Circuit breaker tripping.

Ace Modder

Ace Modder

Ace Modder

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Joined
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Was 150 yds from OCUK - now 0.5 mile; they moved
What a fun Easter Sunday I have had today!

Woke up at 7am, with the electrics all off, trip switch kept going off instantly when I turned it back on.

ID'd it was the ring-main for all sockets. Unplugged every plugged in socket, and still doing it. Ended up getitng an emergency sparky out on Easter day.

3 hours of investigating he found the issue, a mains cable routing into the wall behind a kitchen cupboard was rubbing on the bottom side of our marble worktop, and marble is harder than the plastic coating of 240volt mains wire, so after some years it finally exposed the bare wire and was shorting the whole system causing the trip.

Now he is coming back Tuesday to fix it properly, but short term he isolated that cable for me and made the rest of the house all safe and finally have power at tea time.

He needs to channel the wall and put in new cabling and ensure it is all contained so this cannot happen again.

I'M NOT SAYING IT IS MY FAULT, BUT I DID INSTALL MY KITCHEN MYSELF 4 YEARS AGO. So who knows, right?
 
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so tell us how he located it then ... can you triage based on resistance to ground stepping round the various exposed sockets/boxes on the ring
 
He advised that even though from the RCD box there is only 1 ring main, the actual main split into 3 outlying main loops.

He isolated 2 at a time and work out which loop was the issue. The problem then was identifying what sockets were on what loops. He worked on each socket in the house, but unknowingly (to me) some sockets were run as extensions from other sockets under floorboards etc, instead of being done seperately from the major ring loop, this caused some more time to ID what exactly was going on with various sockets.


He finally got it down to a loop which runs one side of the kitchen - took a little longer as the other side of the kitchen is one of the other 2 loops. Anyway he run some resistance tests and found the offending area, and then he had to investigate, pulling off the socket covers and test each metal back box and all connections. He finally got down to the final section and after revmong the rear of the cupbord from the wall, which wasn't the easiest job due to big old marble polished worktops that I installed in the kitchen, luckily the cupboard in question I fitted a "fake" rear back to the cupboard which I made removable as the gas meter is located in the rear of this cupboard.

This is the offending cable and "dodgy" wooden plate which was how the socket etc was previously installed before I ripped out the kitchen and reinstalled new cupboards etc.

Note in the orange circle, that is where the cable has rubbed and exposed the bare live wire causing the short.
The red circle is the boiler power which normally goes from the middle fuse box into the right box for the boiler. He temp made cut it so its connted to the 3 pinplug until Tuesday when he can come back and fix the bodge job that was in place for a long time. This is how the electrics were setup when i installed a new kitchen, but the worrying thing is that got signed as safe by an electrician who upgraded me to smart meters maybe 1 year after the kitchen was updated by me.

fg2OZpy.png
 
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Hotwired said:
So what does it cost to get an electrician out on Easter Sunday then :p
Click to expand...
A lot less than I expected, £90 initial call out fee and then £80 for just over 3 hours time.

Plus whatever it costs when he comes back, but he said maybe 3 hours ish work for fixing it properly + materials which maybe £20-£30 at a guess.
 
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Ace Modder said:
He advised that even though from the RCD box there is only 1 ring main, the actual main split into 3 outlying main loops.

He isolated 2 at a time and work out which loop was the issue. The problem then was identifying what sockets were on what loops. He worked on each socket in the house, but unknowingly (to me) some sockets were run as extensions from other sockets under floorboards etc, instead of being done seperately from the major ring loop, this caused some more time to ID what exactly was going on with various sockets.


He finally got it down to a loop which runs one side of the kitchen - took a little longer as the other side of the kitchen is one of the other 2 loops. Anyway he run some resistance tests and found the offending area, and then he had to investigate, pulling off the socket covers and test each metal back box and all connections. He finally got down to the final section and after revmong the rear of the cupbord from the wall, which wasn't the easiest job due to big old marble polished worktops that I installed in the kitchen, luckily the cupboard in question I fitted a "fake" rear back to the cupboard which I made removable as the gas meter is located in the rear of this cupboard.

This is the offending cable and "dodgy" wooden plate which was how the socket etc was previously installed before I ripped out the kitchen and reinstalled new cupboards etc.

Note in the orange circle, that is where the cable has rubbed and exposed the bare live wire causing the short.
The red circle is the boiler power which normally goes from the middle fuse box into the right box for the boiler. He temp made cut it so its connted to the 3 pinplug until Tuesday when he can come back and fix the bodge job that was in place for a long time. This is how the electrics were setup when i installed a new kitchen, but the worrying thing is that got signed as safe by an electrician who upgraded me to smart meters maybe 1 year after the kitchen was updated by me.

fg2OZpy.png
Click to expand...
Dear god please lift the electrics away from the Gas meter 150mm minimum distance for anything switched.
 
