Metal plate help.

[Gourlay83]

Looks good mate, Im not back till Fri but sure you will be fine with the fittings. Well impressed with your plumbing ability of late.
Oh and thanks for not telling the full story.......

What the one where you hit the water main and turned Tut Towers into a swimming pool

Looks good Tut

[tut]

Cheers Craig, only have wide mouth pliers at the moment, which are not good for tightening up, so will pop along and see Scott to get a couple of big spanners or adjustables.

However I need a 200mm straight extension on the right angled flue elbow to line it up with the chimney, so will order that tomorrow.

tut

[Gooldie]

Give me a shout if you need any flue pipe or any other stove components

[tut]

Thanks, I absolutely do need one ASAP, but standard sizings are in 250mm increments, and I need a 200mm.

I could have also done without the thermostat going on the immersion cylinder, and as it was pre 2004 there was no thermal cut out switch so it merrily boiled the water. As it is essential, I fitted a timer so that it was only on for two hours until I could get a new one. My local shop had 18" ones in, fitted it on Friday, worked perfectly until Sunday morning when Verian was not impressed at getting a cold shower. Checked the electric supply all the way through, and there is power going to the thermostat connection, highly unlikely that the new one had failed, but rather than having my goolies removed with a blunt instrument, Verian does not go WITHOUT showers, I refitted the old one.

However this gave the same result so I can only presume that the heating element has gone as well. Is this the only likely explanation? If so I will have to take it out to size it before I can get a new one. Been googling and it seems that I need a special spanner to unscrew it, and it will take a lot of force to do it. As copper cylinders are quite thin I would thing that this would be better with the tank full for extra strength. If I close off the supply at the bottom of the cylinder, can I fit it without draining down?

Any advice welcome from those that have been there before.

cheers

tut

[robin]

Tut,

If you have a multimeter you can measure the resistance of the element - assuming there are just two wires that run to the element, the resistance between those wires should be pretty low ... at a guess it should be somewhere between 10 and 100 ohms. ONLY DO THIS WHEN THE WIRES ARE NOT CONNECTED TO ANYTHING ELSE!!!

Double failures are unusual, so chances are you've messed the wiring up somehow (blown a fuse/tripped an RCD/...).

Electrics are dangerous ... it might make sense to get somebody qualified to look at it ... much as Verian likes a hot shower she's probably not yet ready for a (dead) cold Tut

[S111Y TT]

I'm home tonight Dad, will help however you need and happy to put my life on the line to take the reading. Want to test out this invincibility thing to the max.

[Chucks]

Just bought her a soft closing toilet seat, and it has a great sensing lamp on it that lights up at night green if the seat is down, and red if it is up, so also makes sure that I hit the centre every time.

You old romantic you. Wasn't the last gift a soft closing bin & now a toilet seat. You're a lucky man.

[tut]

Thanks Robin, Craig was also on the phone just telling me to check the resistance which should be around 20 ohms for a closed circuit, and a reading of 1 if it is open ie:- I presume knackered. I am certain there are no fuses or RCD's that are not set correctly as the timer is working and giving an output when switched on, and there is 240 volts into the old thermostat which I put back on, but no output to the neutral connector, so no power to the element.

However I then bypassed the thermostat and connected the live directly to the positive electrode on the element, which then gave me 240 volts across the electrodes, and powered off showed 20 ohms resistance which is as should be using I=E/R? The energy meter also rose 3kw/hrs when I switched back on which was a good sign, but as the water tank was already hot as I was using the oil boiler, the sure indicator will be a rise from its present 60 deg to 80 or more. I realise that it will go to 100 if left on as there is no thermostat to control it, but the timer is just set for a couple of hours in the morning for showers, so this will prevent that. I will leave it like that until Craig comes home as it is working, and we have a separate immersion tank in the loft that heats the kitchen water.

So this weekend I fitted a bloody big multi fuel stove, plumbed it all in including compression gate valves into a multi input/output Dunsley Neutraliser, swept the chimney with the drain rods, then got the immersion tank working again with a tut sort out special solution.

