These days, most such kit is controlled by microprocessors - washing machines, dish-washers, alarm panels, cd/dvd-players, etc. Electrical spikes can confuse processors, and then they need resetting. Usually, as you've discovered, power-cycling will do the trick, but sometimes a spike causes permanent damage, in which case the relevant part needs to be replaced.
My own washing machine regularly stops in the middle of washes, and I have to power-cycle it to get it to restart at the point it left off. It's damned annoying, but I've never thought the inconvenience worth the expense - I was quoted £200+ by the engineer who came to look at it - to have it fixed.
I suggest you keep an eye > Hotpoint WF561P less than four years old. Average use.
It was not used Saturday.
> This morning (Sunday) I noticed that two lights were on. Superwash and Easy > iron.
> They were not on yesterday.
> No matter what I did the lights would not go out. Tried a wash, everything.
> Then I turned the power to the machine off and then back on. Lights out. Did
> a wash, no problems.
> No kids, the dog just might have pressed a button but this is very unlikely
> and would not resulted in the lights being on. We always leave the door > slighty open.
Much appreciated is that. I did notice the lights flickering last night, house lights not the ones on the washing machine. The machine now seems to be okay. What the hell was the engineer going to do to your washing machine for £200? A new one would cost much less than that.
Dismantle it (which will take a while) replace the circuit board for the computer then rebuild it (which will take longer than it would on the production line).
House lights flickering would be the obvious trigger. Many computers dislike that kind of thing and I'm pretty sure they have more sophisticated PSUs.
He was going to replace the control-unit. It's a Bosch, so the parts are more expensive to start with.
Incidentally, one source of electrical spikes that is more noticeable at this time of year is 'dirty' central-heating switching. If your c-h needs servicing, then get it done, otherwise it'll gradually kill off all the other audio-visual and microprocessor-controlled appliances in your home. It's cheaper in the long run to fix the central-heating.
Also, I'd suggest that you switch off at the wall such items as wash>
Well, it's Hotpoint. Is that now Bosh? CH stat was new two years ago. It would be nice to cut off the power to the washing machine, however it is built in very well indeed. I would have to pull it out, no thanks.
But what about the switches that control the burners in the boiler?
Shouldn't there be an isolating switch to the wiring-in point, for example above the work surface on the wall? If there's some sort of accident, and it starts pumping water all over the floor, you need to be able to switch it off quickly and safely.
Washing machine is plugged into a socket behind it. I chopped the power in the meter cupboard using the kitchen sockets switch. I have never seen an "isolation switch" on a kitchen wall for a washing machine, refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, microwave oven, electric cooker, kettle, radio, coffee maker, toaster or vibrator.
They are what you'll probably find is in your anti-surge plugs/plug-boards but nothing to stop you connecting them anywhere you need them. Obviously, they won't stop electronic stuff getting temporarily screwed up if the power dips, but its the spikes that do the real damage.
Computers are the exception - if a power dip happens at the wrong time, you can still end up with a corrupt registry or other stuffed data. I run mine on a small uninterupted power supply (I've used APC stuff for years and find them good
formatting link
), and with the high winds and bad weather last week, it cut in several times to keep my computer supply stable. If you just want protection and you're not bothered about long run-time, you can probably get one for around £50-60 new. The type that automatically shut your machine down through a USB cable when the battery is down to a few minutes run time are worth paying extra for.
Just beware of any second-hand items though as they contain sealed lead-acid batteries which degrade over time.
That's a rather unusual location, but the location doesn't really make any difference. I am not a CH engineer, but AIUI ...
As the rooms cool down, the central-heating switches on under the control of the drawing-room thermostat. As the rooms get warm enough, the central-heating switches off, again under the control of the drawing-room thermostat. It's usually the latter action that causes the worst spikes if, unlike yours, the thermostat is not in good condition.
When the central-heating is running, the pump runs circulating the heat out of the boiler around the system, but it can only do this at a certain rate, and, as the system ages, possibly the pump start to labour and/or the pipes start to scale up reducing flow, so there is potential for the boiler to deliver heat to the jacket faster than the pump can remove it. To prevent disaster, there is therefore another thermostat for the water jacket in the boiler itself. So the boiler burns until the temperature of the water in the jacket reaches a certain temperature, and then cuts out under the control of the boiler thermostat. After a while the pump has lowered the temperature in jacket, and then the boiler is ignited again. As with the room thermostat, the worst spikes are when electric current is switched off, and the spikes from the boiler thermostat can be just as bad as those from the room thermostat.
If in poor condition, both thermostats can also cause TV interference. Hence, it's important to ensure that both switching actions are 'clean', not 'dirty'.
Yes, but that would happen any way, even if yours were wired like mine, so that doesn't really tell us anything.
Mine has an unswitched, flush-mounted wiring-in point in the cavity for the machine, and a seperate, fused switch point above the work surface that controls it.
Alternatively, I assume one could have an unswitched socket in the cavity, with an unfused (the fuse is now in the plug on the machine's mains lead) switch point above the surface. The disadvantage with this arrangement would be that a power-point with a plug in it tends to stick out further from the wall, and washing-machines vibrate a lot as they spin, so there is potential either for the machine to be sticking too far out into the kitchen, or else to be pushed so far back as there to be a danger of fouling and damaging the power-point or plug as it spins. At very least I would think that the power-point should not be surface mounted in this situation, but recessed into the wall.
No, I wouldn't expect to see an isolating switch for any of these, not even the last alternative!
I've contributed on and off on here for a few years, but otherwise it would be a hell of a coincidence if you did! Where you from and what lin eof business you in?
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