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Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
I had a work colleague die via fatal electric shock working on a washing machine back in the eighties . a fully competent experienced service engineer .no 2nd chance or possibility of laughing that one off.
and thanks for you ignorant racist view daddykool – albeit misguided to an englishman .Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
What do you expect!
Instead of just saying “be careful when handling live circuits” , you post childish snide remarks to Brodders posts.
He has helped so many people on here , he deserves some support.Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Thank you so much for your support Daddycool !! 😀
Yes I’m trying to help and safety has been mentioned so many times earlier in this forum, i felt no need to repeat it over and over.
I would like to ask Kwatt about his statement.
Live testing is illegal?
Could you quantify that statement because it’s not totally true.
How as an electronics engineer was I ever able to fix anything if I couldn’t turn it on?
In this forum, how does one test for an electrical supply at the compressor?
How do you test the PTC since it needs a good mains supply to work correctly.
One is allowed to test equipment if it cannot be tested dead.Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
daddykool wrote:He has helped so many people on here , he deserves some support.
Absolutely.
But giving the advice we still have to draw the line where we go beyond the confines of what’s “reasonable” for the average person to do, safely.
Working with components, poking about in machines that are live is absolutely and totally unsafe as well as potentially lethal. There is no other way to look at it as even skilled people can come a cropper, it happens regularly.
I will stress again, you are working with mains voltage that can KILL YOU!
You can’t see it, you can’t smell it… there’s no way to detect it when working with live components as power should be in it, until it’s too late… you touched the wrong bit and, you’re dead!
To potentially put someone’s live at risk to save an £80 callout fee or even a couple hundred quid for a PCB is just utter stupidity and wholly irresponsible. Which is why, if anyone reads the forum rules that are at the top of every single forum you will see that there are rules in place on this subject for the reasons given.
K.
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
broddersbaldrick wrote:Live testing is illegal?
Could you quantify that statement because it’s not totally true.Crazy isn’t it? But it is true.
H&S apparently outlawed live testing in the 90’s due to the number of people being killed. We were informed by Zanussi at the time that it was outlawed and everything had to be tested without having mains flowing through it.
This was after a big brouhaha over a Tricity engineer that managed to kill himself working on a microwave a year before with the power off! I always remember that as well as remarking that some caps on the washers hold enough to give you a good belt as well. So you can get killed with the power on or off.
As a field engineer at the time we were told we were not allowed to do it anymore and that, if we did, we were in breach of the law and that we were responsible for our own safety. We had to sign that we’d been informed of that to absolve any blame from being laid with the company or manufacturer.
Whilst it is supposed to be outlawed, electricians have the same issue as I know a few, many tradespeople just ignore it as, to do things without power takes much longer as you’re left with having to meter things out.
In any event, if the pros can fry themselves I think it totally irresponsible to tell untrained people that are not used to working with live electricity that it’s okay as, it’s not. That’s my stance on it.
K.
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Thank you Kwatt for your reply.
Zanussi have got it wrong!
If one looks at current legislation from the HSE, one can work on a live piece of equipment if it cannot be tested dead.
I know there are many different fields and fortunately 240 volts is only regarded as low voltage!
Good job these appliances aren’t high.Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
And before certain back benchers start looking it up to prove me wrong, you won’t because I have 17th edition ….tooooo and still know what I’m talking about.
who’s ya daddy 😆Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Perhaps Brodders but the law states, according to an HSE Guideline note:
Health & Safety Executive wrote: The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 are the principal legislation relating to electrical testing activities. Regulation 4(3) requires that ‘work on or near to an electrical system shall be carried out in such a manner as not to give rise, so far as is reasonably practicable, to danger’.
Regulation 14 places a strict prohibition on working on or near live conductors unless:
(a) it is unreasonable for the equipment to be dead;
(b) it is reasonable for the work to take place on or near the live conductor; and
(c) suitable precautions have been taken to prevent injury.In addition, employers are required under regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to assess the risks to the health and safety of their employees while they are at work, in order to identify and implement the necessary precautions to ensure safety.
Which basically says, if you can’t be safe, don’t do it. But I would doubt that most public members would be able to carry out what would be considered to be a “reasonable” risk assessment before carrying out any work as most people probably wouldn’t know or understand what the risks even were.
K.
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Thank you K for proving me right.
i notice the very first letter states what I mentioned earlier.(a) it is unreasonable for the equipment to be dead;
All I’m saying is your statement was not true and neither was Zanussi!!!Whirlpool state in the manual to take large quantities of ice direct from the bucket.
Tell the child that he has permission to do that, as he tears skin from his fingers with the frozen water in his pores stuck to the ice.We can only do so much and common sense does prevail
And I’m sad that this forum has digressed to this point.
As for an £80 call out or spending £200 on a PCB; I don’t have it and many thousands of people can’t afford that sort of money either. Probably millions!
This last hour you have a new member quoted £180 and the unit is still not fixed so now relying on your forum for help.Sadly the people who are qualified and competent and even employed by theses manufactures are the very people who least understand how they truly work.
And daddycool is spot-on; one simple reminder on safety would have saved this argument.
Thank you
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
May I just say that this thread seems to be going a little off topic.
This thread started because someone had a faulty unit.
33 pages later, and what becomes clear is that Whirlpool clearly had quality issues with these units, as the thread grew.
We then saw the response from the Whirlpool customer service team, which seemed to match their manufacturing facilites attitude towards quality.What happened then was good old community spirit, often found on a forum like this, where people who had knowledge came out and offered an alternative to the ‘dont care’ attitude of the manufacturer.
From what I understand, no one has been electrocuted attempting to repair their fridges from information offered here.
What has happened is people have repaired their units, saved a load of money, saved landfil space, and more pertinently, for me at least, got a great deal of satisfaction from fixing it yourself.I understand that in these times we have to be careful in terms of H&S laws, and the subsequent abulance chasers that follow.
What I don’t understand is the unnecessary negative and picky comments towards the few who are giving their time and knowledge to help total strangers.Come on guys, group hug 😆
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Hi Brodders,
It’s not an argument from my standpoint it’s a simple clarification of fact and, quite an interesting discussion. 😉
The fact of it is simply this, if someone is incompetent or careless they can get killed working with live components. Therefore it is, IMO, grossly negligent to advise people that this is in some way safe or in a manner that it could be considered blase. It may well be, to you, that working with live 240VAC is fine and you may well be safe enough, but every year people are killed messing about with it and, that is a fact.
It has been well documented time and time again on this site that we have not condoned or recommended live testing in any way, shape or form since its inception and that is not a position that will change due to the dangers involved and the fact that we cannot remotely judge people’s competence. We simply cannot tell if someone is competent or not and we certainly can’t tell if the next one or one thousand people that read the advice without so much of a comment are either.
This is a debate that has been had many times in the trade forums and the simple answers lie above.
As to the “it is unreasonable for the equipment to be dead”, who decides that? Is it unreasonable that you just replace the module? Can the components not be tested without current to them?
I’ll allow the HSE to clarify that for everyone though…
Health & Safety Executive wrote:The guidance contains recommendations to help you prevent or reduce electrical danger.
Some of the main ways in which this can be done include:
(a) following safe systems of work, for example:
(i) taking precautions to prevent people who are not doing the testing coming into contact with exposed live parts;
(ii) taking precautions to prevent the testers coming into accidental contact with exposed live parts;
(iii)protecting and insulating both the equipment being worked on and the
testing equipment.
(b) using test equipment that is suitable for the job;
(c) making sure that people doing the work are suitably trained and experienced so that they understand safe working practices and the equipment on which they will be working.I think that makes the safety position quite clear, the persons carrying out electrical testing must be competent to do so, or made to be competent.
Which, we can’t do.
Therefore, we cannot recommend live testing of any kind, it’s simple logic as we don’t know who will attempt it or what level of skill or competence they have. We can’t even say if they have a basic awareness of electrical safety without being provided proof of that.
As a company and as all trade members are pretty much legal business entities, we HAVE to obey the law. Otherwise some idiot will fry themselves and point the finger at us, then we’ll have the “no win, no fee” wolfs howling for blood, ours. So I freely admit, there is an element of self-preservation in this policy for UKW and the pros that post on here. But, it is what it is.
I totally get the affordability thing but, you’re having a go at the wrong person/s and dodging the bullet. If the spares were a reasonable price there’d be no need to go through this pain, see Mr Whirlpool for details of how a PCB that should cost £30 or so costs more than £100. Also, the statement I made, to be more direct, was that a person’s life is not worth the cost of the over-priced spare part or the cost of a repairer to do this for them irrespective of whether they can afford it or not. Unless of course you are trying to say that it’s worth taking your life in your hands for the sake of a couple of hundred quid, or that it’s okay if others do?