Is there no end to this mans talents?



tut

ps:- also found out that an infra red thermometer will not read the temperature of copper pipes. What is all that about then? 22 deg on the pipe, 60 deg on the brass nut.

[robin]

Tut,

If the energy meter goes up 3KW when hotwired, the element must be working (3KW cannot just vanish, so the element must be making heat and heating the water).

You will not see an AC voltage reading on the neutral pin relative to earth - it's already at the earth potential.

What you need to do is turn on your timer then measure the AC voltage between the neutral and live inputs, then again between neutral and live outputs, keeping in mind that the neutral input/output may in fact be common to one another - so it could be live in, live out and just neutral with two wires in it. You should see 240AC (ish) between live + neutral inputs, and when the timer is in it's on period you should see the same between live + neutral outputs.

Is the timer rated to switch 3KW? You may just have burned the contacts.

Cheers,
Robin

[robin]

Re: the pipe - the dot that you see is just for aiming; the measured temperature is from there-or-there abouts, depending on the quality of the equipment. So your dot might be on the pipe, but you might be measuring the wall temperature. Try sweeping the dot slowly from below the pipe to above it and use the peak temperature as a guide to actual temperature.

On a curved surface you will get mixed results - better to "aim" at a flat surface like the nut and better yet the surface should be at least 2-3x the size of the measurement spot.

Light and shiny surfaces also emit IR differently than matt black ones; you can pop some masking tape or electrical insulation tape onto the pipe and you'll get a more sane reading, but you'll still fall foul of the curved surface.

Cheers,
Robin

[tut]

First check that I did was from the timer making sure that there was 240 in, then 240 out when switched on. It is a proper good make immersion heater digital timer, so handles 3Kw. You actually told me to join the two neutrals as there were only three terminals as opposed to four. However there is no terminal for the earth lead that was used in the old switch. Does this matter?

28mm copper pipe makes sense now, could not work out how it would differentiate between materials, temp is temp. It was annoying though as it was showing 22 coming out of the cylinder which was confusing as it should have been 60. Works fine if I point it at the flat of a brass nut.

Verian is happy now that she has hot showers again, she gets up at 0800, whereas I am more of a 10 ish riser. Thought that I was going to have to buy her a back pack weed killer spray to keep her happy, but can save that for next time now.

tut

[Eric K]

Just bought her a soft closing toilet seat, and it has a great sensing lamp on it that lights up at night green if the seat is down, and red if it is up, so also makes sure that I hit the centre every time.

Tut,

I need one of these in my life. Do you have a link to where you got it?

Does not take much to keep a women happy, live and learn youngsters.

Cheers,

Eric

[robin]

However there is no terminal for the earth lead that was used in the old switch. Does this matter?
tut

Well that depends. It is probably designed not to use earth, which is the norm these days for all sorts of consumer stuff - I don't really know about proper power electrics, though, but would guess they would be double insulated too. Does it have a little picture on the housing anywhere with two squares, one inside the other? That means it is double insulated and so does not need earth to make it safe. However, that does NOT mean that your water tank/pipework/etc. no longer need to be earthed - I am sure they should still be earthed. So whilst you don't run the earth wire to the timer you do still run it to the copper pipes, etc.

It appears that you are saying that you have 240 on the output of the timer when active and the immersion still works, so it's a mystery as to why when the immersion is connected to the timer, the immersion does not heat the water.

If you're careful, hook up the wiring the way it should be (mains -> timer -> immersion heater) and activate the timer. Now use the multimeter in AC volts mode and see what the voltage at the terminals is now. It should be 240-ish, still. If it's dropped to nearly zero, or just 10V or something then the contacts in the immersion heater timer have failed under load.

Cheers,
Robin

[tut]

Just finished the installation and lit it.





tut

[Scotty C]

tut you need to sort out your boys coming over to help me load the logs from my garden.

Better hurry up before hte next camping trip or there will be a few more short.