Ours is affected and we have only had it a year or so. It is in the garage, separate from the house but only use it when we are in. @roders, have they offered a like for like replacement? our reply to registering our machine to see if it was affected was that it will be repaired.
Yes they have offered anew one in May Hotpoint FETV60CP ,we checked it out on the John Lewis website and seems identical to the one we have with modification they just add a green sticker............that makes it ok lol. One of our neighbours has already had a new replacement but not the model they have promised us. So the system is working ,although slowly. They have also offered us an immediate replacement at a considerably reduced price.........but we are waiting for the free replacement.
Hi JWK, to be honest, I'm pretty sure that having an electrical appliance in the same room/area as a mains electrical switch is in breach of Building Regulations [Electrical]. I take it that your gas mains control is not in the same room/area?? There were new Building Regulations issued in 2005 [a] to come in line with EU regulations and take into account several cases of domestic fire, over the previous 20 years, where there was loss of life/injury and damage to property where gas/electric meters and were placed/installed in working areas. Most gas/electric meters and control points are placed on the outside wall of a house or, in the case of my house, inside a brick "cupboard" built onto the house. While I know it costs money, I would seriously consider [a] moving the mains switches to an outside area or, stop using any electrical appliance in the same area. If your house is insured I'm pretty sure the Insurance Company would be unhappy to find you are using a Tumble Dryer, or any other power consumer appliance next to your mains electrical control.
That would be when Creda were Creda and not in with the Hotpoint/Indesit/Creda/Ariston.... (to be honest, if you need to sell your product with so many different brand badges on it, then there is something very wrong. Stick with the likes of Bosch, Miele, Siemens, AEG or Electrolux/Zanussi and you stand a bit of a better chance. Part of the trouble of course is the fact that we all want something for next to nothing; for example, an entry level automatic washing machine back in 1984 would cost around £500; in today's money, that is approximately £1500, yet you frequently see brand new washing machines nowadays on sale for £180 - - no wonder they are garbage! Sure, you might well have got a bargain with that el cheapo washing machine or tumble drier, but it doesn't look so cheap once your house is reduced to a charred mess.
My brother has a faulty tumble drier, He has a date for it to be repaired, in the meantime he's been told not to leave it on whilst he's out & to clean out the fluff after every use! (common sense tells me to clean out the fluff after each use??? ).
Sorry Armandii I think that's wrong. My Utility room was all rewired in 2010 and signed off under Building Regs, all the appliance loadings and switches were as recommended by them. I did consider installing an external meter, but the only advantage they said was that the meters could be read from the outside, there is no extra safety aspect. If you look at those external meter boxes in modern houses they are just thin plastic so they don't serve any other function except to allow easy access for meter readings. In fact we didn't even have a 'mains switch', unless you are talking about the big switch on the fuse box? I don't see how moving a mains switch to outside would improve the safety. Why? I'm pretty sure many house and flats have appliances in the same room as the fuse box (I guess that's what you mean by "mains electrical control")?
All houses have a mains isolator, JWK. I you're referring to the ordinary circuit switch when you mention the switch by the appliance, which is not the isolator that cuts all power to the house if needed.
What about the heating or security lighting? Won't work here unless we want our washing covered in bird poop! We do have a drying line in the covered pergola and use that in the good weather but even those sometimes get pooped! We never leave our tumble dryer on when going out but that's for a very practical reason. We vent it through the window so the window would then be left open whilst we're out! We also clean the filter every time Actually we never have any appliance running whilst we're out - apart from heating, outside lights, security lights, answerphones, fridge, freezer, clock radios, clock on cooker, solar panels, propagator, printer (otherwise it cleans the head each time we switch it back on), reclining armchairs, burglar alarm and a load of others!! I couldn't go round turning all of them off as I'd need to lie down to recover from all the bending down
I think this thread has attracted a prolific white goods spammer to GC! http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/search/8996968/
Ours didn't, we have 3 consumer units each with a main switch but that only switches off the circuits to certain parts of the house. I got the electric board to come and fit a mains isolator switch 4 years ago because the only way to isolate all the power to the house was by pulling the main fuse and as that's fixed in with a seal we couldn't do that ourselves. So our new Mains Isolator switch is what is near to the Tumble Dryer. There is of course a circuit switch to switch off just the dryer as well which is just above it over the worktop counter. I still don't see any logic in this and had a quick glance through my NICEIC Domestic Electrical Installation Guide the only mention of an isolator is: I reckon the only time you would really need one would be in a workshop/garage if you had big fixed power tools like a lathe. Where did you get the information about insurance from @ARMANDII ?
I only have 2 consumer units. I used to have 3 before the electricity company spotted I still had an old style meter that gave me extra Economy 7 units during the day (that we weren't paying for) and changed our set up.
The incoming mains to our house comes into the kitchen, and the consumer unit is mounted high on the wall (step ladder or stool required to reach it), and our fridge lives in front of it. Gas and electric meters are on the opposite side of the kitchen, in cupboards - definitely NOT easy to get to; in fact, if there is ever a necessity to change the gas meter, I reckon they will have to rip out half the kitchen to do the job. All of this work was done in 2008/2009, and has since been certified as safe on inspections required for the house to be rented out to us (and all safety inspections carried out since). The only electrical appliances in the kitchen are a fridge (Hotpoint, and not by choice), dishwasher (Bosch), oven (Zanussi) and all of the small things (kettle etc); the washing machine and tumble dryer (both Bosch) are in an outhouse that is just next to the house.
From a relative who's a Fire Insurance Investigator working nationally. He investigates all kinds of incidents at all levels. To be honest, I've never heard of a RCD mains isolator being installed in a utility room before in a modern house. Usually all mains, gas and electric are placed either outside or in a adjoining cubicle/cupboard. Having said that my brother lived in a 16th century stone cottage on a farm and, while there was no gas installed due to the shallow top soil over bedrock and living in an isolated position, his mains electric fuse was inside the cottage by the lounge door. It was an old box with fuses that was never replaced until his death in 2014. I do know that the person who bought the house basically stripped and gutted the cottage and the new RCD mains electric isolator has been placed in a box in the stone barn attached to the cottage.
