Garment Steamer / Cleaners Tripping Power Supply

Has Your Power Supply Tripped when turning on your Garment Steamer / Cleaner?.

I have a Philips Garment Steamer, and when we turned it on last week, the power in the house all went off.
It was 8am, an odd time for a normal power cut, so I checked the fuse box, and found that the Safety Switch had turned off.

I clicked it back on again, and on turning the steam cleaner back on, it tripped the safety switch again.

My first thought was how long was the warranty on the Garment Steamer, but then realised it was over 4 years old. No chance of Warranty.

I Googled the issue, and came across many reasons for most steamers to trip the power.

None of those seemed feasible, but I did come across this: “Occasional circuit breaker tripping is caused by minor steam leakes inside the machine“.

Well, I decided to open it up. (you might be ahead of me now and seen the photo of the insides). I was expecting to have to buy a new one, so decided to see if I could fix a small leak, and save a bit of money.


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After removing about 20 screws I got to the electrics, and took the cover off that.  It wasn’t exactly a small leak… as you can see from the photo, it was something else.

That white stuff you see in this photo that I took, that stuff that looks like snow or ice, was a damp gooey gel type substance.

No idea how it got there, but possible an original dry material to soak up a bit of dampness.  Like those little sachets fund in some products.

It seems it soaked up a LOT of dampness, and caused a shorting between the electrics.

I decided NOT to try to repair it.
Garment Steamer Tripping Power

The machine lasted for four and a half years. It had a 2 year warranty.

But, most of the instructions for these machines advise the user to empty the water container after every use. We didn’t. Four and a half years of absorbing the water from the reservoir. I suppose I can’t complain.

The model was the Philips DailyTouch garment steamer GC506. It worked out at about $30 per year.  Not too bad.

I just bought a Sunbeam Garment Steamer SG1000 for $63. Hope it lasts me 2+ years. We will be emptying the water with this one, each time we use it!!

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