Noodles Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Hi everyone, Hubby and I were recently on a campsite on EHU using the electric ring on the cooker and I was using the hair dryer when we must have blown a fuse cos everything went off. When we reconnected the EHU we noticed that the electric ring on the cooker wasn't working. Hubby has checked the fuse which had blown he put another fuse in the plug but the ring still didn't! work but when we plugged in the kettle that worked ok. Has anyone any ideas? :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Might be helpful if you said which Auto-Trail model you own and which model of cooker (Spinflo Aspire?), just in case another forum member has the same motorhome model and/or cooker. If your simultaneous use of the cooker's 230V ring and your 230V hair-dryer had overloaded the EHU, all 230V appliances within the motorhome would cease working - the oven wouldn't work, nor would anything plugged into the motorhome's 230V socket outlets. This seems to have happend, and I assume your "When we reconnected the EHU..." means that a button or switch on the 230V EHU service-outlet was reset. After this action electrical appliances (like your hair-dryer, kettle, etc.) functioned normally, except for the cooker's 230V ring. Does that sound right? It would seem from your final paragraph that your motorhome's cooker is plugged into a 230V socket-outlet and that the fuse in the cooker's plug had blown. (This seems to conflict with the idea that overloading the EHU may have caused the problem, but let's overlook that for now.) Replacing the fuse in the cooker's plug did not make the cooker's 230V ring work. However, a kettle plugged into the cooker's 230V socket-outlet apparently does work OK, which proves that 230V power is present and correct at that socket-outlet. It's worth checking that the fuse used to replace the one that blew is OK. If you haven't got equipment to do this, put the replacement fuse in the kettle's plug and, if the kettle works, the fuse is OK. If the fuse is OK and, when you put it back in the cooker's plug, the cooker's ring still fails to work, then it's likely that the cooker has developed a fault and that this fault was the cause of the EHU power shutting off in the first place (not overloading). I've looked at the 230V circuit diagram in the current Auto-Trail Tracker/Apache Owners Handbook, but there's nothing that stands out regarding the cooker. Nor does the section in the Handbook that covers cooker usage help in your case. Logically, if the 230V socket-outlet that the cooker plugs into is 'live' (and your kettle experiment evidently proves this), if the cooker's plug is correctly wired (eg. the wires have not come loose) and if the fuse in the cooker's plug is OK, then the cooker's 230V ring should work. As it does not, then there's something wrong with the cooker (possibly with the 230V ring itself). If you had a suitable adapter, you could try connecting your cooker's 230V plug directly to your EHU cable. I would not expect this to cause the cooker's ring to miraculously come bck to life, but (if the ring still failed to work) it would prove that the problem was with the cooker itself and not with the motorhome's 230V circuitry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ips Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 I think it was coincidental that you were using hair dryer. Sounds to me like the element on the cooker has gone, could be faulty / burnt wiring or a control stat/switch fault but my money is on a blown element. Only way to test is with a meter or if you can disconnect the two wires to the element and make them safe before switching on again obviously if it doesnt blow your fuse this time then it is a faulty element. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keithl Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 As it's a 2012 model it will still be under warranty so it looks like it is time for a trip back to the dealers :'( Keith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Having re-read the original posting, I think the scenario was as follows: A hair-dryer was being used together with the 230V ring of the cooker. However (as ips suggests) the use of the hair-dryer is coincidental. A fault developed with the 230V side of the cooker. This blew the fuse in the cooker's 230V plug and also tripped the motorhome's RCD. When the RCD tripped, all of the motorhome's 230V services stopped working (including the socket-outlet into which the hair-dryer was plugged). Resetting the RCD (described by Noodles as "we reconnected the EHU") allowed the motorhome's 230V services to return to normal, except for the cooker's 230V ring. Replacing the fuse in the cooker's plug did not get the ring to work - and could not if the ring itself had failed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noodles Posted August 13, 2012 Author Share Posted August 13, 2012 Hi all, Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. We've only had the motorhome since April and it's a chieftain. We're off to the Western Motorhome Show this w/end and staying on ATOC camping area so if we don't have any joy before the w/end will ask at the show. Need to get it sorted before September cos off on another week touring around. Many thanks :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ips Posted August 14, 2012 Share Posted August 14, 2012 Under warranty ............. so whats the problem take it back and tell em to fix it :-S Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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