PAT Testing in-house: Cost savings

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If an establishment had 400 electrical items, this would result in an annual cost of about £1000 if this were to be contracted out. However, purchasing a PAT Tester for about £200 and having a firm understanding of the requirements, a comprehensive in-house safety strategy can be put in place. This will result in immediate savings. The option of renting a suitable PAT Tester costing about £75 a month, allows further cost savings.

Usually when one of these shorts occur, it is not immediately a hard short - meaning that initially the contact is intermittent and comes and goes. Every time the short occurs, the compressor torque drops sharply, the compressor may shudder a bit visibly as a result, and this shudder shakes the winding enough to separate the short. While the short is in place, the current through the shorted winding shoots up and a lot of heat is produced. Also, usually the short will blow some sparks - which produces acid inside the air conditioner system by decomposing the freon into a mixture of hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid.


If it shorts to the housing, it will blow fuses and/or breakers and your ohmmeter will show a very low impedance from one or more windings to ground. If it does not short to the housing, then it will just stop. You still establish the type of failure using an ohmmeter.