Belling 264 Electric Fire

[Line whistle]

Hi Steve,
The fire looks great, well done. Your fire is listed in my 1961 Brown Bros catalogue. It is a "Waverley" and cost £18 17s 6d plus £3 9s 3d purchase tax. Mine is a "Princess".Your glass diffuser looks the same or very similar to mine. I see yours has two bulbs.
Hope this is of some interest.
Cheers,
Des.

[tsgunnell]

My family had a belling like that in the sixties but with only one fireglow bulb the windmills were supposed to turn to give it a flicker affect

[Darren-UK]

If Steve's fire was listed in a 1961 catalogue, then I wonder how many years it was in production for? I remain convinced it predates 1961 by some ten years but, then again, the 1950's were quite a 'stagnant' decade and more modern designs didn't really appear until well into the 1960's.

[chipp1968]

As I stated ,some Deco based, "dated' designs ran well into the 60s .Odd really .Seams mostly to have been things like fires .It wasn't cheap was it!!

[Darren-UK]

It wasn't at £22 6s 9d (if I've worked that out right) in total, but then people those days expected things like this to last a lifetime, unlike today, so the investment of what equated to two or three weeks wages would've been seen as worth it.

[G8HQP Dave]

Probably a bit late to say this now, but was that asbestos insulation on the internal wiring?

We used electric fires like that (1960's versions) up to 1989 in our house in London because my Dad did not believe in central heating.

[Maestro Maker]

Brings back memories - my sister had the same fire for many years standing in front of an identical fireplace AND the same clock!!!
I used frequently have to adjust the flicker fans because a single spider web thread would stop their rotation. It was also useful to carefully remove the fans from their gramphone needle like pivots and twiddle the shapened end of a soft B pencil inside the glass thimble of the fan to impart some graphite lubricant. They went around at a fair old rate after that. It's all to do with age and relative technology. The ball point pen began to be available in 1946/7 but was no good for doctoring flicker fans!

Cheers, MM

[Colourstar]

Thanks for the tip MM, one of my fans is decidedly sluggish even after much careful alignment of the fins. I'll try your pencil tip, er tip!

Steve

[Mike Phelan]

Great job, Steve!
I think these coal-effect fires using fans were around for a few decades, pre- and post-war. If I recall correctly. some of the red bulbs with bayonet contacts had three pins, not two.

There were later coal-effect fires using a row of dangly tinsel strips blown about by the fan. Quite realistic.

[Bob_Moss]

Saw an advert in the local rag last year "Electric Fire Very Magical", I guess it was 'phoned in on a bad line.

[McMurdo]

Our first flame effect fire had a synchronous motor to drive the flicker flame (early 70's) and after a few years it got very noisy indeed.

[Phil G4SPZ]

Smashing stuff. My mother used to turn on "the glim" (as she called the fireglow bulbs) on cool evenings, but left the main elements off to save electricity. We all felt warmer!

[Herald1360]

Originally Posted by Bob_Moss

Saw an advert in the local rag last year "Electric Fire Very Magical", I guess it was 'phoned in on a bad line.

Berry Magicoal, I presume?

[Hybrid tellies]

What a superb looking fire. Its inspired me to dig my old Belling fire out.

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
Don't forget that when these magnificent beasts were sold they were usually run from nice, big, beefy 15amp round pin plugs. Sometimes 2 pin ones .
As a kid we had an ancient Berry Magicoal 2Kw fire with a fireglow lamp that had two different sized pins . I found out the hard way that the switches were on the neutral side ;
As an aside, a friend of my wife's asked me to have a look at her immersion heater as it smelt "a bit warm". It was running from a 13amp socket with an MK switched plug. The heater was rated at FOUR kilowatts! and had done so for many years without incident. I sorted the problem and replaced the plug/socket with a 20amp DP switch, now everyone's happy and I've got a nice vintage plug
Cheers de Pete

[Hunts smoothing bomb]

Originally Posted by Darren-UK

All three bars at once works out at a current draw of 13.04A excluding the two lamps, so with 13A iron flex you would have to restrict use to two bars.

Most iron flexes are of the order of 1.5mm. (same as toasters) According to the 17th edition wiring regs this flexible cord will carry up to 16 amps so no problem there.

Cheers

[Brigham]

Splendid news! My 3kw. Belling 'Champion' tubular heaters are back in spec.! I was using 1.5mm iron flex until I could get something heavier.