New Dry Cell - Need help troubleshooting it

Hello all, new user here.. I have played with wet cells for a while and decided I would take a stab at a Dry Cell. I have a collection of different plans and picked a 21 plate cell (Stainless Steel - 20g - 6"x6").. It is laid out like:

+NNNN-NNNN+NNNN-NNNN+

It has 2 ports one at the upper portion and the other towards the bottom. I have a reservoir hooked up to it with ports in similar locations with a third port with a line going out to a bubbler (Currently just a pot of water).

I have a 14V (30amp) Radio Shack DC PSU..

When I originally tested it I used distilled water with Baking Soda. It seemed to be working fine but slow.. I read about not using baking soda so I found some Lye at the hardware store.. I cleaned out the cell and reservoir and did a mix of Lye (6 tablespoons) and distilled water (Half Gallon). Its now acting funny.. The power supply is making funny noises like its going on and off. I put a multimeter on the power terminals on VDC and its all over the map. Jumping up and down so fast can barely read it. Same thing for the Amps as well but they are never over 1.4. I have tried my best to test for continuity between the plates to make sure there wasnt a short somewhere.. I didnt find anything when it was off..

At one point i had a tube mix up and the exhaust port wasnt letting the gas out so it was pushing the solution back into the Reservoir from the bottom. One the fluid got to the bottom all of a sudden the PSU sounded correct and I was seeing white mist coming out of the reservoir top (Left it open by accident at that particular moment). Once I fixed the hoses back to the same issue.

Anyone have any ideas what to check to get this working? Thanks!

-D

I have even tried reversing the power on the cell and it acts the same. It does have a slight leak but nothing major. It creates hydrogen/oxygen however its not enough to push out the exhaust hose. Any help would be great!

Drain the unit and rinse it out with clean water then do a continuity test between each cell. You have a minor short most likely OR your gaskets are the wrong material or type of EPDM which is known to be conductive. Also make sure none of the through bolts are touching any of the plates.