Free Storage Heater Experiment

[Mr Gus]

Which begs the question, why for decades have they been so underinsulated & why have the manufs been allowed to get away with such wastage, ..it's not like its free, ..& as of April 2022 "BOOM"

[nowty]

Which begs the question, why for decades have they been so underinsulated & why have the manufs been allowed to get away with such wastage, ..it's not like its free, ..& as of April 2022 "BOOM"

My experiment has also convinced me that it would be much better to house all the electrics / controls underneath the oven so they stay cool, and have a slab of Aerogel insulation at the top, so no need for a cooling fan which on my oven is an unbelievable waste of energy.

[Mr Gus]

We simply turn ours off at the mains, door ajar.. worked for some 15+ years to date.
Yup, that fan might be efficient blowing the air from the elements to evenly cook food, but thereafter it is questionable.

[nowty]

We simply turn ours off at the mains, door ajar.. worked for some 15+ years to date.
Yup, that fan might be efficient blowing the air from the elements to evenly cook food, but thereafter it is questionable.

In my oven there are two fans.

One blowing over the element to cook the food evenly, that does its job well.

But there is a second cooling one, sucking cool air from outside and through the electric controls area and blowing it out the front just above the door at just above the top of the oven. Its on all the time if the oven is switched on, or with the oven switched off but the top of the oven is still too hot for the electric controls area.

So in effect, the insulation at the top of the oven is a fan blowing cold air over the top of the oven. Its that one I cannot comprehend in terms of actively making the oven less efficient.

[Mr Gus]

Nor I.

It's surely expensive to add a second fan compared to a cheap bit of glass fibre type insulation & heat resistant foil around the essential controls, that's all ours has between it & the pressed steel naffness of our AEG oven.

Unless their aim is failed small unit deemed a "minor fault" that is determinable in its absence of sound to the purchaser for the sake of flogging spares & racking up engineering hours? ..just as cars off the forecourts profitability is bumped by in house services etc.

[Marcus]

Nor I.

It's surely expensive to add a second fan compared to a cheap bit of glass fibre type insulation & heat resistant foil around the essential controls, that's all ours has between it & the pressed steel naffness of our AEG oven.

Unless their aim is failed small unit deemed a "minor fault" that is determinable in its absence of sound to the purchaser for the sake of flogging spares & racking up engineering hours? ..just as cars off the forecourts profitability is bumped by in house services etc.

This story is not entirely relevant to this thread, but is prompted by my experience of an AEG cooking appliance and AEG service engineer:-

fitted an AEG induction hob for someone a few years ago now and it stopped working after a couple of months - would power up, sometimes work a bit then throw up an error number on the display and stop. As with many major renovation projects it had been bought 'earlier' and was out of warranty. The owner phoned AEG and 'the nice lady on the phone' persuaded them to buy a service contract(i forget the exact terminology and cost, but it wasn't cheap) which would result in a service engineer visit and repair at minimum cost.

Service engineer comes, says 'it was fitted with inadequate ventilation' (not true- ventilation exceeded what was recommended in the instal manual) and was 'beyond repair', and leaves.

Anyway i came and fitted a temporary cheapo ceramic hob and agreed to take a look at it in case it could be recovered. Took it home, googled the error code - " communication error" then opened it up. Inside there were two motherboards each with two induction units and a control board in the front right with the led displays and touch controls butted up to the underside of the glass(?) hob.

Close inspection reveals that the 7segment LED display on the top left of the control board had distortions on it's top surface (i.e. where it was touching the glass) suggesting that it had got hot. next to it - also very close the the glass was the 3 pin plug&socket (5volts, 0volts & data) of the communication cable that linked the boards together. This also looked heat damaged on it's top edge. Soldered the wires direct to the underside of the board - hob works perfectly.

Conclusions: someone probably put a hot pan on the control part of the hob (it was a holiday let so who knows?), and the AEG engineer either has less engineering skills than a chimp with a blunt screwdriver, or they have a policy of saying 'not repairable' if it's out of warranty.

[nowty]

Conclusions: someone probably put a hot pan on the control part of the hob (it was a holiday let so who knows?), and the AEG engineer either has less engineering skills than a chimp with a blunt screwdriver, or they have a policy of saying 'not repairable' if it's out of warranty.

And I bet they didn't get the service contract refunded either.

I have a story (think I posted it at some point on the old forum) with my Bosch Worcester gas boiler which threw an error code, I think flame failure and it started intermittently shutting down every now literally a week or two after the warranty ended. No problem, I can fix most things and managed to get hold of the service manual. I tried every thing it said, everything checked out ok and nothing I did could fix this problem.

I ended up paying for a year service contract which was circa £300 and any fault fixed. Service engineer came down, he knew his stuff and tried everything I had already done but I could not admit that to him could I.

He was at my house for ages and he could not understand what was going on but he said he liked a challenge and vowed not to leave until it was fixed. He then phoned his boss who suggested a couple other things. Still no luck, after some more time passed without any luck his boss phones him up after he'd asked around some of his most knowledgeable staff.

The service engineer said, OK, I've been told to remove (and NOT replace) a sprung loaded back draft flap from the flue. Apparently they occasionally stick and therefore give an intermittent problem. He said if it gives the same code again, give me a call but the fault never returned.

On one hand I was happy that it was fixed, but then I thought, hang on a bit, I've just paid to have a faulty designed boiler have something removed to get it working.

[Mr Gus]

I hope a damning email barreled their way Marcus?

(AEG, as we found are typically another pressed steel badge swap for a plethora of brands, white goods forum initially diagnosed it & repair 2x has been filthy cheap for the same problem years apart)

"....It's ALIVE..."

[Marcus]

I hope a damning email barreled their way Marcus?

(AEG, as we found are typically another pressed steel badge swap for a plethora of brands, white goods forum initially diagnosed it & repair 2x has been filthy cheap for the same problem years apart)

"....It's ALIVE..."

I kind of left that with the owner TBH.

[nowty]

An extra hour from 10:30 tonight on the Octopus intelligence tariff so I am roasting some chicken, oh, bugger that means I need to remove the bricks.

OK, SWMBO was winging that they are too heavy to remove safely, hmmmmmm, I agree, but it was a proof of concept that I need another storage heater for those extra cold periods.

So I just bought an extra unused storage heater (bricks still in the box) for less than half price.
It will fit in the boiler room which is a bit of a joke as the gas boiler has been switched off since May 2021 apart from its service and the time I had a smart gas meter installed so it had to be turned on to purge out any air in the gas pipe.

Another 10+ kWh of heat storage for Nowty Towers.