I disagree. Any measurable leakage (at least with ordinary instruments outside of a lab) is evidence of impending failure. Anyway, he's got a Megger so can test it on the bench and hopefully let us know the result. He could always heat it with a plumbing blow lamp if it is still borderline.
No it is not.
The 'insulation' insde a heating element in particular is not an absolute insulator.
It is in general Magnesium oxide. Because that has excellent thermnal conductivity.
The great danger inimmersin heaters is water ingress. But if that gets in te ting will show very low resistance
RCD are designed to cope with some leakage. All elements leak. The question is how much.
I dont regard half a megohm as interesting at all.
Half a meg at 1.5v means it should be tested at higher voltage, which is what I advised the OP to do. I don't know at this point whether he did or not.
NT
In article snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, Kal Ico snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com scribeth thus
Any further with that odd Earth Neutral short on the mains filter?..
Very often heating elements increase their leakage as they warm up least the two or so I've had to replace have!..
As (I think) Tony pointed out earlier, the elements are cheap enough to replace so I've ordered another one.
I haven't taken the old one out to bench test it at mains voltage, but I can say that I have run two cycles with the element disconnected and neither time did the RCD trip. I have then run two cycles with the element connected and both time it tripped after a minute or two (presumably when it went to heat).
On the basis of balance of probabilties and cheapness to replace, I'm going to try a new element and will let you all know what happens.
Thanks, as always, for the clever advice.
Yeahbut that didn't negate the WM from 'the issue' as it was tripping more regularly when it was connected?
Agreed (and seems likely from the further info from the OP).
As an aside, we have just ordered and I replaced Mum's washing machine. Well, it replaced a replacement she was given years earlier and I found was doomed to fail when I made it functional a bit back.
I was given to her by her granddaughter on the grounds that I might be able to fix it and I recently did when her (very) old Hoover finally died (rear ally drum casting corroded away).
The Whirlpool was 'crunchy' when you turned the drum by hand and after stripping it down, I found *loads* of calcium loose between the drum and the tub.
However, I also noticed loads of corrosion and cracks in the inner spider that supported the back of the drum so told Mum not to use the higher spin speeds (and she wanted to get *some* use out of the WM because 1) she was given it by her GD and 2) she had stored it for some time so wanted to use it out of principal. ;-)
The other day she said 'it's leaking and won't spin' and when I went to pull it out ready for the new one, I turned the drum and found it really rattling about and the drive belt was broken and on the floor. ;-)
We got her a Bosch like the one our daughter got us as it has one simple program knob and a stop / start button and ours seems to work ok (with an A+++ energy rating or summat). ;-)
Cheers, T i m
Latest update (& solved).
Thanks again for all the advice.
I replaced the heating element and all is tickety-boo.
One thing I did before replacing it was measure the resistance (yes, at low voltage, using my multimeter) between E and the two power terminals on the element. It showed as totally open circuit. Compared to the 500k - 1M Ohm of the old element. (I realise it would have been better to measure at mains but was unable to do that).
So, the washer is fixed (for now!)
Which leaves the strange thing of the RCD still tripping a couple more times after I first unplugged the washer. I didn't imagine that, and of course there could be this high residual current thing that some of you suggest, with the washer just pushing it over the edge. I also wondered if it could be that the characteristics of an RCD change, even if slightly, if it is repeatedly tripped in a short space of time. This making it a little 'sensitive', so to speak, such that even with the washer unplugged it tripped a couple more times.
What do you all think? Seems odd, but it has not tripped at all since and everything is very much back to normal.
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