damage. We hoped it was a fuse but they were fine. For a while, we just gave up and didn't use it. When we decided we had to get it running again, we replaced the fuses we had not put back in. This time, when we replaced one of the fuses, the unit started running and did not stop. The buttons on the control board had no effect so all we knew was to remove the fuse to stop it (we did throw the breaker before we took the fuse out. Maybe a mistake, but we tried again with new fuse and same thing happened. We did talk to Raritan (don't know who)and they offered to sell us a control board ($144 as I recall). That's alot to spend not knowing it will be the final resolution. We live aboard, are pretty handy with the onboard systems and can handle most repairs and installations. We did use the heavy guage wire as prescribed in the manual for our distance. Sorry I was unclear before. Thanks for all your help. I'm glad to have found you on line here. NB