Electrician advice

Dist · 1 Jul 2007 at 15:24

If a relay switch that powers 2 sets of plug sockets sudenely trips and wont flip back up, what could be causing it to not stay up? (no jokes about it 'not staying up' please).

Not being an electrician im not sure how they work exactly, but since it cant be fliped back up im gusesing whatever caused the relay to trip in the first place is still causing it to be triped when the relay is turned back on.

One plug socket was compleatly empty when this happened, the other socket had a pc (powered off), laptop (powered off), a cable modem, and a router all pluged into it. I daubt any of these caused the fault because when plugged into a switch on a seperate relay, they work fine without causing the other relay to trip.

With NOTHING pluged into any of the wall sockets that are connected to the tripped relay, the relay still refuses to be turned back on, does this mean the problem lies with either a) the relay itself being faulty, or b) a problem with the wall socket wiring causing power to be set to ground, thus tripping the relay, or c) something else?

Dist · 1 Jul 2007 at 15:37

well its the weekend, so no way will we pay a proper electrician to come out to check whats the deal, as it would cost too much. And since the plug sockets that are effected arnt essential, a proper electrician can wait for now.

Dist · 1 Jul 2007 at 22:18

Well i have no idea how, but it seems to have fixed itself. I went to take a picture of it, and i thought i would try flip the lever up for one last go. it didnt stay up right away, but when i held it up for a few seconds, it now stays up. Not sure why it had to be held up for it to stay up, all the other switches stay up when simply flicked up.

I assumed it was an electrical problem causing the cuircit breaker to keep staying on the off position, but it could just be a slight mechanical problem with the cuircit breaker itself in that it has to be held up for it to lock into the on position.

Dist · 2 Jul 2007 at 10:08

How do i know if its a 30A MCB? the Breaker itself only has '8032b' writen on it along with 240/400v (if i saw the numbers right that is, the writing was small and hard to make out). On the panel itself that the breakers are attached to, they are split up into 2 sections, and the panel points to this section as 'RCCB 80A, 40mA - do not exceed 90A' or something like that, again, its hard to make out because its just a little hand written sticker.