electric towel rail

[rondue]

Hello people,

Non-electrician here. Just a regular geezer trying to improve things around his home.

I have an electric towel radiator in my bathroom that was installed by the previous occupant of the flat years ago. It still works fine, but I have noticed a very slow drip of an oily-yellow liquid, the source of which is not visible to me at all. I placed a white tea towel on the floor beneath the towel rail, and within a few days it began to have tiny yellow spots on it. Now, after several months, the white tea towel has turned yellow and has an oily texture due to the liquid. If you touch the rails around the bottom rungs, you can feel it a bit greasy.

Why would there be a liquid inside an electric radiator?

Where does this liquid escape from and how can I stop it? Is this fixable? Do people fix towel radiators or should I just replace it?

Steve

[Someone-Else]

Its an oil filled radiator (with a leak) You would need to find where the leak is coming from in order to fix it. (Have you looked at the top?)

[ericmark]

Since you don't know age, replace whole radiator, some were filled with fire resistance fluid which is canceragenic.

To repair it would also need refilling, so unless you can find a data sheet for it, you have no idea what it is filled with.

[rondue]

Since you don't know age, replace whole radiator, some were filled with fire resistance fluid which is canceragenic.

To repair it would also need refilling, so unless you can find a data sheet for it, you have no idea what it is filled with.

That’s a fair point, and thank you very much for alerting me to the potential safety hazard in my bathroom.

I read elsewhere that the fluid can be a mixture of water and antifreeze. It can also be a 15% solution of anticorrosion inhibitor oil. I haven’t yet identified definite information on those anticorrosive inhibitors that are carcinogenic.

Here is a picture of the label on the electric rail. Unfortunately, although the company is around, it doesn’t seem to produce that product anymore and there is no datasheet, or trail of it online – nothing that I could find. Nevertheless, I have emailed them. Let’s hope they have an answer.

[ericmark]

I did look and when I read some descriptions one does wonder

90w Oil Filled Towel Rail
Polished Stainless Steel
Model A
‘The exclusive Jeeves heated liquid filled (water based liquid)
towel rail provides constant maintenance free operation.’

How can it be oil and water based?

I know I have seen oil filled radiators refilled with cooking oil, I assume as we know transformer oil was a vegetable oil, but really if it leaks it needs replacing as we simply have no idea what liquid it contains.

[aeromech3]

Is it a sealed unit or does it have a bleed point or stopper type plug?
If sealed it is rubbish now.
If the bleed or plug type maybe repairable.

[rondue]

Is it a sealed unit or does it have a bleed point or stopper type plug?
If sealed it is rubbish now.
If the bleed or plug type maybe repairable.

I really don't know. It's only got this black dial. The plastic of the dial is brittle and a bit has broken off. I suspect the leak is coming from there.

Weird thing is: there is a cable coming out from behind that black dial. So you wouldn't expect oil to be flowing through electrical connections.

Is it possible that the heating element is inside that black dial and somehow after a plastic chip fell off, the heating fluid found its way through there. Very suspicous.

[rondue]

Oh and the company came back and said that Winterwarm is a brand being sold via amazon and has nothing to do with winterwarm.co.uk.

[aeromech3]

IMHO its a sealed unit hence for the trash bin.

[Rorschach]

It's old, it's leaking, it looks like it has been bashed around. A replacement is very cheap so I would just replace it, you will waste more time and money trying to repair than just replace.