Mrs Norman got in touch through Positive Connections because the wall mounted fan heater in her bathroom had stopped working. With the colder months coming in, a bathroom you can’t warm up is more than just an inconvenience, so Dan and Ryan booked her in and headed over to Liskeard.

We arrived equipped to replace the whole unit, which is what we’d been expecting to do. But before anything comes off a wall, we always have a proper look at what’s actually going on. There’s no sense pulling out an appliance on the assumption it’s failed when something else on the circuit might be the reason it isn’t running.

Dan started at the supply end and worked back. The heater was fed from an RCD spur, and the trip switch on it had been knocked, cutting the power to the heater completely. From the outside there’s no way of telling. The heater does nothing when you turn it on, so naturally you assume the heater has given up. Mrs Norman had no idea a small switch out of sight was the real culprit.

Once the supply was restored, the heater fired up and ran exactly as it should. Given that the existing unit was in good condition and relatively new, fitting a brand new one would have been pointless. It would also have left the actual problem untouched, because the moment that trip switch got knocked again, the new heater would have stopped just the same.

So we dealt with the real issue instead. We checked the consumer unit and confirmed the property already benefits from RCD protection at the board, which meant the RCD spur was duplicating protection that was already in place while creating a nuisance trip risk right next to the heater. We removed it and fitted a standard fused spur in its place. The heater keeps its local isolation and fuse protection, the circuit keeps its RCD protection where it belongs at the board, and there’s no longer a trip switch sitting there waiting to be caught.

With the supply side sorted, Ryan turned his attention to the heater itself. These wall mounted units pull air across a heating element and push it back out into the room, so over time they draw in a fair bit of dust, hair and general bathroom fluff. That build up makes them noisier, less efficient and, left long enough, a genuine risk. He stripped it down, gave it a thorough clean and service, and put it back together. It was running quieter and shifting warm air noticeably better afterwards.

We tested everything properly, ran the heater from cold to confirm it was operating as it should, and then spent a few minutes with Mrs Norman showing her where the new fused spur is, what it does and how to isolate the heater if she ever needs to. That bit matters more than people realise. A lot of the elderly and vulnerable residents we visit have lived with switches and spurs in their homes for years without anyone ever explaining what any of it is for, and a short conversation in plain English saves a lot of worry later on.

The whole visit cost Mrs Norman nothing. Positive Connections is our commitment to putting something back into the communities we work in, offering essential electrical work at no cost to elderly and vulnerable residents who’d otherwise struggle to get it done or simply go without. A perfectly good heater stayed on the wall, the actual fault got fixed, the installation is safer and more sensible than it was, and Mrs Norman has warmth in her bathroom again.