I will generally ask one simple question when this comes up, how would you feel if someone died trying to do something that was deemed as generally unsafe on the strength of the advice you’d given?
K.
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Aaanyway… remember when I fixed my fridge and said I’d report back with thanks or tantrums? Well…
It’s been working for about 8 hours, and has got nice and cold, but I’m stood here now and the freezer is defrosting already. It wa only a tiny bit iced up, a thin coat of frost on the ice container, but that’s wet now and the unit is silent, no compressor sound. There is a noticeable dripping sound at the back of the freezer, surely it couldn’t be that iced up already?
Aaaand, now it’s buzzed into life again! I guess I never paid attention to it’s normal operation when it worked, so now I can’t remember of this is right!
We’ll see what the morning brings.
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
I think this has gone WAAAYYYY off topic… Health and Safety issues – interesting though they are 😉 are now ceasing to add anything further to this discussion.
I asked Brodders the original question – which did not involve ‘live testing’ at all…
Specifically what I asked about was the 2 plastic connectors in this picture…
Whether it was OK to disconnect them to be able to remove the panel whilst leaving the freezer running.
When you disconnect the connector blocks the female parts are the ones that are still connected to the machine. This can then hopefully be left running keeping the food cool whilst making the mod to the front PCB.I always check everthing exposed that might get touched with a mains circuit tester screwdriver, maybe this isn’t enough…
If it’s best practice to disconnect the freezer, remove the circuit board, reconnect the freezer until re-attaching the modded circuit board that’s fine too – I do tend to take advice from people who seem to know what they are talking about 😆
But really it was about whether the machine would run OK with the front board disconnected 😆
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Aaanyway… remember when I fixed my fridge and said I’d report back with thanks or tantrums? Well…
It’s been working for about 8 hours, and has got nice and cold, but I’m stood here now and the freezer is defrosting already. It wa only a tiny bit iced up, a thin coat of frost on the ice container, but that’s wet now and the unit is silent, no compressor sound. There is a noticeable dripping sound at the back of the freezer, surely it couldn’t be that iced up already?
Aaaand, now it’s buzzed into life again! I guess I never paid attention to it’s normal operation when it worked, so now I can’t remember of this is right!
We’ll see what the morning brings.
Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!
Hi Kwatt,
I did actually go on to say I don’t endorse working with live equipment.
I would have left it there but then you wrote it was illegal.
It’s simply not and never has been and never will be.
You quoted it as being illegal which is absurd and I certainly wouldn’t let that go.
If it was, nothing would get fixed because; yes most components do need to be tested in the circuit when running. Forgetting all the sophisticated microprocessors on these freezers etc etc, just the simple PTC as I mentioned earlier can’t be fully tested with the power off.
These caps are a known suspect so yes can be replaced without power on the unit.
But what happens when it’s not the caps and, maybe a suspect compressor or related component.
Ok hands up, maybe I was nonchalant when saying he can unplug it with it switched on but, in my defence, I clearly stated the plugs have 240 volts and, subsequent replies state that the terminals are insulated which I knew.
The comment could have been removed or edited if I’d been asked.
But No, the whole issue has been blown out of proportion due to one snide comment.
All the people who have ever injured themselves or even killed themselves working on appliances and similar items became blasé. That’s a fact or they’d still be here!
The engineer back in the 80’s for one!
If he had taken precautions he would still be here, no??
Proper precautions were not taken. Period !!!!
Pilots are competent and trained until they crash an air plane.
Yes you could write all day about the dangers of 240 volts; the HSE would stop every one from doing anything if they had their way.
Quoting the HSE doesn’t stop competent people from killing themselves and neither will it stop joe public having a go whether it’s here on this forum or not.
And most of your quotes are recommendations for the work place and not for people at home trying to fix an appliance, and they are not the law.
The cost of a module compared to a life is a pretty weak argument because no one would disagree. It just looks good in writing.
I work on low voltage and high voltage equipment and have done for over twenty years.
I treat 240 volts with the respect it deserves, that’s why I’m still here.
I figured the user who asked the question may want to test it and shed some light on its function.
He did after all have the unit partially stripped down without any advice from this forum and it was turned on. See the picture for yourself.
What gets my goat is the people who lurk in the background with nothing constructive to say, just waiting to pounce with the slightest slip-up and think their clever.
As I said, I would have retracted it or amended it but I’ll leave it to you.
All he has done is demoralise me and maybe others.
Regards bb
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