No power going to Hot Water Cylinder

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sonyxperiageek

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#233418 15-Apr-2018 16:09

So I've checked the breaker box and nothing is tripped, the isolator switch next to the hot water cylinder is on, yet measuring the red/black wires inside the cylinder itself shows 0 volts on the voltmeter. Does anybody know how I could check if there's something wrong with my cylinder (thermostat issue), or if there's a problem with the wires in the house, or if my power company has accidentally turned off the power to our cylinder even though we are not on a metered plan? I've pressed the reset button on the cylinder itself but I can't tell if it's done anything. Everything else in the house still has power, and we didn't have any power outages during the storm last week.

Thanks.

Sony

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#1996521 15-Apr-2018 16:12

is your hotwater "ripple" controlled?- could be a fault in the controller or has been rippled off..

sonyxperiageek

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#1996525 15-Apr-2018 16:18

Ah could possibly be! I might call Mercury and see if they have purposely turned it off.

Sony

Spyware

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#1996527 15-Apr-2018 16:28

Not a Mercury thing. Its a lines company thing.

shrub

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#1996528 15-Apr-2018 16:30

You might have a boost switch on the board which overrides ripple.

sonyxperiageek

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#1996529 15-Apr-2018 16:33

Ah right, turns out it is most likely the ripple control then.

Just checked Neighbourly and see a few people near me also have no hot water. So I spent all afternoon trying to diagnose my cylinder lol. Oh well, at least I learnt a bit about hot water cylinders in the process! Thinking too advanced when I should've been thinking simple.

Sony

richms

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#1996530 15-Apr-2018 16:33

Are you on teh shore/west auckland? Pilot wire faults all over the place. Its a nasty crappy old way of doing load shedding and they dont do on new installs now. You can get it bypassed and have hot water all the time.

Hot water isnt as effective as in the past for load control because people are running so much other stuff.

Richard rich.ms

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gregmcc

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#1996531 15-Apr-2018 16:33

sounds like a ripple control problem, get an electrician out

sonyxperiageek

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#1996533 15-Apr-2018 16:38

Yeah I'm in West Auckland. How do you know it's a pilot wire fault? How does one get it bypassed?

@gregmcc Since there are a few neighbours around me having no hot water, might wait a bit for Vector to sort it out. Don't really want to pay for an electrician at this time lol.

Sony

djtOtago

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#1996539 15-Apr-2018 16:45

Once every couple of years or so our ripple control misses the ON signal, so the next morning the water isn't as warm as it is normally. Next time the ON signal is broadcast it has always turned on again.

The first time it happend, I also spent a lot of time tring to work out what was wrong with my cylinder, house, wiring. The electrician showed me a litttle white flag thing I can see on my ripple control, which is visiable when the controler is on.

Dynamike

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#1996547 15-Apr-2018 16:58

djtOtago:
Once every couple of years or so our ripple control misses the ON signal, so the next morning the water isn't as warm as it is normally. Next time the ON signal is broadcast it has always turned on again.

My father used to have that problem quite often. He would turn it back on again by swiping a magnet over the ripple control to flip the switch to ON.

eph

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#1996557 15-Apr-2018 17:32

Vector turned off the hot water pilots in lots of affected areas not to stress the fragile network after the storm. Hot water is their lowest priority at the moment since there is still lots of people without power.

They will likely tell you the same if you try to call them (and wait your 1h+ on the phone). You'll just have to wait like the rest of us (we've got no hot water either) :)).

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sparkz25

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#1996565 15-Apr-2018 17:55

richms:

Are you on teh shore/west auckland? Pilot wire faults all over the place. Its a nasty crappy old way of doing load shedding and they dont do on new installs now. You can get it bypassed and have hot water all the time.

Hot water isnt as effective as in the past for load control because people are running so much other stuff.

i dont see how you think its not as effective, its not a old nasty way of load shedding, its still common, but it depends who your powerboard is, its probably one really effective way of load shedding when you take in to account that there could be say 30 houses on the same tranny (we will use a 400kva as an example) and if they each have one 3kw HWC thats 90kw in total, thats 407 amps!!! the trannys capacity is only good for 570amp give or take,

So when every one gets home between 5pm and 8pm and half of those houses has a freestanding electric range and they all turn on one element approx 1.9kw thats another 120amps on that tranny making that a total of 527amps, now i havent added in all the other things like a fridge and a freezer and lights and so on, but to me thats a clear example why load shedding is good.

you can do the math on all the other household appliances and fridges and freezers because if you add that in to account the tranny would have dropped a ht fuse and or burnt out by now!

Any ways they only load shed during peak times so why does it really bother that they shed the load? you get a cheaper rate because of it and if your HWC is insulated well enough it should hold its temp for quite some time!

richms

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#1996566 15-Apr-2018 18:06

The pilot wire is the crap way of doing it. Its an all or nothing shed for all the connected stuff. The ripple relays allow more granular control of it.

Richard rich.ms

gregmcc

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#1996576 15-Apr-2018 18:50

djtOtago:

Once every couple of years or so our ripple control misses the ON signal, so the next morning the water isn't as warm as it is normally. Next time the ON signal is broadcast it has always turned on again.

The first time it happend, I also spent a lot of time tring to work out what was wrong with my cylinder, house, wiring. The electrician showed me a litttle white flag thing I can see on my ripple control, which is visiable when the controler is on.

There is a difference between ripple control and pilot control, typically (but not always) a lot of places in Auckland have pilot control, basically an extra wire comes in to your house with the mains while there is power on this wire your hot water is on, when it's off, hot water is off.

Ripple control, a high frequency signal is sent along the power lines and ripple relay detects this and changes from on to off or off to on, depending on the frequency of the signal.

djtOtago

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#1996583 15-Apr-2018 19:13

gregmcc:

There is a difference between ripple control and pilot control, typically (but not always) a lot of places in Auckland have pilot control, basically an extra wire comes in to your house with the mains while there is power on this wire your hot water is on, when it's off, hot water is off.

Learning something new :)

OT
@gregmcc Just for my own education, Does the voltage on this wire control a relay? or is the HWC directly powered by it?

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