Electrical maintenance

[NCBeerMedic]

We all do maintenance on our equipment, clean everything, etc. How many of us check the plugs going to our elements? After today, I will more regularly. I started up my BK to get some water hot for cleaning out the kettles before a quick brew session. I started smelling something hot, I thought it was some dust one the heatsink getting warmed up, kinda like when you first crank up your heater. All of a sudden, the breaker tripped. I opened the panel and found nothing out of the ordinary. Reset the breaker, turned the element back on and it tripped again. This time I looked at the plug in to bottom of the panel, no issues. Followed the wire down to the element and the smell hit me. Burning plastic! I pulled the plug off the element and there it was, a melted terminal on the plug. I pulled the plug apart and the wires were loose in the receptacles. Trimmed the wires back to new copper and reassembled the plug, took the male end apart and did the same, however there was no damage to that end. Took the element out of the kettle, it's shot. The lug that was plugged into the loose wire was toast. So, popped onto Amazon and ordered a new one. I took all the other plugs out of the panel and checked all the connections, tightened them all. So I will now start looking at the connections after every brew session or two. I got lucky, I could have lost my entire brewery.... What do you guys do ???

 

[ITV]

My experience with electrical connections is that they don't loosen by themselves unless subject to vibration. If I am wiring a plug or receptacle, I make sure that I strip the wire to the proper length and don't nick any strands or have loose strands and tighten very tight.

My neighbor had a problem with their pool pump. I found the problem with a burnt prong on the plug. I watched my neighbor stop the pump by pulling on the plug from the receptacle. They didn't realize that the plug was a twist lock which prevented full electrical contact with the receptacle causing it to arc and burnt the prong.

If you didn't do the electrical connections yourself then I would recommend what you did and inspect all of your electrical connections for piece of mind. Also test the GFCI breaker on occasion.

 

[NCBeerMedic]

I did make the connections. The only vibration it gets is when I unplug them to clean the kettles.

 

[golfindia]

Vibrations have nothing to do with it. Heat and cool cycles cause the wires to loosen. Good practice is to tighten (with a torque screwdriver if you have one) until they stabilize. Some cheap plugs are more prone to melting just because of their design. The ones with screws on the outside can be more fragile in my experoence.

 

[NCBeerMedic]

Now that makes sense. I don’t have a torque screwdriver but I will be checking them often for awhile.