Ace Modder said:
A lot less than I expected, £90 initial call out fee and then £80 for just over 3 hours time.

Plus whatever it costs when he comes back, but he said maybe 3 hours ish work for fixing it properly + materials which maybe £20-£30 at a guess.
Click to expand...
That's the cheapest sparky quote I have ever heard of for that amount of work. I would keep his number.
 
The guy travelled from Telford to Newcastle under Lyme also for that price.

I didn't know where he came from till after he arrived, because I posted the job on a few checkatrade sites etc. And he answered the job and called me (didn't really fancy cold calling sparkies on Easter Sunday)

Nice guy too, he explained everything he tried and found too, he did show me that my 2 socket plug behind my fridge/freezer was unearthed and could potentially cause the appliance to become live if a leak occurs, he is going to also fix that for me on Tuesday too.

I love my old 1930s house, which appears to have some old age lecky issues. But I am certainly getting him to update my circuitry for me when he has some better free time - he is working flat out for the next few weeks doing a big solar farm project. But he is able to come and help fix my problems on an evening after his full days work.
 
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Ace Modder said:
He advised that even though from the RCD box there is only 1 ring main, the actual main split into 3 outlying main loops.

He isolated 2 at a time and work out which loop was the issue. The problem then was identifying what sockets were on what loops. He worked on each socket in the house, but unknowingly (to me) some sockets were run as extensions from other sockets under floorboards etc, instead of being done seperately from the major ring loop, this caused some more time to ID what exactly was going on with various sockets.


He finally got it down to a loop which runs one side of the kitchen - took a little longer as the other side of the kitchen is one of the other 2 loops. Anyway he run some resistance tests and found the offending area, and then he had to investigate, pulling off the socket covers and test each metal back box and all connections. He finally got down to the final section and after revmong the rear of the cupbord from the wall, which wasn't the easiest job due to big old marble polished worktops that I installed in the kitchen, luckily the cupboard in question I fitted a "fake" rear back to the cupboard which I made removable as the gas meter is located in the rear of this cupboard.

This is the offending cable and "dodgy" wooden plate which was how the socket etc was previously installed before I ripped out the kitchen and reinstalled new cupboards etc.

Note in the orange circle, that is where the cable has rubbed and exposed the bare live wire causing the short.
The red circle is the boiler power which normally goes from the middle fuse box into the right box for the boiler. He temp made cut it so its connted to the 3 pinplug until Tuesday when he can come back and fix the bodge job that was in place for a long time. This is how the electrics were setup when i installed a new kitchen, but the worrying thing is that got signed as safe by an electrician who upgraded me to smart meters maybe 1 year after the kitchen was updated by me.

fg2OZpy.png
Click to expand...
Err not sure that’s code lol.
Isolator needs to be easily accessible, the use if extensions in a ring, and bettern not have a small gas leak..
 
Ace Modder said:
He advised that even though from the RCD box there is only 1 ring main, the actual main split into 3 outlying main loops.

He isolated 2 at a time and work out which loop was the issue. The problem then was identifying what sockets were on what loops. He worked on each socket in the house, but unknowingly (to me) some sockets were run as extensions from other sockets under floorboards etc, instead of being done seperately from the major ring loop, this caused some more time to ID what exactly was going on with various sockets.


He finally got it down to a loop which runs one side of the kitchen - took a little longer as the other side of the kitchen is one of the other 2 loops. Anyway he run some resistance tests and found the offending area, and then he had to investigate, pulling off the socket covers and test each metal back box and all connections. He finally got down to the final section and after revmong the rear of the cupbord from the wall, which wasn't the easiest job due to big old marble polished worktops that I installed in the kitchen, luckily the cupboard in question I fitted a "fake" rear back to the cupboard which I made removable as the gas meter is located in the rear of this cupboard.

This is the offending cable and "dodgy" wooden plate which was how the socket etc was previously installed before I ripped out the kitchen and reinstalled new cupboards etc.

Note in the orange circle, that is where the cable has rubbed and exposed the bare live wire causing the short.
The red circle is the boiler power which normally goes from the middle fuse box into the right box for the boiler. He temp made cut it so its connted to the 3 pinplug until Tuesday when he can come back and fix the bodge job that was in place for a long time. This is how the electrics were setup when i installed a new kitchen, but the worrying thing is that got signed as safe by an electrician who upgraded me to smart meters maybe 1 year after the kitchen was updated by me.

fg2OZpy.png
Click to expand...
I’m no expert but that all looks pretty dodgy to me. If my electrics were tripping and I had that in my home, I’m pretty sure it would be my starting point
 
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