Immersion heating

Run out of oil yesterday morning - forget to check the level - my mistake. Anyway to short a long story, had to use the immersion in order to have hot water for my son bath and doing the dishes. I put it for 2 hours and the water was barely warm and have just enough warm water for my son bath to have his leg cover before the water running cold.

Is it normal ? is there a problem with my immersion ?

Thank for your advice

There is something wrong, my immersion heats up water in 15 minutes, a bathful maybe 30 minutes............

Some Immersions have "sink" or "bath" settings. Does yours have a switch?

I have the sink or bath setting and I select the bath setting, turn it on and turn if off after two hours hoping to have very hot water. I never use the immersion before as there is a setting in our oil boiler for water or water/heating and was very surprised that after two hours the water was barely warm.

Any idea what could cause it ?

Our immersion on the sink setting always took about 30 mins. and possibly 1.5/2 hours on the bath setting.

If this is your first time using the immersion;

Most likely cause is an error in the wiring at the back of the switch. Electrician has mixed up the bath and sink element wires.
Turn the switch to sink and see do you get a greater volume of hot water. If this works, then live with it being this way, until you have an electrician in the house carrying out other work and ask them to rectify it (approx: 3 minutes).

If this does not solve the issue, you can isolate the immersion, by switching off all the mcb's at the fuseboard, until the immersion light goes off. Remove the cap (3" diameter) which is on top of the element, at the top/side of the tank and you will see a small plastic arrow dial, which you should set to approximately 60 degrees.

If neither of the above work......call an electrician.


Hope it helps (Ocras)

Thank a lot for the advice Unregistered guest

I will have a look at it tonight when I get home

*Visions of Samantha being fried this evening hehehehe, ahem.

We have just moved house. The house we have moved to has been unoccupied for the past 2 weeks.

On the day we moved in, we used the immersion to heat the water. No problems.

Yesterday, the immersion wasn't working.

What, if anything, can I check?

There is a problem with a socket somewhere in the house (the RCD tripped the first evening and we have turned off one of the socket sets in the fuse box to 'solve' this problem), but I don't believe this is affecting the immersion?

It is an 'old style' immersion switch, i.e. 'on/off' and 'sink/bath' buttons.

Could it be the immersion MCB which you have turned off?
The immersion would be fed through the RCD like the sockets.
If the MCB will reset for a while before the RCD trips, try it and see if the immersion works. The spinning disc on your ESB meter is one way of checking this.
If the tripping is being caused by the immersion, you will probably need a new one.