Portable Appliance Testing

[tanker]

Hi Guys


Wonder if you would be able to offer me some advice. I have recently been on the C&G course for PAT. As a landlord I thought that the initial outlay of the course and a tester would be a useful addition given that my tenants like to have their own electrical appliances, testing these before they use them will give me peace of mind.

While I found the course useful I'm not overly convinced that I was taught every thing that would have been possible.

As a test I went and tested some of the appliances that I have in my own home, I came across a juicer, that is a class 1 item, however I am unable to find a suitable area on the appliance where I can clip my earth bond lead, the casing and handle are both made of plastic.

Any advice would be appreciated

T

 

[luminaire]

Are you sure it is ClassI?
Double check and look for the square within a square symbol.

If it is Class I, then you would need to clip your earth bond to the metal blade inside the juicer.

 

[tanker]

Luminaire,

Yeah it's definately class 1, says so on it's label, I was suprised myself as there doeasn't appear to be metal parts on it.

http://www.powerjuicer.com shows what I'm talking about. While the handle is metal it fits into the plastic casing.

The steel cutting blade screws onto a plastic mail thread that the motor spins.

Any further advice would be greatly accepted.

T

 

[Spark123]

Is the earth connected to the motor? Can you get access to the motor?

 

[luminaire]

There are occasions where a Class I fitting is completey encased in plastic in which case you are unable to complete the test.

 

[Lectrician]

Table top fans being a very common example......

 

[ricicle]

I hate Portable Appliance Testing testing

 

[Spark123]

Agree, it has got to be one of the most repetative, boring jobs. Thankfully we now have an AVO PAT 4 which records the results instead of doing them manually, that was even worse.
Likened on a boredom level to maintenance on wet cells!!

 

[ricicle]

Likened on a boredom level to maintenance on wet cells!!

Gotta keep those fork-lift trucks, cherry pickers and floor scrubbers working

 

[Spark123]

lol, yeah they are only tiddlers on them though!! As an apprentice we had rooms full of them for UPS inverters, emergency lighting, fire alarms etc. One room had a few 110v systems and a 415v system worth of cells in it, there were a lot and each cells wasn't small either!! Top up the water, measure the SG, measure the voltage hundreds of times