How to spot a blanket that is beyond it's useful life

An electric blanket's useful life is generally expected to be no more than 10 years.

Usefully the British Electrotechnical Approvals Board changed their logo in 1995 so if your blanket has this obsolete logo on, it must be at least 14 years old and should be replaced.

The blankets we saw seemed to go along with the fashion of the day. Pink and Blue, especially on opposite sides of the same blanket, were a sure sign of an over aged blanket.

Things to look out for

The Current BEAB logo is rectangular with rounded corners. All recent Electric Blankets should have this mark

In 1993 the CE mark was introduced so all recent Electric Blanktes should have this mark too.

On 13th August 2005 the WEEE logo was introduced. All new Electric Blankets must have this logo and it shows your blanket is no more than Four and a bit years old.

2009 results

We tested 156 electric blankets over 29th & 30th September 2009 and these were the results.

It's encouraging to see over Two Thirds passed with flying colours. But it's more worrying that nearly One Third failed and were condemned. Nearly a Fifth were more than 10 years old, the maximum reccomended age.

2009 Pictures

The Star of the show.

Normally the blankets we condemn are sent for recycling. However when this one arrived for inspection it was clear it would not pass as it is overaged but comparing it to all the others it was in such remarkable condition we decided not to send it to be destroyed. Instead we are in the process of finding it a home. There must be a museum or other display of a 1950s bedroom where this blanket would fit in perfectly.

It's 2 feet by 4 feet, Pink with fabric covered flex. The flex is white with yellow, blue and red fibres and is in mint condition. One would expect the whiteness to have yellowed with age but this hasn't. The switch is Bakelite and there is an obsolete Two pin plug.

If you know of anywhere that could give this blanket a home please let them know to look at this page and to contact me, thepat|man on 0777 201 9908. It is worth noting though that this blanket has not passed it's safety inspection and should not be plugged in as it is not safe to use. In particular there is no mark to say it is double insulated and there is no earth, it needs one or the other of those. There is only an on and off switch with no overheat protection. If there is a problem in the heating element the blanket will just get hotter and hotter until it burns, there is nothing to stop that happening.

Here is the control of a blanket we tested. It is an old one and would have failed because of its age. This one also had the flex pulled out of the control. That means there was no protection for the insulators of the wires.

Here is the control from another blanket. As you can see, either side of the tape the flexes don't match.

I took the tape off and found that the flex had been replaced.

Looking under the heat shrink I found the join was a soldered one. Electrically this is a sound joint but mechanically and for protection from electric shock is is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. Firstly there is no strain relief. Any strain on the flex would be taken by the joint. Strain should be taken by an enclousure or a sheath. Also the Tape is not acceptable as Fault protection as it could be removed by hand. It should only be removable by destruction or by use of a tool.

This was in my opinion the most immediatley dangerous blanket we saw. As the flex was exiting the control it had been strained and nicked. Not only were the insulators (The wires coloured Brown and Blue) visible but on the Line (Live) I could see coppe through the insulation. When it was plugged in that part of the flex would have been at 230V and would easily have given a fatal electric shock.

Here is a wonderful idea that doesn't seem to have caught on. This blanket is clearly dated 27th April 1982. It tells us that it is 27 years old. We condemned it for this reason. If all blankets had a manufacturing date on them, or even a better a "Stop using after" date on them then perhaps the testing days would not be neccessary.

2008 results

We tested 102 electric blankets over 27th and 28th October 2008 and these were the results.

It's encouraging to see over Two Thirds passed with flying colours. But it's more worrying that nearly One Third failed and were condemned. Nearly a Quarter were more than 10 years old, the maximum reccomended age.

2008 Pictures

Here is a blanket that we tested. you can see dicolouration around the middle but the real worrying thing was one could feel the heating elements were all over the place.

That was enough to condemn it, so we decided, as an excercise, to look inside. Here you can see the heating elements following their intended paths out of the blanket, but then they curl off to the side.

In the middle they were more like a pile of spaghetti. This is extremely dangerous as the elements need space for the heat to spread out and warm the bed. Here they were heating each other which could lead ot overheating and a fire. I'ts a wonder the owner didn't notice that most of the blanket would have been cold with a really hot area in the middle