Thought the sparks on here might like this. I was being rather nosy the other day, when i discovered an overheating terminal block in the electrical panel in one of our freezers. So being the good little drone that i am, i phoned it in. The engineer came to see to it the same day. (It was very brown, see below, and kicking out a fair bit of heat!)
It turns out that one of the door heaters was pulling 9.8 amps! Now i dont know what power the door heaters are, but i'd think they aren't more than 100w. Anyway, i got my calculator out, and worked out that this door heater cost us £150 over a month, based on 9p per kw. And godknows how long its been like this. It happens we took monthly meter readings the other day and noticed they had gone up, we were scratching our heads wondering why! Now we know!
Old bit of terminal block (that 2 door freezer doesnt have any of this, it seems this freezer was bodged together at some time using whatever was handy at the time). Wire was very brittle.
Fancy faultfinding in this?
(the panel is not fixed shut, simply hinged at the top, and yes, there are many exposed 230V terminals there. the adjacent freezer is the same)
This is what replaced that burnt out block - the connectors at the top left and the crimps. Note the scorch marks at the top where the terminal had been overheating.
He disconnected the door (its now dripping with condensation) and is waiting for a replacement door to arrive. The supply to this freezer is via 3 x 13A plugtops - it has 3 compressors controlled by a relay. I'm guessing that this door heater plus a compressor was close to overloading one of the plugs (compressors in this unit run near-constantly). You'd think within all that wiring would be a few fuses for individual components - i know the dairy chillers have an MCB board within them!
It turns out that one of the door heaters was pulling 9.8 amps! Now i dont know what power the door heaters are, but i'd think they aren't more than 100w. Anyway, i got my calculator out, and worked out that this door heater cost us £150 over a month, based on 9p per kw. And godknows how long its been like this. It happens we took monthly meter readings the other day and noticed they had gone up, we were scratching our heads wondering why! Now we know!
Old bit of terminal block (that 2 door freezer doesnt have any of this, it seems this freezer was bodged together at some time using whatever was handy at the time). Wire was very brittle.
Fancy faultfinding in this?
(the panel is not fixed shut, simply hinged at the top, and yes, there are many exposed 230V terminals there. the adjacent freezer is the same)
This is what replaced that burnt out block - the connectors at the top left and the crimps. Note the scorch marks at the top where the terminal had been overheating.
He disconnected the door (its now dripping with condensation) and is waiting for a replacement door to arrive. The supply to this freezer is via 3 x 13A plugtops - it has 3 compressors controlled by a relay. I'm guessing that this door heater plus a compressor was close to overloading one of the plugs (compressors in this unit run near-constantly). You'd think within all that wiring would be a few fuses for individual components - i know the dairy chillers have an MCB board within them!
