Earth leakage

[Bill]

Well it was Christmas morning and we had opened all the presents, not a DiY one amongst them, unless you include the "bake your own Christmas cake" mix and the "how to stop smoking in a day" book that my wife presented me with.

Any way she decided to be ultra efficient this year and use 2 ovens for dinner. Pity she hadn't checked the 2nd one in the annexe. (for 2 years). I am assuming the heating element is leaking, every time I put power to it the trip goes. Left it running for a while with the fan on and the top grill area on to try and warm it up and remove any moisture. Oh the hassle of it all having to manage with only one oven on Christmas day :-(

I think I know what I'm doing next week! All I have to figure out is how to remove a built in oven.............

Merry Christmas everyone.

[damduck-egg]

For some blokes cooking a cake and stopping smoking would be mutually incompatable.

Sticking with the theme of the group my late father always Iced the cake. My mother Reckoned that as he was good at plastering it was the same skill set.

G.Harman

[<me9]

I used to get the job for that reason. Somehow i've managed to get out of it of late.

[Tabby]

disconnecting the earth & shorting the RCD?

[JS]

DANGER DANGER DANGER If the RCD is tripping then DO NOT disconnected the safety earth. The tripping indicates there is a high leakage current that would make the metalwork live and be able to give a severe electric shock. Depending on the local earthing arrangements it may be that an RCD is not required for sucha class 1 appliance but that would depend on the supply earthing arangements.

[Bill]

In message , Tabby writes

Strangely enough I did consider this, just to get the element hot in the hope it may remove the moisture that has probably built up. The oven is about 15 years old, was used regularly for about 5 years and now only once or twice every couple of years.

A new element is £35:00 so not dramatically expensive, would heating it be a fix or just a temporary bodge or just a waste of time?

[John Williamson]

A dangerous waste of time. If warming the room above the dew point for a few hours doesn't work, the moisture's inside the element or in the switchgear, which means it's shot and in a dangerous condition.

[ARWadsworth]

It is worth a shot but your chances of success are only 10-20% IMHO.

[Tabby]

as long as you keep the oven earthed its not dangeorus in the least.

NT

[PeterC]

If it's like my very underused cooker, there'll be a build up of moisture in the element near the terminals. It happened on most of my elements, as my father did a lot of cooking then, after he died, I did none. The salts etc. from cooking can get into the insulation for a short way and absorb moisture, then heating the element will drive out the moisture and it will condense on the cool ends of the element, tripping the RCD.

Once I realised the cause, I removed the elements (3 rings and both grill), clened them and put them in the oven at 150C for half an hour. On refitting, they all worked properly. Now I run all of the elements to red heat (not all on at once) on a cold morning (no point in wasting heat) once a year. They've been OK ever since.

[Graham.]

I recently replaced the element in our oven. The old one was tripping the RCD when the oven reached about 200 deg C so it had plenty of opportunity to "dry out" if moisture was the problem. I wasn't 100% sure if the element would be the cause, but happily it was.

The cheap and cheerful electric hob with the solid rings is a different story. This does respond to boiling off the moisture for ten min with the earth temporarily disconnected.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember JS saying something like:

Bollocks.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember John Williamson saying something like:

Bollocks.

[ARWadsworth]

Mine are.

[John Rumm]

cause, but happily it was.

Alas the problem is not really solved just by "drying out" as such, although that will help in some cases where the moisture is not actually in the element.

The usual insulation material in the element is magnesium oxide. Its hygroscopic, and when it gets wet you get a chemical conversion to magnesium hydroxide which is electrically more conductive. To reverse the process you need to get it *very* hot, IIRC over 320 deg C.

[Tabby]

wsRo.100612$ [e-mail]...

the cause, but happily it was.

An element should reach that and more in normal cooking.

NT

[Bill]

Well, it may be a short lived fix, but I gave it half an hour this morning with no earth, still alive by the way. Reconnected the earth and no more tripping. Gave it another hour and then left it to cool down. Tried it this evening and still no trip so OK for now. We'll see how it goes after a few days in an unheated kitchen.

Thanks to everyone for all comments, a varied assortment and much appreciated.

[Andy Champ]

My mother baked our wedding cake, and my father iced it. With a float.

Beautiful job, and they got repeat orders (from around the family not from me!)

Andy

[Andrew Gabriel]

Yep - that used to be my job too. Eventually we all admitted that none of us actually like icing, and I switched to doing a marzipan covering only. After another few years of none of us having any room to even start on the Christmas cake after we'd eaten the Christmas pudding, mince pies, marzipan stollen, and various other things, we stopped making the Christmas cake altogether.