Older 220V heater wire keeps burning out

Question

I have an older 220V heater that came with the house I bought. It worked wonderfully for years, but then a wire burned out and each time I replace it, it burns out again within a week. The original wires were some kind of cloth-covered wire and there are still some of the original wiring, I have only replaced the burnt-out wires. One in particular keeps burning out. It connects to the screw which connects to the heater coils in the front. I have used all gauges of stranded wire and I have used solid wires. I use a ring terminal to connect the wire to the screw.

What can I do to fix this once and for all? Is there a certain type and gauge of wire to use? A different connector?

Answer 1

A burnt wire in an appliance is very bad. This implies couple of things:

• over-current fault causing the load to exceed initial specification
• connection have corroded and can no longer handle the load

Neither are trivial. Both are turning said wire into a heating element, which is causing it to "burn out".

Fixing this is non-trivial. For the first one, it is a write-off. There's no point of even trying, and you risk making it worse.

For the second point, you'll have to spend time cleaning up the connection. Most of the time, the appliance is usually made in such a way that doing this is extremely impractical. I've fixed my kettle that had a corroded contact so YMMV, but it involves taking the whole thing apart, getting sandpaper in there, and sanding the thing down, then making a really good connection so the problem doesn't repeat.