Dimplex Storage Heater - why did the elctrician do this..?

[vonsworld]

My friend has a Dimplex CLX24N storage heater. An electrician dismantled and examined the heater, and said 2 out of the 4 elements were broken and needed replacing. He quoted £40 per element plus labour.

Therefore I bought 2 new elements and decided to fit them myself.

When I opened the heater I found the electrician had disconnected 2 of the elements which were still in place between the bricks. The junction boxes underneath each element had been unscrewed and left resting at the bottom of the heater wrapped in insulation tape.

Why would the electrician leave the faulty elements in the heater, but disconnected in this way?

I then put a multimeter across each element in turn. They all had a resistance of about 70 ohms, both the good and supposedly faulty ones.

Is there a good reason for what I've described, or was the electrician hoping to trick us into having him replace 2 perfectly sound elements?

Thanks for your advice...

 

[st07]

70 ohms, makes sense I suppose, that'd be around 750W per element. Was your friend experiencing any problems with the heater which required a call out, or was this just a scheduled inspection?

 

[333rocky333]

He had no need to remove the elements yet if he had no replacements to put back.

To do so he would need to remove and refit the relevant covers and bricks.
Then repeat again to fit the new ones.

As the bricks crumble easy he was wise to leave them in for now.

The connection blocks would have been best left off if they were causing problems, so would have to lay loose, with the faulty element still in place.
They still could liven up, so the tape I assume was to insulate them from the case although proberly not required

you only need to remove the terminal block to test each element so was no real need to remove the elements yet.
May have saved some labour cost.
Why he said they were faulty only he can answer that.
Did you insulation test between the element core and the element casing, this could be low and why he condemned them, that could still show an end to end element reading which you say was 70

There are aprox 150 mm width of heater per element (one brick)
If you feel along the cover aprox 30 minutes after switching the isolator on
(During off peak obviously) you can get a rough idea if all elements are on.