Friday, July 09, 2010

Fingers crossed.

Oooh, that big heater on our copper. Bad heater. It went again of course. So I decided to have a proper look at it. Insulation cooked off the wiring. Corroded conductors. Nasty. OK, so, undo everything and wire it up again. I decided to remove the wiring enclosure and spin it round a bit to give a better angle for getting the wires to the crappy little terminals. This gave me a better look at the ends of the actual elements.

I tend to call this heater the 12K element, but it's actually 6 elements, joined together 2 per phase. And what's this, the little link connecting two of the elements is all gnarly and burned. Barely touching one of the posts, and only shakily connected to the other one.

On the left, the old one, on the right, a new one I hastily "machined". Little beggar.

I reckon that old one would have been arcing and getting all naughty and hot. It may have been the cause of the trouble all along. Perhaps.

And you know, it all seems to be working. This is good, as we absolutely have to brew tomorrow. It's probably going to be  Sunbird, some of which is likely for the big festival in that London. Touch wood.

2 comments:

Jeff Pickthall said...

Are you going to the big festival in that London?

StringersBeer said...

I don't think we'll be able to make time.