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Immersion heater switch tripping shore RCD


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Don’t see how this can be condensation, far too much water especially this time of year unless you are putting very cold water into your tanks. This would seem like a leak somewhere to me. I had something like this were water was rising up around the top of the calorifier between the insulation and tank, turned out the tank had a slit in it, new tank sorted the problem, costly.

 

Fred

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As others have said, dry it out & see how you get on. If you're lucky, it's condensation, if not you need a new element.

 

Be aware though that if it's micro leaking (as referred to by NMEA above) you might find it'll go away as long as the tank is full of hot water, then come back again if the tank gets cold for any length of time - when everything is nice & hot, the micro cracks around the element seem to seal up &/or any small leaks evaporate. When everything cools down again, the micro cracks open up & water pools into the casing as in your picture & the RCD goes PING again...

 

I've seen a few of those here over the past couple of years (but not specifically the new titanium Surcal ones though)

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I had a very similar (same) issue no long ago.

 

New Surecal fitted this winter. After a few days out and plugin back into shore power, the RCD inside the boat and at the bollard would trip. I found the same amount of water as you did after removing the black plastic cover.

 

Engineer came to the boat and fixed it by replacing the o-ring between the immersion heater and the tank body. Seal was split; he suggested it was most likely due to it being over tightened during manufacturing...

 

So far so good.

Edited by fer
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My neighbours had a huge calorifier fitted (the biggest they could find) and because of it's size had yo git it in the engine 'ole of their cruiser stern. I earned them that condensation might cause them some problems which it did.

Problem was it effected the 3 other boats on the same bollard and we went through a winter with the bollard tripping out all the time.

Phil

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I dried it out and, so far, all is going well. It is staying dry, hot water is in the taps and no RCD tripping. Out of interest, if I wished in the future to remove the element what sort of spanner would I need? The 'nut' is about 90 mm across.

post-25277-0-25844700-1472583031_thumb.jpg

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I dried it out and, so far, all is going well. It is staying dry, hot water is in the taps and no RCD tripping. Out of interest, if I wished in the future to remove the element what sort of spanner would I need? The 'nut' is about 90 mm across.

Immersion box spanner from Screfix or similar.

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I dried it out and, so far, all is going well. It is staying dry, hot water is in the taps and no RCD tripping. Out of interest, if I wished in the future to remove the element what sort of spanner would I need? The 'nut' is about 90 mm across.

If you do need to remove it use the proper spanner as suggested here but I would suggest you loosen the heater slightly while the cylinder is still full of water

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I had exactly the same problem. The water pooling was actually leaking out of the seal where the immersion screws into the tank. I cleaned up the area, scraping away some of the tank insulation which was preventing a tight seal. I screwed in a new immersion unit with some silicon tape on the threads and some bathroom sealant between the tank and the immersion unit. Solved it. Apart from the immersion unit i replaced it with is half the length of the old one and doesn't heat the tank too well. Now i can't be bothered to replace it again because i fear i may have sealed it too well!


p.s. i used this to undo it: http://www.qvsdirect.com/silverline-immersion-spanners-box-type?utm_source=google&utm_medium=googleshopping&utm_campaign=googlebase&gclid=CNSoupCa7M4CFbYy0wod9NoGkQ

 

Box-Wrench.jpg

 

give it light taps with a hammer to release any seal rather than twisting with force.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The leak slowly returned, so I bought a box spanner (£8.99 Screwfix) and, after a series of hard thumps on the spanner handle with a lump hammer, managed to remove the heater and thermostat. The culprit appears to have been a fractured washer (see photo below). I tested the heater and thermostat with a multimeter and they are fine. So I bought a new washer (£5.99 Plumb Centre) and put everything back. The tank is now full with hot water and, so far, no leaks evident. Thank you all for your kind help. It has been a bit of a long-winded process, but I learnt a lot. And if anyone needs an immersion heater washer, I have four spare biggrin.png

post-25277-0-33463900-1474019252_thumb.jpg

Edited by Daltonia
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