"Roger Hayter" wrote in message
...
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 18/02/2019 22:38, Kal Ico wrote:
On Monday, 18 February 2019 22:21:43 UTC, wrote:
On Monday, 18 February 2019 22:12:50 UTC, Kal Ico wrote:
Latest news:

Following the earlier steer that the most likely component to break
is
the heater element in the washer, I took the connections off that.

It then does not trip the RCD and I was able to select the drain
programme then the spin programme, without problem.

But then the strange bit - when the spin finished I reconnected the
heating element and it still didn't trip the RCD.

Testing the resistance from each terminal on the heating element to
Earth, with the low-voltage meter, it was about half a Meg Ohm on
each.
Could this be a fault that only shows up when under power and/or
heated?

Just to be clear, there have been NO further trips of the RCD when
the
washer is unplugged. Maybe just a coincidence or maybe that ring has
high earth leakage anyway. Not sure.

Half a meg at low voltage is not right, suspect it has a problem. That
R figure will fall as higher V is applied. The heater elephant is only
powered up during the wash cycle, and half a meg from N to E doesn't
matter. I'd test the element resistance at full voltage. Leaky elements
are cheap enough to replace.


NT

Thanks. New element ordered. Cheers

Don't be too sure. He is (as usual) talking relative ********.

half a meg is 500uA. Well below 30 mA.

IME trips happen around the tens of K mark.

The elements I have replaced all measured that when cold. Thats not to
say they didnt get worse when hot, but they all showed up in the sub
100K zone cold.

As did my motor winding to chassis 'short'

I disagree. Any measurable leakage (at least with ordinary
instruments outside of a lab) is evidence of impending failure.

Nope, just a limitation of the technology,
most obviously with water heating elements.

Anyway, he's got a Megger so can test it on the bench
and hopefully let us know the result. He could always
heat it with a plumbing blow lamp if it is still borderline.