Electrical shower

[Cj24]

Hi Iv been to someone's house who said there shower pull cord sw was smelling of fish so I opened up the pull cord to find the Neutral on the supply side was melting and the copper was all black and the switch was melting as you could see the plastic slightly disformed so the smell was surely the burning of the plastic, I remade connection off and reused the same switch as a temp measure, the guy ordered new sw and was getting back to me but not heard anything then 3 weeks later I get a call saying smells back so Iv been round and changed for new switch but the supply Neutral had started to melt again, any ideas? And do you think it will happen again? It is 8.5kw shower and 10mm cable and it's a short distance from the board do you just think it was a loose connection? As I can't see what else it could be

 

[netblindpaul]

always enjoy a lively debate. got kicked out of a few in my time. Paul. do you think that customers using shower isolators as on/off switches, switching under load, could be a cause of premature failure?

Could well be tel.
Other options are material creep due to heating and cooling cycles allowing the connections to loosen, carp materials (switches), poor installation techniques, for example.

 

[Geordie Spark]

Chorlton Water Park is still wet though.
It's now got a dodgy frothy scum floating on it at the moment, so I'd give it a day or two.


As it happens, I have partaken in the use electric showers and never once used the greasy pull cord to 'Isolate' it afterwards.
Totally effing pointless!

Electric shooers are pants!!

Once you've partaken the delights of a decent thermostatically controlled mixer valve shower (Mira Excell perhaps?) run off a nice big combi boiler you'll never want to wash your bits in a piddling little leccy jobbie again!!

 

[Silly Sausage]

Electric shooers are pants!!

Once you've partaken the delights of a decent thermostatically controlled mixer valve shower (Mira Excell perhaps?) run off a nice big combi boiler you'll never want to wash your bits in a piddling little leccy jobbie again!!

Oh I don't know, when I were a lad with the fresh young chicken (as she were then) in the new Whitworth Park flats, wicked showers they were.
I've never been so clean since.

 

[Knobhead]

As it happens, I've just got back from changing a shower isolator (and one or two other things in the same property). The isolator contacts themselves had failed, I noticed the shower was left switched on, and the occupiers confirmed they leave the shower switched on and then turn it on/off via the isolator. No overheating of the terminations or cable, just failed a contact. It didn't look that old (perhaps no more than 5 years).

That’s no great mystery, an isolator is an OFF LOAD switch. No wonder it failed.

 

[davesparks]

I remember the very early days of my apprenticeship, we learned useful things like the difference between an isolator and a switch and between a switch-fuse and a fuse-switch

 

[Geordie Spark]

Wow! Great debate this one chaps
Aye .. and it's been made all the better thanks to your very valuable contribution for which I have given you a "thanks".

Thanks Geordie, I missed most of it mate, but I would say a shower needs an isolator most definitely. And I think that's what most people have concluded

I neither agree nor disagree with you and frankly my dear I don't give a damn! :vanish:

 

[Silly Sausage]

I neither agree nor disagree with you and frankly my dear I don't give a damn! :vanish:

I'm tempted to agree with you on this, but on second thoughts, I'm not so sure.
Let me sleep on it.