Do-it-yourself electric kettle repair: instructions and video

House­hold elec­tri­cal appli­ances are wide­ly used through­out the world and one of the most com­mon elec­tri­cal appli­ances is the elec­tric ket­tle. Despite the reli­a­bil­i­ty of many mod­els and man­u­fac­tur­ers, the ser­vice life of elec­tric ket­tles, like oth­er elec­tri­cal appli­ances, is lim­it­ed, so ket­tles break soon­er or lat­er. And in this case, it is not nec­es­sary to take the ket­tle for repair or pur­chase a new one — you can repair the elec­tric ket­tle with your own hands. In this arti­cle, we will dis­cuss with our read­ers how to repair the most com­mon break­downs in elec­tric ket­tles.

The principle of operation of the electric kettle

Before under­tak­ing the repair of any elec­tri­cal appli­ance, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand its prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion — this rule also applies to the ket­tle. Accord­ing to the elec­tri­cal dia­gram, it is easy to under­stand the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion of this elec­tri­cal appli­ance. Note that almost all mod­els work accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion below.

The prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion is as fol­lows: after con­nect­ing the plug to the pow­er source, the cur­rent pass­es through the wire to the con­tacts of the stand, on which all ket­tles are installed when water is heat­ed.

At the base of the ket­tle itself there are spe­cial con­tacts that are con­nect­ed togeth­er with the con­tacts locat­ed on the stand — in this way the cir­cuit is closed and the heat­ing ele­ment is heat­ed. The elec­tric­i­ty then pass­es through a ther­mal switch, a device that allows the ket­tle to turn off when it reach­es a cer­tain tem­per­a­ture (usu­al­ly the boil­ing point). Also in the stan­dard cir­cuit there is a ther­mal pro­tec­tion switch, which is always on and is acti­vat­ed only if the user turns on an emp­ty ket­tle. From the marked switch­es, elec­tric­i­ty pass­es direct­ly to the elec­tric heat­ing ele­ment (also called the heat­ing ele­ment).

We have exam­ined the basic prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion of an elec­tric ket­tle — now we will con­sid­er sep­a­rate­ly the oper­a­tion of some of its cir­cuits and sec­tions.

Wiring diagram of nodes

Care­ful­ly con­sid­er the stand for the ket­tle and the place of its con­tact with the ket­tle itself. Inside the cir­cu­lar grooves, you can find an elec­tri­cal con­tact locat­ed on a small spring. It is through this con­tact that the volt­age from the com­mon net­work is sup­plied to the elec­tric ket­tle itself. In the cen­ter of the stand there is anoth­er con­tact, which, when in con­tact with the elec­tric ket­tle, grounds its case. In fact, this con­tact does not play any role and is intend­ed only to pro­tect the user in case of vio­la­tion of the integri­ty of the insu­la­tion.

The pow­er cord that goes to the stand of the elec­tric ket­tle, inside this stand, branch­es into three wires, to which the ter­mi­nals are con­nect­ed. One wire is for ground­ing, the oth­er two wires go to con­cen­tric cop­per rings that are used to trans­fer elec­tric­i­ty from the stand to the ket­tle itself. Fur­ther, elec­tric­i­ty from cop­per rings goes direct­ly to the heat­ing ele­ment, which is installed at the base of the ket­tle body. As a result of the clo­sure of the cir­cuit, the water is heat­ed.

overheat protection

Heat­ing ele­ments have high pow­er and get very hot dur­ing oper­a­tion, there­fore, a spe­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tem is addi­tion­al­ly installed in each elec­tric ket­tle. The basis of this sys­tem is bimetal­lic plates, which, when heat­ed to a cer­tain tem­per­a­ture, unbend and open the cir­cuit, there­by pre­vent­ing fur­ther over­heat­ing of the ket­tle.

Automatic shutdown

Almost all mod­ern elec­tric ket­tles have a spe­cial sys­tem that pro­vides for turn­ing off the heat­ing ele­ment from volt­age when the water reach­es the boil­ing point. The prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion of such a machine is sim­ple — when heat­ed, steam is sup­plied through a spe­cial chan­nel to a bimetal­lic plate, which in turn is con­nect­ed to a switch. When the ket­tle boils and at an increased inten­si­ty of steam pres­sure, the bimetal­lic plate heats up and press­es on the switch lever, there­by dis­con­nect­ing the ket­tle from the mains.

How to repair a kettle?

We exam­ined the main tech­ni­cal fea­tures, and now we will con­sid­er how to repair an elec­tric ket­tle. For the con­ve­nience of read­ers, let’s con­sid­er spe­cif­ic exam­ples that most often arise with teapots from var­i­ous com­pa­nies (Tefal, Philips, etc.):

1. Ket­tle stopped heat­ing water. In this case, the mal­func­tion is very easy — there was a break in the sec­tion on the heat­ing ele­ment itself, or there is no con­tact of some ter­mi­nals with the ter­mi­nals on the heat­ing ele­ment. The con­nec­tion is restored very eas­i­ly — for this you need to dis­as­sem­ble the ket­tle and deter­mine the place where the con­tacts left off. When deter­min­ing the place of lack of con­tact, it is nec­es­sary to restore the con­nec­tion of the ter­mi­nal with the ter­mi­nals on the heat­ing ele­ment using pli­ers.
2. The ket­tle stopped heat­ing water and the indi­ca­tor does not show that the ket­tle is on. First of all, we check the volt­age in the net­work. If there is one, the rea­son is poor con­tact between the cur­rent col­lec­tors at the base of the ket­tle body and the stand. In this case, it is nec­es­sary to check how the spring-loaded con­tacts, which we talked about above, are hold­ing. To do this, the stand is dis­as­sem­bled and a ring with a suit­able con­tact is tak­en out. It is nec­es­sary to check how tight­ly they are fixed — as a rule, they become loose over time and you sim­ply need to tight­en them more tight­ly in order for elec­tric­i­ty to pass through the con­tacts.
3. Switch or over­heat­ing pro­tec­tion does not work. When con­sid­er­ing how to repair an elec­tric ket­tle, most often in prac­tice they encounter a non-work­ing switch. It may be bro­ken due to the wear of plas­tic parts, rust on the sur­face of the bimet­al plate. To check the con­di­tion, it is nec­es­sary to remove the switch from the hous­ing and check the integri­ty of the parts. After that, it is nec­es­sary to inspect the con­di­tion of the plates. If there is a strong deposit from steam or rust on them, it must be removed and the oper­a­tion of the switch should be checked again. These mea­sures are also tak­en if the over­heat­ing pro­tec­tion stops work­ing (in oth­er words, the ket­tle stops turn­ing off) — it is nec­es­sary to check the con­di­tion of the bimetal­lic plates and, if nec­es­sary, clean them.
4. The ket­tle is leak­ing. In this case, it is nec­es­sary to check the integri­ty of the ket­tle body and see where the leak comes from. As a rule, if there is a strong leak, it may not be pos­si­ble to repair the ket­tle, espe­cial­ly if its body is made of low-qual­i­ty plas­tic or the inner sur­face has been bad­ly dam­aged as a result of dam­age.

Video instruction

In addi­tion to the above infor­ma­tion, we rec­om­mend watch­ing a video where you can see detailed instruc­tions for repair­ing elec­tric ket­tles: