A Rather Expensive 3 amp Fuse !!

[DavidWW]

I've selected this forum as it's the most appropriate, I think, in terms of the Scottish approach to being careful about spending money


Last Sunday evening we had guests. My wife came to me in a panic as the oven had just "cut out" when she was preparing the main element of the purvey (Google the term ).


The electrics to the gas oven had indeed cut out. Fortunately, the sellers of 12 years ago had left us the instructions for this gas oven/grill so that I was able to establish reasonable quickly, once I'd found these instructions , that ...........

(a) there should be somewhere a fused (3 amp) electrical connection....

and that .......

(b) there was also a manual override that would allow the oven still to operate, based on manually igniting the gas supply to the oven burners.

Despite looking everywhere that I could imagine, I could find no such electrical connection, - this, of course, under the time pressure of feeding our visitors; but the manual override did allow the oven to be lit, and the food supplied to our visitors


Being in the middle of the process of selling our house, we didn't really want to have such a problem, so called in an engineer from Scottish Gas, in the full knowledge that the call-out charge was £144 (US$ 285, Oz$ 345, NZ$390)........


The Scottish Gas engineer duly arrived, and, after the problem had been fully described to him, within 5 minutes searching, had found the fused plug involved, with a 3 amp fuse, which, when replaced, solved the problem ...........


Various points arise ............

Firstly, such fuses will eventually fail, - in other words, as in this case, a fuse failure doesn't mean that there is a basic system failure, only that a 27 year old 3 amp fuse is very probably at the end of its life in terms of the degradation of the metal in the fuse link, - any and all such fuses will eventually fail ......................

Secondly, when the instructions state that there is a fused link, then believe that statement, and continue the search for that link, since, as in this case, as long as you look in the right place, - quite easy when viewed upside down, viewed from under the drawers under the hob , there was indeed a twin socket, for the hob igniter, and the gas oven electrical functions

As the subject line says ......... "A Rather Expensive 3 amp Fuse !!"

David

[Alison Plenderleith]

I think rather expensive is a bit of an understatement, David

I'm glad we haven't got gas


Kind regards,

Alison

[DavidWW]

I think rather expensive is a bit of an understatement, David

I'm glad we haven't got gas


Kind regards,

Alison

I'm very much an understatment person in such a situation

David

[joette]

I think it also indicative of our throw away society.If you were buying the item today it would not have
1 a manual override.
2 the said fuse would be in a fully sealed unit & would need replacing at the cost of "loads of money".
My employers are at present trying to find an electrician to do some minor rewiring which they are both fully capable of doing themselves.However due to EU regulations this must be done by a fully certified electrician.Great & I am all for giving work to people but have you tried getting an electrician for such a smallish job & I won't tell you the prices the two who have visited have quoted & the time scale involved.
Many companies aside from call-out charges also charge for parking fees as well - I am sure most big cities around the world have similiar probs but it seems that is taking the Michael.
Are you moving far David?Or just downsizing?

[Thrall]

You don´t need an oven to find a slightly similar, or perhaps contrary example of this sort.
A few years ago the family owned an (elderly) Toyota Corolla. One of the bulbs illuminating the speedometer died. As we were tidying up the vehicle for sale I decided to replace the bulb and purchased it at the agency for 40p or so. I then asked how much it would cost to have it changed, to know (as a Scot?) how much I would save by doing the job myself; an incredible 150 GBP was the reply, if all goes well. That seemed a wee bit excessive, but...
When I got home and dug out the Haynes repair manual, the first sentence in the sequence was "Remove both front seats, rear centre console, mid centre console and front centre console!"
Good to know how much one had saved when the job was done - and yes, I changed the other dash bulbs at the same time.

Guid hunting,

Thrall

P.S. David, how was the roast?

[sporran]

Hello all,


about 15 years ago I did a day's consultancy manipulating and transferring data at a BAT factory in Nottingham. I was put in an office with an engineer who spent a lot of the day trying to find a supplier of a fuse for machinery that had stopped working. Admittedly, the fuse was big enough to act as a dumbbell for a child, but he struggled to find a source for a fuse that had blown after 30 years' use, and then to get the price down to nearly £10000.


Regards,

John

[paddyscar]

... but he struggled to find a source for a fuse that had blown after 30 years' use, and then to get the price down to nearly £10000.

Coupled with the service call, would it have been less to replace the machine?

David: You could offer diagrammed fuse replacement instructions to the new owners for only £75. Think of the potential savings to them, when they have to replace the fuse in 30 years!

Frances

[Thrall]

David: You could offer diagrammed fuse replacement instructions to the new owners for only £75. Think of the potential savings to them, when they have to replace the fuse in 30 years!

Get to the root of the problem! Stick in a length of nail with a wee bit of pencil and you´ll never have to worry about another blown fuse.....

Thrall

[wini]

DAVID,

The really interesting question is
"HOW WAS DINNER?"

:lol

wini

[DavidWW]

David: You could offer diagrammed fuse replacement instructions to the new owners for only £75. Think of the potential savings to them, when they have to replace the fuse in 30 years!

Get to the root of the problem! Stick in a length of nail with a wee bit of pencil and you´ll never have to worry about another blown fuse.....

Thrall

But the point was that the fused plug and socket was nowhere that I could find it, so where to stick the nail?............

And, yes, the pizza was great

David