Strange smell when immersion is on

There is a very strange smelll coming the circular box attached to the top of the hot press when the immersion comes on, it almost smells like varnish. It's as if something has burned out, the immersion heats the water though.

The circular box on top of the hot press (where the immersion cable is connected to) is getting extremely hot when the immersion is on. The recently replaced the immersion switch, although the smell was coming prior to that.

Any ideas?

Get an electrician to check it, if you don't want to do it youself.

masterK said:

There is a very strange smelll coming the circular box attached to the top of the hot press when the immersion comes on, it almost smells like varnish. It's as if something has burned out, the immersion heats the water though.

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The immersion heaters are usually delivered with an extension lead made of multi-strand wires. Some manufacturers will directly screw the multi-strand wire into the screw terminal (inside the circular box) without using any bootlace ferrule (Note: some screw terminals have a small flat piece of metal between screw and wire, so screw does not come direclty in contact with wire - Not ferrule required in that case).
In most case, only few strands make contact and therefore have to carry the load (heater is 3kW). They get very hot, sometimes to the point of melting the plastic of the screw terminals, though immersion still heats the water.

Looks like the problem you are having....so the fix could be as simple as redoing the connections properly in the circular box if no damage has been done yet , or change immersion heater (say around €30 in Heat Merchants just for the piece).