"Ed Sirett - Property maintainer and registered gas fitter." ;-)
Ed said "In a place I run, the damp pump windings have gone short circuit (4.4 Ohms @ 3V DC)"
Well the 'winner' in that the 'fault' causing the clicky thing under the stairs to do it's thing *seems* to be the wachine machine main motor?
Firstly I'd like to mention that I wasn't 100% correct with my first fault description in that the machine was infact 'On' but the door was open (I assumed nothing much would be live in there in this state). With the machine off and the power on, all was fine.
So, had a clean up in there (mainly belt rubber) and no sign of wet, mice, purple worms or currents (flowing in any direction).
I then gleaned a general connection path, removing and testing the connectors to various mains connected loads (and testing in-between) till I came to the main motor. With that disconnected the machine did everything else perfectly (but my whites weren't getting white, Doh!) ;-(
I pulled the motor and measured 45.5k ohms between either stator winding end and ground and 1.6 ohms across it?
So, at 45.5 it's not a 'short' to ground so what else would cause that sort of resistance (the 'breaking down' of a winding insulation possibly?).
Q1, is there anything *I* can do about that? (strip the motor and clean it with something (if so what?). Spray it with WD40 (that fixes everything, right? )
Q2, (and assuming the answer to Q1 is yes). Is 1.6 ohm 'ok' for a stator winding (the wires are pretty thick)?
Q3, could someone tell me if an RCD cares if the current through the live must come back through the neutral or the earth? ;-)
All the best and thanks again to all for the replies (I actually read them all so that makes me the saddest of all of us!)
T i m
p.s. Sorry if I missed anyone else mentioning a possible motor fault (I did check / isolate / rule-out filters / caps where possible as well ta .