Foot bath heater repair help please

Eric, A footbath is a great place to strart a trip thru electrocution to the morgue. I there is ever an acident the first place the investigator will look is who repaired it.

For your own happiness DON'T DO IT. :-?

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John G

I thought about that. But there is really no other foot bath that has the same ease of cleaning and if I replace the resistor wrongly enough to maybe cause power to enter the water then the circuit breaker and the GFI woiuld trip. The cleaning is super important. My wife has to disinfect each foot bath after a client uses it and before another client can put their feet in it. Fungus infections are particularly troublesome. My wife has never failed to sterilize her tools and has never had a client become infected from her shop. So she needs tools that are easy to sterlize and one thing that makes tools hard to sterlize are crevices which her current foot baths do not have but which all the new ones do. Eric

snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I assume you are in 120V land!

A simple calculation (P=(V^2)/R) shows the resistor probably dissipates 72 watts which would correspond neatly with your observed 78W draw. However the originals are only rated for 20W - no wonder they fail!

You do not know what extra testing has been done by "Helen of Troy" to qualify these resistors for use at 3.6 times their rating, nor do you know if a third party's 20W 200 ohm resistor will fail safe.

If you had appropriate professional liability insurance for small medical appliance repair you would run away screaming from a customer who asked you to fix a device that overran a heater by that high a factor using unapproved parts.

The fact that you belive the GFI can be relied on to backstop your possible shoddy workmanship means I can be certain that you are not a fit and competent person to repair these appliances.

Basically you are putting all your assets on the line. Your home, your wife's business etc. and because she let you work on them, she's negligent as well if they are ever put back into service.

Find a company willing to repair them (if you can) and make sure they have appropriate insurance or forget about it. -- Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED) ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk [at]=@, [dash]=- & [dot]=. *Warning* HTML & >32K emails --> NUL

"Ian Malcolm"

** The 20W resistor is mounted on a heatsink (ie the tub of water) so can dissipate far more than its free air rating.

BTW: the " Helen of Troy Model 61320" is sold to the public and retails for about US $40.

The OP's main problem will be finding an exact match that fits tightly in whatever clamp holds it up against the tub.

But I agree, the safety issue is critical and repair is not advisable nor even economic.

.... Phil

What form does the double? insulation take between resistors and water?

In the extended SI system of units The unit of beauty is the milliHelen - the amount of beauty required to launch one ship

You have to be careful with those things.

SWMBO and I bought a heated massaging foot bath for her mother (in her eighties), who we heard one day telling her friends that she now had an infra-red vibrator...

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Peter

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 02:04:06 +0000 (UTC), Ian Malcolm put finger to keyboard and composed:

I'd like to see how these appliances behave if you operate them without a water load. Do they actually sense the presence of water and, if not, is the bimetallic switch able to prevent damage to the resistor in the absence of cooling?

- Franc Zabkar

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Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Yes Franc, there is a bimetal switch in series with the resistor and it lays along the length of the resistor. Eric

es

.

What everyone else says about liability I second. But, is there a 3- wire or a 2-wire power cord, is the basin metal or plastic, two zillion things you haven't told us about!!!!

"hr(bob) snipped-for-privacy@att.net"

** The basin has to be metal for the resistor / heater idea to work.

The combination of metal basin, mains power and contact heater means it has to be earthed at the supply.

Stainless steel jugs and kettles are earthed via the lead.

.... Phil

Does not really matter, any unlicensed repair will void the warrentee and responsibility will fall RIGHT ON :-? the repairer.

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John G

"John G"

** What "license" is needed to repair such an appliance ????

BTW The maker's warranty must have long ago expired because the unit was being used commercially.

.... Phil

on 11/12/2012, Phil Allison supposed :

I suppose Authorised would be a better word but whatever the risk will go with the repairer. And Warranty, of course you are right, but if it was ever properly tested, UL CE or whatever applies in the location will be void.

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John G

"John G" Phil Allison supposed :

** Repairers are ALWAYS responsible for making sure an appliance is safe to use when returned to the owner - or else they must disable it. Nothing new or different here.

Anecdote:

Yamaha made powered mixing desks that were "double insulated" - the EMX series.

Several of them came my way with the complaint that performers were receiving small electric shocks (bites) on the lips from microphones when using these desks. The reason was simply that there was no earth and the chassis floated up to half the AC supply voltage and with a few hundred pF capacitance to ground.

The only answer was to fit a 3 core lead and remove the double square symbol. The service manual showed that US and Canadian versions were fully earthed, as no doubt UL and CSA had insisted.

These models were inherently unsafe in live performance situations, if I had simply done NOTHING then I could have been liable for any injuries that subsequently occurred.

... Phil

I keep wanting to pull out my foot bath massage unit, which I think had a heater. I think I gave it away.. That old plastic stuff tended to crack open.

At work one time, they built a heated live heart transporter mostly out of plexiglass. They were testing it and kept blowing the hospital outlet GFI. I think it was to be used in a helicopter. I suggested installing a transformer to isolate. It worked.

Greg

The cord is 3 wire. Everything is properly grounded. Eric