Electric Cooker simmerstat Life

John.G

My very first post on here (4 years ago) "Simmerstat Life" concerned a Belling cooker and the failure/frequent replacing of these stats at < 2 year intervals.

My supply voltage was 246V or greater for many years up to about this period, from then on its been normal at 232/235V. Since this happened I havn't had a single failure of one of these stats, coincidence?.

kirk.

Could have affected them I'd say they have a small heater in them if memory serves ?

246v was way too high anyway

John.G

Yes, its 10K ohms, so current/power draw at 246V = 24.6ma/6.05W and 23.2ma/5.38w at 232V. IMO all this means is that the control settings are slightly different since this is constantly switching anyway to give excellent control.

kirk.

Ya i think simmerstat is just a dumb control so you'd be adjusting for more heat

What was the reason for the voltage , did they change a transformer to fix it or what happened there

kirk.

ESBN has tolerances which I think was + - 10%

Was never sure exactly what that referred to as 10% difference is miles off acceptable maybe it's for a time period I dunno

Contractor then is allowed 3/5 % drop for lights and power afaik , used to be 4% for either

John.G

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119852957#Comment_119852957

Havn't a clue but I was delighted as my 9kw shower (at 230V) was running at 10kw for years

kirk.

Well that's a point the instantaneous showers are rated 230/240 for here or uk use

Could be the simmerstat are rated for 240 and I'm wrong , was only a guess anyhow probably someone knows more on that

That voltage was too high. Most Irish supplies sit between 220-230V, the original spec here having been 220V, more like continental Europe.

That being said, your Belling Cooker is very likely to have been designed for British use. Their old spec was 240V, now nominally 230V, but it wouldn't have been entirely unusual to have had power coming in at over 240V, so it would seem unlikely that your cooker would have been too upset by that level of voltage.

Most old British appliances like cookers are 220V / 240V spec, so it covered export markets, notably here. You often saw the different wattage outputs tabled for running on 220V too.

Everything's now nominally 230V.

Seems Northern Ireland may have actually moved to 230V long before the UK in general did. I've seen old NI meters with 230V 50Hz and they seem to date from the 1960s/70s.

Also saw a very, very old ESB one with 210V 50Hz. I remember reading somewhere that there were a few lower than 220V supply areas in the ESB's network, which included the Phoenix Park.

John.G

My 1972 Ferranti meter is stamped 220V. 3 phase supply here was 380V? so (almost) root3 380. So when did 230V appear around here.

Bit of a history lesson:

220V / 380V 50Hz seems to have emerged sometime in the very early days of European systems and was popular in Scandinavia and parts of Germany. It’s likely originated from Siemens, AEG, ASEA & Brown Boveri.

ESB seems to have just picked what was the most open standard of that era, which was 220V / 380V at 50Hz

Britain used a vast array of voltages ranging from 200 to 250 as well as DC supplies. They finally settled on 240V 50Hz, only officially in the early 1970s. Before that it was quite regionalised. It also had no official mandatory plug type - there were about 6 different round pins and various other odd designs. That’s likely why the ESB preferred “Schuko” originally - it was an actual system and it went very well with 220V.

France, Italy and Spain and a lot of places electrified by French, Italian and Spanish companies used 127V / 220V 50Hz systems, which had two lives and a neural, very similar to the US Edison approach. This system cropped up in various random spots around Europe too. Often you had two meters, one for light (127V) and one for power (220V). The light was cheaper because they had to compete with gas lighting.

In the aftermath of WWII and the early days of standards development in Europe, the predecessors of CENELEC picked 220V 50Hz, the most common system and the 127V split phase system was eliminated. So the entire continent was on 220V/380 50Hz.

In a lot of cases you could just connect the two lives to a socket and get 220V from phase to phase, so conversion was easy and as time went on 220V + grounded 0V neural replaced those. (Also a reason why polarity on continental plugs is irrelevant).

Britain, Cyprus, Malta, Australia, New Zealand and several places heavily influenced by UK standards had 240V/415 50Hz

Most appliances were happy on 220-240V, there were exceptions, but to make appliance sales easier in Europe, and with the approaching single market in the early 1990s, CENELEC split the difference and moved to 230V/400V 50Hz by expanding the margins slightly to accommodate 220 or 240V systems. The networks have, as things are replaced moved target voltages to 230V/400V too and ultimately the voltage range accepted on supplies will be narrowed again.

Then the IEC officially adopted the same 230V/400V recommendation, making life a lot easier for consumers and equipment makers world wide in countries using the European style supply systems. So this is now also the norm in Australia etc etc

and that’s how we got to 230V!!

John.G

Certainly some great history there.

I got the honour of switching on the first light in our house after our rural area was connected in approx 1955. We had, I think. a ESB supplied cooker, as you would see lots of these 20 years later or so at the sides of peoples houses in the country. These had a solid plate, a grill, one or two spiral rings and a oven. The unique feature of these spiral rings was that to replace them you just pulled them straight up off the cooker and pused the new one straight on, no wires to disconnect.

Back to my simmerstat.

I had a Creda Cavalier for "ever" before I bought the Belling in 2008/2009 and never had to replace a (presumably) simmerstat on this. We also had one of these at work that got hammered for ~ 6 years or so and again no simmerstat failure.

kirk.

Was always replacing spiral type rings and simmerstats on cookers years ago

Definitely simmerstats used to give a lot of trouble now that I think about it .There was the single and dual type ring and simmerstat I think , can't remember how the dual rings and stats operated

Could be as GlottalStop said not a voltage issue at all

kirk.

I think the simmerstats used to fail in the open position, there was no click when you turned the dial as far as I can remember

It's going back a long time since changing simmerstats was a thing but definitely ya they used to fail quite a bit now that I think about it

John.G

All the 4 or 5 Belling ones failed with power on but could be switched off, probably because they are NC when cold so when the resistor winding isn't heating they remain closed.