Men/women/alI I have a 4 ring ceramic CDA hob rated 7.4Kw. Naturally it has it's own dedicated radial circuit. The circuit comes via a mysterious control box manufactured in Estonia located in "the void". 3 wires enter the box, some sort of Estonian twattery takes place, and 4 wire emerge and make their way to the hob(2 lives). This is the set up in all of the 300 living units at the student accommodation where I work. In the last 2 months, 10 of these Estonian marvels have malfunctioned. By malfunctioned, I mean power enters them and NEVER LEAVES. A contract spark has quoted £600 per unit to rectify this. I'm thinking that he kind of gives reputable electricians a bad name. My question is.....why can't we just remove all the Estonian nonsense boxes, replace with standard JB's and buy new 4 ring 3 wire ceramic hobs with built in time/temp cutouts ??? Cost ???? Approx £150 per unit AND we can sell the overpowered hobs. (300 x £600 = £180,000 !!!!!!)
Photo of the mystery box including any labels etc that give a clue to it would help! Also make and model of the hob. If possible turn the power off and remove the cover of the box and photo so we can see the innerds and connections. It may just be a simple connection box, many hobs come with multi core cable to support polyphase supplies (used a lot in Europe) and a simple connection box is used to allow connection to a single phase supply.
If its somewhere you work then I presume they are they only authorised to use certain tradesmen? Esp as its student accommodation. And definitely NOT covered or insured for you to do any work? Dbs, Health and safety regs and the like. Not sure why as an employee you'd have an issue really? Surely safety is paramount? But could they get 2 more quotes if only to see if the original one is fair?
I too would be intrigued to see an image of these "Estonian nonsense boxes", both exterior and interior. It is of course well known that anything manufactured outside of the glorious islands of the United Kingdom and its dominions, ruled over by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (long may she rule over us), is made up of spit and old shoes.
I don't have a smart phone, so photography is not straightforward. But I will take your sage advice and just leave it for somebody else to deal with because students don't really need hobs do they. Thank you.
Posting pics is a pretty straightforward process. My best advice would be to focus on the problem and not its country of origin. If everyone followed suit, China would now be a global pariah instead of the world’s maker of everything.
I presume they are countdown timers to stop the students leaving the hobs and ovens unattended. They are installed because the millennials can’t be trusted to use hobs and ovens safely and removing them is not a good idea. https://ovenguard.co.uk/
Thanks Happy, yes they appear to be Fireangel stove guards, designed to twatproof the appliances. Unfortunately they are currently preventing normal people from cooking normally (or cooking at all) but at least they can't burn to death, soooooo glass half full eh ??????
They do fail, but come with a 5 year warranty. How old are they? The heat sensor often gets damaged. I'd be contacting the manufacturer in the first instance.
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