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Showing posts from July, 2020

A Story of Repair (SoR): Electric Kettle

One or two weeks ago, during the day, the RCCD (residual-current circuit breaker) tripped. The root cause was very unclear at first since no equipment was switched on or off during the event. Also the weather was quite humid and sticky after a thunderstorm, so that could be a factor as well. By unplugging some usual suspects one at a time, we could trace it to the culprit. First I unplugged the coffee maker from the mains, but again the RCCD tripped after some minutes. Next the electric kettle was unplugged, and bingo! The RCCD did not trip again. This Kettle, a Tristar HL-108B, has a base piece. This base did have my suspicion, since the inner wires became visible from where there should be a cable strain relief. Opening the base required special spanner or ‘fork’ style screws. Somehow they want to discourage repair, but they are wrong. With a suitable long bit style drivers it was fairly easy to get access to the wire terminals. The multimeter did not show any problems, but these kin